Feature request: add a frozen state for queued messages

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#35,357 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by locating the existing message-queue implementation and its terminal UI, then define how frozen messages interact with queuing, editing, reordering, deletion, release, and indexed shortcuts; done means each proposed behavior works without auto-sending frozen messages.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

enhancement TUI

Problem

When an agent is busy, I want to jot down follow-up ideas without interrupting it. Currently, queuing a message means it auto-sends as soon as the agent finishes, giving me no chance to review, tweak, reorder, or hold back the thought.

Proposed solution: Frozen Messages

Add a Frozen Messages state to the message queue. Instead of auto-sending when the agent finishes, these messages stay paused in a dedicated box until I manually release them.

How it should work
  • UI: A visual box holding pending frozen messages as editable cards/lines.
  • Shortcuts and buttons: A way to send a message directly into the frozen state rather than the active queue.
  • Manual release: Frozen messages remain paused after the current task completes until explicitly sent.
  • Indexed sending: Keyboard combinations, for example ending with a number like 1, 2, can instantly send the corresponding frozen message when multiple messages are lined up.
  • Editable: Frozen messages remain fully editable text until sent.
  • Reordering and deletion: Allow frozen messages to be reordered, deleted, or moved into the active queue before release.

Why this helps

This supports rapid follow-up thinking without interrupting a long-running task or accidentally sending an unreviewed prompt. It separates two different intents:

  1. Queue this to run automatically next.
  2. Remember this for later, but let me review and decide when to send it.

The current queue supports the first intent, but there is no clear way to express the second.

Related OpenAI Codex discussion

A related request in Codex proposes grouping queued user messages and sending them as one request: https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/35356

This issue is specifically about adding a user-controlled, manually released draft/frozen state rather than only grouping or automatically processing queued messages.

Dominant language
Rust
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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