github / github/copilot-cli

Any way for an extension to render a live panel in the terminal?

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area:plugins area:terminal-rendering
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Description

### Describe the feature or problem you'd like to solve

An extension has no way to render a live, refreshing panel in the terminal (e.g. a sub-agent progress dashboard) — `session.log` only appends scrolling text.

### Proposed solution

I'm building a CLI extension that runs a bunch of sub-agents in parallel and I want to show progress while they run. Something like:

```
my-run · explore · 3/5 done · 02:14
✓ auth-coverage done 45s 12.3K tok
✓ input-validation done 38s 10.1K tok
⠿ rate-limiting streaming 41s 3.2KB 8.7K tok
⠿ error-handling tool 41s (web_fetch)
· cors-policy pending 0s
```

ideally refreshing in place.

As far as I can tell there's no way to do this from an extension right now. The only output options are `session.log(..., { ephemeral: true })`, which is just scrolling text with no fixed region, and the modal `session.ui.*` dialogs. Since stdout is the JSON-RPC channel I can't draw to the terminal myself either.

I have all the data on the extension side (state, elapsed, tokens, current tool per agent) — I just have no surface to render it on.

Would you consider an API for extensions to render a panel like this in the TUI?
Even a read-only snapshot (no keyboard, no live push) would be enough to start — the extension hands the host some structured rows and the host draws them. Live updates could come later.

`@github/copilot` ~1.0.65, extension via `@github/copilot-sdk/extension`.

### Example prompts or workflows

_No response_

### Additional context

_No response_

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by reviewing the extension API exposed through @github/copilot-sdk/extension and how session.log and session.ui.* are surfaced in the TUI. Define the smallest structured-row snapshot API first, then verify that an extension can provide the requested data and that the host renders it as a fixed terminal panel; live refresh and interaction are explicitly later considerations.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
github
Domain
cli, developer-experience
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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