TUI Daemon Adapter Draft

Deprecated: this document describes the early DaemonTuiAdapter spike. The legacy adapter still exists in packages/cli/src/ui/daemon/, but the reusable direction is now the SDK shared UI transcript layer. For the current architecture, see ../daemon/14-cli-tui-adapter.md.

Goal (historical)

Add a flag-gated TUI transport that talks to qwen serve through DaemonSessionClient instead of creating an in-process Config + agent runtime.

This is an internal validation path for Mode B client migration. It must not replace the default TUI path until output sinks, typed daemon events, session-scoped permission, and lifecycle diagnostics are stable.

Proposed Entry Point


QWEN_DAEMON_URL=http://127.0.0.1:4170 qwen --experimental-daemon-tui

Optional:


QWEN_DAEMON_TOKEN=... QWEN_DAEMON_WORKSPACE=/repo qwen --experimental-daemon-tui

The CLI should refuse this mode unless both are true:

QWEN_DAEMON_URL or --daemon-url is set.
GET /capabilities advertises session_create, session_prompt, and session_events.

Minimal Flow

Create DaemonClient with daemon URL and token.
Fetch /capabilities.
Create or attach with DaemonSessionClient.createOrAttach().
Subscribe to session.events().
Submit user prompts through session.prompt().
Route cancel through session.cancel().
Route model switch through session.setModel().
Route permission votes through session.respondToPermission().

Rendering Contract

The first implementation adds DaemonTuiAdapter, a locally verifiable reducer and transport spike. It maps only these daemon events:

Daemon event	TUI handling
`session_update` / `agent_message_chunk`	Append assistant text
`session_update` / `agent_thought_chunk`	Append thinking text
`session_update` / `tool_call`	Show tool call lifecycle
`permission_request`	Show existing confirmation UI where possible
`permission_resolved`	Close or update confirmation UI
`model_switched`	Update footer/model display
`session_died`	Show disconnected state and stop streaming

Unknown events must be ignored, not fatal. Typed event reducers will land in a later protocol PR.

The adapter is not wired into the default Ink app yet. Existing interactive TUI, JSONL, stream-json, and dual-output behavior remains unchanged.

Explicit Non-Goals

Do not remove the current TUI in-process runtime.
Do not change JSONL, stream-json, or dual-output behavior in this PR.
Do not expose file CRUD, MCP management, memory CRUD, or provider/auth mutation through TUI yet.
Do not make browser/web direct-to-daemon assumptions; this is terminal only.

Merge Safety

Default off.
Additive code path.
No existing CLI flags change behavior.
If the daemon is unavailable, the experimental path fails before starting the TUI and tells the user to run qwen serve.

Validation Plan

Unit-test event-to-TUI-state mapping with synthetic daemon events.
Unit-test prompt, cancel, model switch, and permission vote forwarding.
Unit-test flag/env parsing when the feature flag is wired.
Smoke-test against a local qwen serve:
- prompt text streams into the TUI
- cancel resolves the active prompt
- permission request can be accepted or rejected
- reconnect sends the tracked Last-Event-ID

Blockers Before Default Migration

Typed daemon event schema.
Session-scoped permission route.
Output sink refactor for JSONL / stream-json / dual-output parity.
Session lifecycle close/delete semantics.
Runtime diagnostics for MCP, skills, providers, and workspace env.