Problem
When working with subagent sessions (e.g., tasks spawned by the task tool), navigation currently requires cycling through sessions one-by-one using <leader>right / <leader>left. This becomes inefficient when:
- Multiple subagents are spawned from a single parent session
- Subagents spawn their own subagents (nested hierarchy)
- You need to jump directly to a specific session (e.g., one awaiting permission input)
There's no way to see all related sessions at once or jump directly to a specific one.
Proposed Solution
Add an interactive session switcher dialog that:
- Shows hierarchical view of parent and all descendant sessions (up to 3 levels deep)
- Displays session status - busy spinner for active sessions, permission indicator for sessions awaiting user input
- Allows direct navigation - select any session from the list instead of cycling through sequentially
- Integrates with command palette - appears in suggested commands when subagents exist
Keybind
<leader>s (configurable via session_child_list)
UI Example
Switch Session
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Parent
● Main session title 2m ago
Subagents
explore task 1m ago
code-review task 45s ago
Subagents › explore
◉ nested-search task 30s ago
● indicates current session◉ (warning color) indicates session awaiting permission- Spinner shown for busy/active sessions
Why This Is Useful
Direct selection is significantly more efficient than sequential cycling when you have 5+ subagent sessions and need to:
- Check on a specific task's progress
- Respond to a permission prompt in a nested subagent
- Return to the parent session after reviewing children
Implementation Approach
The implementation reuses existing patterns from the codebase:
DialogSelect component for the selection UI (same as DialogSessionList, DialogTimeline)sync.data.permission[sessionID] for pending permission detectionsync.data.session_status[sessionID] for busy state detection- Category grouping for hierarchical display (same pattern as date grouping in
DialogSessionList)
Style note
The implementation uses a let statement when walking up the session tree to find the root parent:
let current = currentSession()
while (current?.parentID) {
const parent = sync.session.get(current.parentID)
if (!parent) break
current = parent
}This is a legitimate use case where let is appropriate - the variable must be reassigned during iterative traversal. Per the style guide, let should be avoided where possible, but not prohibited when it's the natural solution.
Problem
When working with subagent sessions (e.g., tasks spawned by the
tasktool), navigation currently requires cycling through sessions one-by-one using<leader>right/<leader>left. This becomes inefficient when:There's no way to see all related sessions at once or jump directly to a specific one.
Proposed Solution
Add an interactive session switcher dialog that:
Keybind
<leader>s(configurable viasession_child_list)UI Example
●indicates current session◉(warning color) indicates session awaiting permissionWhy This Is Useful
Direct selection is significantly more efficient than sequential cycling when you have 5+ subagent sessions and need to:
Implementation Approach
The implementation reuses existing patterns from the codebase:
DialogSelectcomponent for the selection UI (same asDialogSessionList,DialogTimeline)sync.data.permission[sessionID]for pending permission detectionsync.data.session_status[sessionID]for busy state detectionDialogSessionList)Style note
The implementation uses a
letstatement when walking up the session tree to find the root parent:This is a legitimate use case where
letis appropriate - the variable must be reassigned during iterative traversal. Per the style guide,letshould be avoided where possible, but not prohibited when it's the natural solution.