[FEATURE] History navigation (up-arrow) destroys unsent draft with no recovery

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened May 1, 2026 by dmagliola Closed May 2, 2026

Preflight Checklist

  • [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
  • [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

In the interactive CLI prompt, pressing the up-arrow key while composing a message replaces the in-progress text with a previous message from history. There is no way to recover the original draft:

  • Down-arrow does not restore the unsent buffer (unlike bash/zsh, which stash it)
  • No undo keybinding rescues the text
  • No autosaved draft file

This means a single accidental keypress can wipe out a long, carefully-written message. For an interactive tool where users routinely type multi-paragraph
prompts, this is a significant UX failure — readline-style history navigation has stashed unsent buffers as standard behavior since the 1980s.

Proposed Solution

When up-arrow is pressed with text in the buffer, stash that text. Pressing down-arrow past the most recent history entry should restore it. This matches the behavior of bash, zsh, fish, psql, irb, and essentially every other interactive REPL.

Alternative Solutions

Workaround users currently need: Compose long prompts in an external editor and paste them in.

Priority

Medium - Would be very helpful

Feature Category

Interactive mode (TUI)

Use Case Example

_No response_

Additional Context

_No response_

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