[FEATURE] Treat user typing during agent turn as a soft-pause signal

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

Title: Treat user typing during agent turn as a soft-pause signal

Type: Feature request

Summary

When the agent is mid-turn (running a chain of tool calls), let the user's keystrokes be a hint to the agent that the user wants to redirect — without requiring Esc.

Current behavior

While the agent is working, the user can type a message but it stays queued. The queued message is only delivered at the next turn boundary. If the agent runs many tool calls in one turn without intermediate text, the queued message can sit unread for a long time. The only way to reliably interrupt sooner is Esc, which is a hard stop.

Proposed Solution

Proposed behavior

Surface "user is typing" or "user has queued input" as a lightweight signal the agent can see — for example, a system-reminder injected at the next assistant message boundary, or a flag the agent can poll between tool calls. The agent can then choose to wrap up its current step and check in, rather than barrelling ahead through several more phases of work.

This preserves the agent's autonomy (no forced stop) while giving the user a soft channel for course correction.

Why this matters

Esc is too blunt for "I think you're starting to drift, let me redirect you." Users currently have to either:

Wait until the agent finishes a long chain (work may already be wasted)
Hit Esc and disrupt the flow
A soft-pause signal sits between those two and matches how collaboration actually works — a colleague who notices you've started talking and pauses to listen, rather than either ignoring you or stopping cold.

Acceptance criteria

Agent has a way to know that user input is queued/being typed during its turn
Agent can voluntarily wrap up early to check the input
Esc still works as today (hard interrupt)
No change required for users who don't type mid-turn

Alternative Solutions

_No response_

Priority

Medium - Would be very helpful

Feature Category

CLI commands and flags

Use Case Example

This happens all the time, for me I watch as Claude investigates, and if I see it's clearly off track I would
like to interrupt without destroying the context and work it has built. /btw is similar, but it does not seem to influence the main agent.

Additional Context

_No response_