Task capsule surface

Task capsules compress agent work into a stable attention layer. They are especially useful for long-running tasks, queues, background agents, and sessions that should not fully render while inactive.

Standard task states

State	Meaning	Attention	Required affordance
running	Work is active.	Low	Open details, interrupt when supported.
queued	Work is waiting.	Medium	Show position, preview, edit/remove when supported.
steering	Input is being delivered to current work.	Medium	Show pending steer preview.
needs_input	User must provide information.	High	Clear CTA and oldest age.
plan_ready	A plan awaits approval or edit.	High	Approve, reject, edit, inspect.
permission_required	A risky action needs permission.	High	Approve/reject with scope and risk summary.
failed	Work failed but may be recoverable.	High	Retry, inspect diagnostic, export evidence.
cancelled	Work stopped intentionally.	Low	Quiet summary.
completed	Work finished.	Low	Summary and artifact/evidence links.
stale	No activity beyond threshold.	Medium	Inspect, interrupt, or resume.

Attention rules

1. Normal running work should be visible but calm.
2. needs_input, plan_ready, permission_required, and failed may use stronger visual priority.
3. Completed tasks should collapse automatically unless they produced important artifacts or evidence.
4. Capsules should open details without navigating away from the user's current context.
5. Multiple capsules should aggregate by session, workspace, or task group when screen space is limited.

Capsule content

A capsule SHOULD include:

• short label
• state
• count or queue position when relevant
• latest meaningful activity
• primary CTA only for attention states
• link to process, artifact, or evidence details

Avoid putting full tool output, logs, or long plan text inside the capsule.

Session interaction

Task capsules can keep inactive sessions cheap:

• active session may render full conversation and process surfaces
• recent session may keep a snapshot and active capsule
• suspended session may keep only title, summary, and task states
• discarded session may keep restore metadata and artifact/evidence index

This makes task state visible without forcing every session to hydrate full history.

Acceptance scenarios

1. Two running tasks appear as compact capsules without flooding conversation.
2. A needs_input task is visually higher priority than a normal running task.
3. A queued turn shows preview and remove action before it starts.
4. Clicking a capsule opens task details in context.
5. Closing or suspending an inactive session releases heavy process rendering while preserving capsule state.