[Feature]: Expandable list of pending background work in the composer banner

[MannJadwani]

Problem

When a turn settles but background work is still alive, the composer banner tells me the thread is waiting, but not in a form I can scan or act on per task.

• On the released build I'm running, the banner is a bare "Monitoring" label with a Stop button. Nothing says what is being monitored.
• On current main (after feat(orchestrator): introduce new orchestrator #2829), the banner names the work: "Waiting on monitor ", or "Waiting on 2 subagents and 1 monitor" with the names as an inline comma-separated list. That is better, but the inline list gets long with several tasks, and Stop is still all-or-nothing.

Proposal

Make the banner expandable (a dropdown or disclosure) that lists each pending task on its own row:

• kind (subagent, command, monitor, background task) and its description
• subagents link to their thread, as the inline list already does
• the collapsed state keeps today's summary title

The data is already on the wire: pendingBackgroundTasks carries an id, kind and description per task, and presentPendingBackgroundWork in packages/client-runtime already builds the item list for web and mobile. The first step is a client-only change to how the banner renders it.

Possible follow-up: stop one task

Per-task stop would be the natural next step, but it is a larger change. Stop currently routes through the stop-everything interrupt, so stopping a single task needs server and per-provider adapter work. I'd treat it as a separate proposal.

Surfaces

• Web and desktop: composer banner in ChatView.tsx
• Mobile: the floating status pill above the composer uses the same presentation and would need an equivalent expanded view

Related

• [Feature]: Make the composer reflect background agent work after the turn settles #14016 asks for clearer at-a-glance signals that background work is running; this is about seeing which work it is.

[david1asher]

+1, hitting this daily. On my build the banner above the composer is just "● Monitoring" with a Stop button. I can't tell what is being monitored, whether it's still healthy, or whether stopping it is safe.

Beyond naming the task (which main now does), I'd like each monitor to show some status data, for example:

• What it's watching: the command, PR, URL or condition, not just a description
• How long: elapsed time since it started, and the timeout if it has one
• Last activity: time of the last check or event, plus the last line of output it produced
• State: waiting, matched/woke, erroring or retrying, about to time out
• Count: how many checks or polls it has made, so I can see it's alive and not stuck

Even a hover or popover with this data on the collapsed "Monitoring" label would be enough. Today the label tells me that something is running, but not what is running or whether it's working.