2026-09-07 -- Slash-command input and context compaction

Two gaps that were both “the CLI already does this, the panel just does not let you reach it / does not tell you about it”:

1. The composer had no way to type a slash command with any confidence. The CLI reports its command catalog twice (system/init slash_commands[] names, initialize commands[] with descriptions), SystemInitMessage.SlashCommands even mapped it, and nothing read it.
2. system/compact_boundary mapped to the ignored InboundType.System bucket. A /compact (or the CLI’s automatic compaction near the window limit) left no trace in the transcript, and the context meter — whose whole job is to warn about imminent compaction — kept showing the pre-compaction number, or worse.

1. Slash commands

1.1 Wire contract

In --input-format stream-json the CLI treats a user message whose text is /name args as the slash command name (Agent SDK “Slash commands”). So the panel sends the typed text VERBATIM and invents no syntax of its own. SlashCommandCatalog.TryParse is the sent-text grammar: leading whitespace, /, one or more command characters (letters, digits, -, _, : for namespaced skills), then whitespace or end. /, / x, //, /usr/bin/x, 1/2 of the scene are prose.

Two commands get panel-side treatment:

• /clear never reaches the CLI. The CLI’s own /clear starts a new session id underneath a panel that still believes it is showing the old one; the panel’s New chat (AgentHub.StartFresh) is the same intent done honestly, so /clear maps to it.
• /compact goes to the CLI; section 2 is what happens next.

A sent command consumes NO context chips and NO pending images: appending a delimited context block or an image block to /compact would turn the command into prose. They stay pending for the next real message (ComposerView.SendSlashCommand).

1.2 The catalog and its cache

AgentHub.RefreshSlashCommandCatalogCache runs on BOTH arrival points (initialize resolved, system/init received — their order differs between a fresh spawn and a --resume) and stores SlashCommandCatalog.Merge(initialize commands[], init slash_commands[]) in PanelSettings.slashCommandCatalog, the same shape as modelCatalog / agentTypeCatalog: rich entries (description, argumentHint) win, names the rich list lacks are appended bare, and an empty result never clobbers a cached list. The cache is why the popup works right after a domain reload or editor restart, before this connection’s own init.

What the composer offers is AgentHub.SlashCommands = SlashCommandCatalog.WithBuiltins(cache, ...): /compact and /clear are guaranteed at the front (every SDK-mode CLI this panel targets supports both; /clear is local anyway). /clear ALWAYS carries the panel’s own description because it is the panel’s New chat; /compact keeps the CLI’s description when one was reported.

1.3 The popup

ComposerView shows a suggestion list in normal flow directly above the field (never absolutely positioned, so it cannot be clipped by the panel edge or overlap the message list) while the WHOLE field text is / plus a command prefix (TryGetTypedPrefix): a space, a newline or any other character ends prefix mode, i.e. the user is typing arguments now. Filtering (Filter) lists prefix matches first, then contains-matches, ordinal-ignore-case, capped at 8.

Keys, all consumed only while the popup is open, and all breaking the Enter keycode->char bridge like any other non-Enter key:

• Up/Down move the highlight (wrapping). The caret does not move.
• Tab completes the highlight to /name (CompleteText; the trailing space leaves prefix mode so the popup closes through the ordinary value-changed path). Unity follows a Tab keycode event with a '\t' character event that the TextField would insert into the just-completed text; _swallowNextTabChar eats exactly that one event.
• Enter completes INSTEAD of sending while the typed prefix is not already the highlighted entry’s full name (ShouldCompleteOnEnter); once it is, Enter sends. So a no-argument command is /comp Enter Enter, and nothing is ever sent that the user has not seen spelled out. The paired character event inherits EnterAction.Ignore through the existing pending protocol (the IME-confirm shape), so it neither sends nor inserts a newline. IME composition still wins: the Enter decision is resolved first, and only a resolved Send is redirected.
• Esc closes the popup without touching the text (and, with the popup closed, Esc is the interrupt it always was).
• The hint under the field reads the key legend while the popup is open.

The popup never hides on focus-out: a row click takes focus before the click lands.

2. Compaction

2.1 Protocol

system/compact_boundary now maps to SystemCompactBoundaryMessage (InboundType.SystemCompactBoundary, event AgentClient.CompactBoundaryReceived). Wire shape (Agent SDK docs, CLI v2.1.218): {"type":"system","subtype":"compact_boundary","compact_metadata":{"trigger":"manual"|"auto","pre_tokens":N}}. The on-disk transcript spells the same fact compactMetadata.preTokens; ReadMetadata accepts both so TranscriptLoader shares the mapper and the two cannot drift. Nothing in it is required: a bare boundary still maps (trigger empty, PreTokens -1) — the boundary is the fact, the metadata decorates it. No repo fixture captures a real compaction yet; the shape is pinned from the SDK documentation and guarded by the tolerant mapping (a spelling drift degrades to “no token clause”, never to a dropped line).

2.2 The context meter

The meter’s numerator is result.usage.iterations[last] (design note 2026-08-27). After a compaction that number is wrong in a specific way depending on who compacted:

• MANUAL /compact: the turn IS the compaction. Its last iteration is the summarization call, which read the whole OLD context — exactly the number the compaction just made obsolete.
• AUTO, mid-turn: the turn went on after the boundary; its last iteration ran against the compacted context — exactly the post-compaction size.

AgentHub therefore records the trigger of a boundary seen since the last result (_pendingCompactTrigger) and, at the next OnTurnCompleted, keeps the reading for auto and discards it for manual (ApplyCompactionToContextReading). From the boundary until a reading is trusted, ContextUnknownAfterCompaction is set and StatusBarView.RefreshContextMeter shows “compacted” at 0% with a tooltip instead of a number: the old billing-sum fallback would re-read the discarded context as ~100% right after the user asked for room. A real reading always wins over the flag (ShowCompactedState) — the flag suppresses a fallback, never a measurement. The flag is per session (cleared by StartFresh / SwitchToSession / ResetForTests) and not persisted across a domain reload: after a reload the meter falls back one rung until the next turn, which is the pre-existing, honest behavior.

2.3 The transcript note

CompactionNote.Describe(trigger, preTokens) (Integration — it reads L10n, which Model may not) is the single wording, shared by the live path (AgentHub.OnCompactBoundaryReceived) and the restore path (TranscriptLoader.HandleCompactBoundaryLine, through the TranscriptLoader.CompactionDescriber seam that CompactionNote installs at editor load, the ImageSaver pattern; a null seam falls back to plain English so the boundary is never lost), so a session looks the same watched live or reopened from History. Four strings, one sentence each (the i18n Fmt rule): manual/auto x with/without a token count; an unknown trigger reads as auto, never claiming a /compact the user did not type. Token counts use TokenCountFormat.Short (“84.2k”), which StatusBarView.FormatTokens now delegates to, so note and meter agree on notation. The live handler closes the streaming bubble (text after the boundary starts a new one) but does NOT demote open tool-call records the way FinalizeStreamingMessage does: a compaction happens between API calls, never while a tool is mid-flight, and the turn is still running — its own result closes it.

2.4 History restore

TranscriptLoader.ProcessLine now looks at system lines before the isMeta gate (the CLI writes the boundary with isMeta:false today; the boundary must survive if that ever flips) and turns compact_boundary into the note above, closing the current assistant accumulator like a user line does. The isCompactSummary:true user line the CLI injects after the boundary (“This session is being continued from a previous conversation…”) is skipped like an isMeta line — the person never typed it and the model already has it — and SessionIndex skips it for the History preview for the same reason. Other system subtypes stay ignored, and their timestamps still count toward “last activity” as before.

3. What was verified here and what was not

EditMode pins: ProtocolMappingTests (both metadata spellings, bare boundary, non-numeric tokens), SlashCommandCatalogTests (parse from the real initialize capture, merge, builtins, the typed-text grammar, prefix mode, filtering, Enter-completes), CompactionHubTests (note text and the manual-vs-auto meter rule through a real AgentClient into AgentHub’s handlers), TranscriptLoaderCompactionTests (restore + preview), ComposerSlashCommandTests (popup through the real value-changed and OnKeyDown paths), CompactionNoteTests, PanelSettingsTests (cache round-trip). This session had no Unity Editor or dotnet toolchain, so the suite was not executed here; CI (editmode-tests.yml) is the verification. Still to be watched live on a real CLI: the exact compact_boundary line (to be captured into Tests/Editor/Fixtures), and whether /compact’s own result carries the summarization usage as assumed in 2.2 (if it does not, the only cost is one turn of “compacted” in the meter where a number could have been shown).