[FEATURE] VS Code: show the agent map pill for background tasks and workflows, not only subagents

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 VS Code extension, the agent map pill in the prompt box footer only appears when the conversation has subagents. Background work without subagents is invisible in the UI:

• A Monitor or background shell command shows no pill at all, even though the agent map lists it.
• A background workflow shows no pill until it spawns its first agent.

The only way to see this work is to type /tasks, which is documented but not discoverable.

This matters most for usage. Each Monitor event wakes Claude and runs a full model turn over the whole session context, which counts against plan limits. A Monitor keeps doing this until TaskStop or the end of the session. Without a pill, a user who forgot about it, or never noticed Claude started it, has no visible sign that the session keeps consuming their subscription, and no one-click way to stop it.

Proposed Solution

Show the footer pill whenever the session has subagents, background tasks, or a running workflow, for example "1 task" or "0 agents · 1 task". Keep the same status dot behavior (running / waiting / failed). Clicking it opens the agent map, exactly like /tasks does today, where the task can be stopped.

Alternative Solutions

Typing /tasks opens the map and shows the task correctly, so the functionality exists. The gap is only the entry point in the UI.

Priority

High - Significant impact on productivity

Feature Category

Other

Use Case Example

Scenario A: periodic Monitor ("pulse")

1. In a VS Code session with ~98k tokens of context (Sonnet 5), ask Claude to start a Monitor that emits an event every 30 minutes:

while true; do sleep 1800; date -u +"pulse %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ"; done

1. The Monitor starts as a persistent background task ("runs until TaskStop or session end").
2. The footer shows no agent map pill. Nothing in the panel indicates a background task exists.
3. Every 30 minutes the event wakes Claude and runs a model turn over the full ~98k-token context, which counts against plan limits.
4. Later I switch to other work and forget about it. The Monitor keeps waking Claude for hours, invisibly.
5. Only typing /tasks reveals it: the map shows "0 agents", "1 background task".

Scenario B: background workflow

1. Ask Claude to run a multi-agent workflow in the background.
2. While the workflow is running but has not spawned its first agent yet, the footer shows no pill.
3. The pill appears only after the first agent is spawned.

With this feature, the pill would be visible from step 3 in Scenario A and from step 2 in Scenario B, and one click would open the map where the task can be stopped.

Additional Context

Screenshots: the session with a running Monitor and no pill in the footer, and the agent map opened via /tasks showing the task.

Docs currently describe this behavior ("when the conversation includes subagents, an agent count appears"; "type /tasks to open the map when no agent count is showing"): https://code.claude.com/docs/en/vs-code

Related: #75019 (broader request for a background-activity indicator in VS Code, filed before the agent map existed) and #75863.

<img width="2239" height="1281" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/545cbde6-3767-479c-a954-bde78b9fa446" />
<img width="2242" height="1284" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/95a29004-3e3b-43c4-abec-79d89100e877" />