Vim mode: 'k' hotkey kills background agents with no confirmation
Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Feb 25, 2026 by acushner-rippling Closed Feb 28, 2026
Problem
In vim mode, pressing k (which is the standard vim "move up" keybinding) kills a running background agent immediately with no confirmation prompt and no partial output returned.
This is especially painful because:
- Vim users press
kreflexively to navigate — it's muscle memory for "move up" - No confirmation dialog — the kill is instant and irreversible
- No partial output — you lose all the work the agent has done so far. Even if it was 90% done, you get nothing back
- Background agents can run for minutes — research agents doing web searches can take 5+ minutes, and accidentally killing one means starting over from scratch
Expected behavior
At minimum, one of:
kin vim mode should move the cursor up, not kill agents- Kill should require confirmation (e.g., "Agent is running. Kill it? y/n")
- Partial output should be returned when an agent is killed
Reproduction
- Enable vim mode
- Launch a background agent (e.g., a research task)
- While it's running, press
kto try to scroll/navigate - Agent is immediately killed with no output
Environment
- macOS
- Claude Code CLI with vim mode enabled
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