Chat UX: queued message lost on interrupt, no immediate-send shortcut, and ESC behavior differs from Claude Code

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
50/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
electron, next.js, typescript
Domain
desktop, frontend

Research direction

Start by locating the chat input and the code that queues messages and interrupts generation; the issue does not name specific files or tests. Reproduce the queued-message loss by typing during generation and pressing ESC or stop, then check how Enter and Ctrl+Enter are handled. Done means queued text is not silently lost and the agreed interrupt-and-send behavior works consistently.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Summary

Three related UX issues with the chat input / message sending behavior in the Codepilot desktop client:

  1. Queued message lost on interrupt: When the user types a message while the model is still generating (message is queued), then presses ESC or clicks stop to interrupt the current generation, the queued message is silently discarded instead of being sent.

  2. No immediate-send (interrupt + send) shortcut: In Claude Code CLI, Ctrl+Enter sends the message and immediately interrupts the current generation. In Codepilot, there appears to be no equivalent — the user can only queue messages, and there's no way to force-send with immediate interruption.

  3. No interrupt-and-send button: Unlike Cursor (which has a visible "send anyway / interrupt" button that appears when you type during generation), Codepilot only shows a "cancel" action for queued messages, but no way to promote a queued message to an immediate interrupt-and-send.

Detailed description

1. Queued message lost on interrupt

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Model is generating a response
  2. User starts typing a new message in the input box (message is queued, shown as pending)
  3. User presses ESC or clicks stop to interrupt the current generation
  4. The queued message disappears without being sent

Expected behavior:

  • Pressing ESC while a message is queued should: interrupt the current generation AND send the queued message (matching Claude Code CLI behavior)
  • OR at minimum, the typed text should be preserved in the input box so the user can re-send it manually

Actual behavior:

  • The queued message is silently discarded. The user cannot recover the text they typed — it's not preserved in the input box, not in clipboard, not in any history.
2. No immediate-send shortcut

Expected behavior (from Claude Code CLI):

  • Enter → queue the message (send after current generation completes)
  • Ctrl+Enter → immediately interrupt current generation and send the message

Actual behavior in Codepilot:

  • Enter queues the message (works)
  • Ctrl+Enter behavior is unclear or non-functional as an interrupt-and-send
  • No visible keyboard shortcut hint for immediate send
3. No interrupt-and-send affordance

Expected behavior (from Cursor):

  • When user types while generation is active, a visible button appears: "Send anyway" / "Interrupt and send"
  • This gives the user a clear choice: queue or force-send

Actual behavior in Codepilot:

  • Only a "cancel queue" option is shown
  • No way to promote queued text to an immediate send

Suggested improvements

  1. ESC behavior: Match Claude Code CLI — ESC interrupts generation AND sends the queued message
  2. Ctrl+Enter: Implement as immediate interrupt + send
  3. Queued message preservation: Even if not auto-sent on interrupt, the typed text should be preserved in the input box (not discarded)
  4. Visual affordance: Consider adding an "Interrupt and send" button that appears when the user types during generation (similar to Cursor's pattern)

Related UX principle

The current behavior creates a frustrating loop:

  1. User types a correction/follow-up while model is generating
  2. User interrupts the generation (expecting their queued message to go through)
  3. Message is silently discarded
  4. User has to retype everything from memory

This is particularly painful for long or carefully crafted messages.

Environment

  • Codepilot version: 0.64.0
  • Platform: Windows 11
Dominant language
TypeScript
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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.

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