Discussed in #824
Originally posted by jcmuller June 26, 2026
Right now the left spaces sidebar tells agent status apart almost entirely by color. state_dot() maps three different states to the same ● glyph: blocked is red, working is yellow, idle-unseen is teal. If you are colorblind, those three collapse into "a filled dot."
The agents panel on the right does not have this problem. It calls a sibling function, agent_icon(), that gives every state its own shape on top of color (◉ blocked, an animated spinner for working, ● idle-unseen, ✓ done, ○ unknown), plus a separate text label. Same (state, seen) input, accessible output. The sidebar just never got the same treatment. Switching to a monochrome theme like vesper actually makes it worse, because that removes the one thing currently carrying the distinction.
A plugin cannot fix this, since plugins cannot restyle the UI. The smallest fix is in the TUI client layer: point the sidebar (and the mobile views) at the same agent_icon mapping the agents panel already uses, and delete the duplicate state_dot. Pure presentation, no server/API/protocol change. The only visible shifts are blocked ● to ◉, working ● to the spinner, done ○ to ✓, and unknown · to ○; idle-unseen ● stays put, and every glyph is one cell so the columns do not move.
I prototyped it on my fork and it passes the full suite, with new buffer-render tests asserting blocked and done render distinct glyph cells. Happy to open a PR if you are up for it. Want me to file an issue first?
Discussed in #824
Originally posted by jcmuller June 26, 2026
Right now the left spaces sidebar tells agent status apart almost entirely by color.
state_dot()maps three different states to the same●glyph: blocked is red, working is yellow, idle-unseen is teal. If you are colorblind, those three collapse into "a filled dot."The agents panel on the right does not have this problem. It calls a sibling function,
agent_icon(), that gives every state its own shape on top of color (◉blocked, an animated spinner for working,●idle-unseen,✓done,○unknown), plus a separate text label. Same(state, seen)input, accessible output. The sidebar just never got the same treatment. Switching to a monochrome theme like vesper actually makes it worse, because that removes the one thing currently carrying the distinction.A plugin cannot fix this, since plugins cannot restyle the UI. The smallest fix is in the TUI client layer: point the sidebar (and the mobile views) at the same
agent_iconmapping the agents panel already uses, and delete the duplicatestate_dot. Pure presentation, no server/API/protocol change. The only visible shifts are blocked●to◉, working●to the spinner, done○to✓, and unknown·to○; idle-unseen●stays put, and every glyph is one cell so the columns do not move.I prototyped it on my fork and it passes the full suite, with new buffer-render tests asserting blocked and done render distinct glyph cells. Happy to open a PR if you are up for it. Want me to file an issue first?