Show agent thinking and tool calls in the chat UI
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Assessment
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Newbie friendliness
- 22/100
- Issue type
- Feature
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Activity status
- Stale
- Tech stack
- python, typescript
Research direction
Start with apps/app/src/components/tool-rendering.tsx and inspect the existing ToolReasoning and useDefaultRenderTool integration. Then read apps/agent/main.py to understand how agent events are emitted; the work is done when thinking and tool activity can be presented as a coherent, collapsible chat view with the proposed status details.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Description
Summary
Surface the agent's thinking process and tool call activity in the chat UI so users can see how the agent reasons, not just the final answer.
Current State
- Tool calls: The
ToolReasoningcomponent (apps/app/src/components/tool-rendering.tsx) already renders tool names, arguments, and status (executing → complete) viauseDefaultRenderTool. This is a good foundation but is minimal — it shows what tool was called, not why. - Thinking/reasoning: Not shown at all. The agent's intermediate thought process is invisible to the user. There is no UI for streaming thinking tokens or displaying step-by-step reasoning.
Proposal
1. Agent thinking display
Show the agent's reasoning as it works through a problem. This could be:
- Streaming thinking tokens — If using a model with extended thinking (e.g. Claude with
thinkingblocks), render these in a collapsible "Thinking…" section above the response. Show the thinking text streaming in real-time with a subtle visual treatment (muted text, indented, or in a distinct container). - Step-by-step reasoning — For multi-step agent tasks, show each reasoning step as the agent progresses (e.g., "Analyzing your request…", "Looking up existing todos…", "Organizing by priority…").
2. Enhanced tool call visualization
Build on the existing ToolReasoning component:
- Execution timeline — When multiple tools are called in sequence, show them as a vertical timeline so users see the agent's workflow.
- Tool results — Show a summary of what the tool returned (e.g., "Found 3 todos" or "Updated 2 items"), not just the arguments passed in.
- Duration — Show how long each tool call took.
- Grouped display — Collapse completed tool calls into a compact summary, expand only the active one.
3. Thinking + tools combined view
When the agent thinks, then calls a tool, then thinks again — show this as a coherent narrative:
🧠 Thinking: "The user wants to organize their todos by priority..."
🔧 get_todos → returned 5 todos
🧠 Thinking: "I'll group these into high/medium/low priority..."
🔧 manage_todos → updated 5 todos
✅ "I've organized your todos by priority!"
Implementation Notes
- CopilotKit's
useDefaultRenderToolalready provides the hook point for tool rendering - The agent backend (
apps/agent/main.py) would need to emit thinking/reasoning events — this could be done via LangGraph's streaming callbacks or by adding thinking state toAgentState - For models with native thinking (Claude extended thinking), CopilotKit may already surface thinking tokens — needs investigation
- The
ToolReasoningcomponent atapps/app/src/components/tool-rendering.tsxis the starting point for enhanced tool visualization
Design Considerations
- Thinking should be collapsible by default after completion — users who want transparency can expand it, but it shouldn't clutter the chat for those who don't
- Tool calls should feel like a progress indicator, not noise — compact when done, detailed when active
- The overall effect should make the agent feel more trustworthy and transparent without overwhelming the UI
- Dominant language
- TypeScript
- Stars
- 1.6k
- Forks
- 202
- PR merge metrics
- No merged PRs in 30d
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
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