Summary
Add display-layer options to control how much detail the TUI shows for
thinking blocks and tool calls — e.g. show only a "Thinking…" placeholder or
a one-line "Running tool: Read" summary instead of the full content.
Motivation
Thinking blocks and tool-call details can dominate the scrollback, especially
with high reasoning effort or MCP-heavy sessions. Users who trust the agent's
process and only care about final replies currently have no way to reduce
this visual noise.
The existing controls do not cover this:
[thinking] enabled = false and the "Toggle thinking mode" switch change
model behavior (reasoning on/off), not display.
- Thinking blocks can be collapsed manually, but only per-block and not
persistently.
- There is no option at all for tool-call rendering.
The request is purely presentational: the model still thinks and calls tools
exactly as before; the TUI just renders less.
Proposed solution
New optional fields in tui.toml:
[display]
# "full" (default, current behavior) | "collapsed" (folded by default,
# expandable on demand) | "placeholder" (single "Thinking…" line, not expandable)
thinking = "collapsed"
# "full" (default) | "summary" (one line per call: tool name + key arg +
# status) | "hidden"
tool_calls = "summary"
Behavior notes:
collapsed should be expandable via the existing fold interaction, so
details remain one keystroke away.
placeholder / hidden only affects rendering; content is still recorded
in the session transcript for later inspection.
- Errors and permission prompts must always render in full regardless of
these settings (hiding a failure or an approval request would be a
footgun).
Alternatives considered
[thinking] effort = "low" — shortens thinking but still displays it, and
changes model behavior.
- Disabling thinking entirely — loses the reasoning quality.
Environment
kimi-code 0.31.0, Linux (WSL2)
Summary
Add display-layer options to control how much detail the TUI shows for
thinking blocks and tool calls — e.g. show only a "Thinking…" placeholder or
a one-line "Running tool: Read" summary instead of the full content.
Motivation
Thinking blocks and tool-call details can dominate the scrollback, especially
with high reasoning effort or MCP-heavy sessions. Users who trust the agent's
process and only care about final replies currently have no way to reduce
this visual noise.
The existing controls do not cover this:
[thinking] enabled = falseand the "Toggle thinking mode" switch changemodel behavior (reasoning on/off), not display.
persistently.
The request is purely presentational: the model still thinks and calls tools
exactly as before; the TUI just renders less.
Proposed solution
New optional fields in
tui.toml:Behavior notes:
collapsedshould be expandable via the existing fold interaction, sodetails remain one keystroke away.
placeholder/hiddenonly affects rendering; content is still recordedin the session transcript for later inspection.
these settings (hiding a failure or an approval request would be a
footgun).
Alternatives considered
[thinking] effort = "low"— shortens thinking but still displays it, andchanges model behavior.
Environment
kimi-code 0.31.0, Linux (WSL2)