fix(tui): show progress indicators while subagent is initializing

[Githubguy132010]

Context

Fixes #8422. Subagents can take over a minute to show any activity during startup, making the UI look frozen. There were two places where users got no feedback:

1. Parent session view — the Task tool entry showed a spinner + task description, but nothing else while the LLM was generating its first response (before any tool calls arrived).
2. Subagent session view — if a user clicked the task link to navigate into the subagent session, they saw a completely blank message area because no messages existed yet.

Implementation

Two minimal additions to packages/opencode/src/cli/cmd/tui/routes/session/index.tsx:

Task component content memo — added an else branch for the empty-tools running state. When isRunning() is true but tools().length === 0, the display now includes ↳ Starting... instead of nothing:

│ ⠋ General Task — Fix the bug
      ↳ Starting...

Once the first tool call arrives this transitions naturally to the existing ↳ Tool title display.

Subagent session view — added a <Show when={session()?.parentID && messages().length === 0}> block that renders ↳ Initializing... before the message list. This replaces the blank screen a user would see when navigating to a freshly-created subagent session. It disappears automatically as soon as the first message arrives (reactive update via messages()).

No backend changes needed — the gap is inherent to LLM response time. The web UI already shows a TextShimmer animation on the task title, which provides sufficient feedback there.

Screenshots

before	after
Task entry shows only title + spinner; subagent session is blank	Task entry shows ↳ Starting...; subagent session shows ↳ Initializing...

How to Test

1. Start a Kilo Code TUI session.
2. Send a prompt that triggers a subagent (e.g. @general-purpose summarize this repo).
3. Parent session: observe the Task entry — it should immediately show ↳ Starting... once the task is running, before any tool calls appear.
4. Click the task link to navigate to the subagent session — you should see ↳ Initializing... instead of a blank screen.
5. Once the subagent begins making tool calls, both indicators transition to normal progress display.

Get in Touch

[kilo-code-bot]

Code Review Summary

Status: No Issues Found | Recommendation: Merge

Files Reviewed (4 files)

• packages/kilo-vscode/webview-ui/src/components/chat/ChatView.tsx
• packages/kilo-vscode/webview-ui/src/components/chat/MessageList.tsx
• packages/kilo-vscode/webview-ui/src/components/chat/TaskToolExpanded.tsx
• packages/opencode/src/cli/cmd/tui/routes/session/index.tsx

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_{Reviewed by gpt-5.4-20260305 · 1,049,884 tokens}

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