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Let the candidate restore the starter code

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#348 1 comment 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

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@RWong04 is already working on this.

Since Oct 18, 2026.

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Description

Who is affected

A candidate in a coding interview who has edited the editor into a state they want to start over from. The starter is the only template they have, and nothing on the interview page puts it back.

Observed

On main at 1ba82f9, with cargo run -- web and ?problem=chargeback-pair-match, I replaced the Python buffer with my own text, clicked JavaScript and then Python again, and the buffer still held my text. Ctrl+Z at that point did not bring the starter back either. The page has no control with a reset, restore or starter label: I listed every button and summary on the interview page and found none. codeByLanguage is seeded from problem.starterCode once (web/interview.js:422), and setLanguage only swaps buffers between tabs (web/interview.js:2209).

Desired outcome

The candidate can put the starter code of the language they are in back into the editor, without leaving the interview.

Present workaround

Select all, delete, and retype the signature and the class wrapper.

Scope

The editor toolbar and the editor buffer on the interview page, in web/interview.html and web/interview.js. Not the agent, the recording contract, the judges or the problem bank. I have no data on how often candidates want this, so this issue rests on the missing path, not on a measured need.

Approaches

  1. A button that replaces the buffer at once. Smallest change, but one misclick discards the candidate's work with no way back.
  2. The same button behind a confirmation. Safe, but adds a step, and a modal competes with the Meet presentation flow.
  3. A button that replaces the buffer through document.execCommand("insertText"), as the editor's own programmatic edits already do (web/interview.js:817), so Ctrl+Z restores the previous buffer. No extra step, but undo depends on the browser accepting the command, and the existing fallback assigns .value, which drops the undo history.

I prefer 3 with the fallback taking the confirmation of 2, so the case where undo is unavailable is the only one that asks.

Compatibility

No new message type or recording kind is needed. A reset is a new code_update, and the recording's editor event is already a whole-buffer snapshot that replaces the previous one (docs/recording-contract.md). On the agent side, a code change that does not arrive with a language switch is already read as the candidate editing, and the comment in src/agent/events.rs covers a candidate clearing the editor and starting over.

Open question

Interview contract version 17 records Test only while the editor still holds the code the run executed. I have not checked what happens to a Test credit that was already recorded when the buffer is reset afterwards. I will measure that before the pull request and report it here.

Acceptance criteria

  1. A control on the interview page replaces the editor buffer of the current language with that language's starter. The buffers of the other languages are unchanged.
  2. A reset cannot silently destroy work: it is either undone with Ctrl+Z or confirmed first.
  3. The reset reaches the interviewer and the recording through the normal code publish.
  4. The control is unavailable whenever the editor is disabled, including after the interview ends.
  5. A browser test fails if the reset leaves the buffer unchanged or discards the other languages' buffers.

Related: #252 added the editor options and states that the editor preserves native undo and redo; approach 3 keeps that.

I will work on this and can open a pull request with the test first. Please assign it to me.

Dominant language
Rust
Stars
160
Forks
64
Avg merge
1d 11h
Merged PRs (30d)
132

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