stacklok / stacklok/mecatl

Compact tool call output, expandable on demand

Open
#1,361 0 comments 1 reaction 1 assignee View on GitHub

@jbeda is already working on this.

Since Sep 11, 2026.

tui
Dominant language
Go
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152
Forks
16
Avg merge
14h 48m
Merged PRs (30d)
536

Description

Problem

Tool call output dominates mecatui's conversation view. Usually you don't need to see what a tool call did in that much detail, and the big blocks make the actual conversation hard to follow — reported as the single biggest reason mecatl's output feels harder to follow than other tools; what the agent is doing gets lost.

Scale makes it worse: runs regularly hit tens or 100+ tool calls depending on the model. Shrinking individual cards won't fix that — consecutive tool calls need to compact into a single line.

But they shouldn't disappear either. Early visibility is how users build trust in the agent: when switching models or trying a new process, you want to watch for it going off the rails. Once comfortable, the same output is noise. The UI has to scale across both ends.

Ideas discussed

  • Compact consecutive tool calls into a single line (the core fix).
  • Clickable tool cards — expand one at a time.
  • Click through to a tool-call summary/detail view for real exploration.
  • Not all tool calls are equal: file edits might always show the diff. Per-tool display rules, not one policy.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Assessment

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