[FR] Compact icon labels for tool calls instead of verbose text

[ewilderj]

Summary

Currently tool call labels show verbose text like read, edit, execute, etc. and status labels like pending, in_progress, completed.

I've been experimenting with replacing these with compact icons:

Kind icons:

Kind	Icon
read	📖
edit	✏️
delete	🗑
move	📦
search	🔍
execute	⚡
think	💭
fetch	🌐
switch_mode	🔀
other	🔧

Status icons:

Status	Icon
pending	◌
in_progress	◐
completed	✓
failed	✗

This makes the UI more compact and scannable, especially when there are many tool calls. Combined, you get something like ✓ 📖 instead of read [completed].

Open questions

1. Would this be welcome as a default, or should it be behind a customization toggle (e.g. agent-shell-use-icon-labels)?
2. Are there accessibility concerns with emoji/icons that would favor keeping text labels as an option?
3. Any preferences on the specific icons used?

Happy to submit a PR if there's interest. Just wanted to discuss the approach first per contributing guidelines.

[ewilderj]

Here's a screenshot from my working branch. Also I think this screenshot illustrates my comment on #229 about promoting the command into the title being too verbose.

[xenodium]

Thanks for the proposal! I was initially thinking along these lines (using emojis for statuses) when I was prototyping agent-shell and eventually moved away from it. To an extent (and in some contexts), emojis are getting a bad rep for their LLM overuse, sometimes used as a slop signal, so I went the extra mile to build text with boxes, align text, etc.

Having said that, I'm not opposed to icons entirely. If we are to introduce icons, I'd be inclined to make them optional and configurable. To avoid the emoji rep, we can potentially look into monochrome characters (inheriting the font color), like ✓, ✗, →, ←, etc. This may enable us to keep the box properties and apply text color, and maintain a more consistent palette/ icon style. The configurability also opens things up for folks who may want to indeed use emojis, or even something like font awesome.

These suggestions are of course in principle and hard to make a call without seeing what they look like in practice. Other approaches we can consider:

1. Only render icon status but keep kind at text? There are cases where kind icons seem less intuitive.
2. If we're looking to compact things, could we find shorter text alternatives? For example: "wait", "busy", "done"... (I'm warming up to these for text anyway).

Would this be welcome as a default, or should it be behind a customization toggle (e.g. agent-shell-use-icon-labels)?

I'm likely inclined to remain text by default.

Are there accessibility concerns with emoji/icons that would favor keeping text labels as an option?

I would like to keep the text option still.

Any preferences on the specific icons used?

Something monochrome if possible, hopefully helps them blend. We are, however, limited by the characters we can use.

There's a lot to try here if we want to iterate and see what works best, not to mention a high degree of sujectivity. We may try different things and not necessarily come to an agreement. I understand this may not be what you originally signed up for.

[ewilderj]

After thinking about this a bit, and how useful or not the icons are to the user, I am inclined to submit a patch for your opinion that just removes verbosity. Given the expando- and the tool call title, the kind data offers very little to the user, to be honest. I would propose a minimal mode that simply has status and tool call title,
e.g. these or similar, and not show kind at all.
pending ◌
in_progress ◐
completed ✓
failed ✗

[xenodium]

simply has status and tool call title,
e.g. these or similar, and not show kind at all.

Some options to play with:

- pending: □ ⋯ ⧖ ⧗
- in_progress: ◧ ◐ ◔ ≈
- failed: ⚠ ⊘

With these sorts of changes, it's hard to tell without seeing a screenshot. If we do end up going for it, it would likely be an optional setting. I suspect most users are ok with the textual option.

Also, with your suggestion to hide the kind, I'm wondering if shortening status text is enough ("wait", "busy", "done", "error") and we find a good mix of ideas?

[ewilderj]

I've not yet worked on the icon option. I do like what's in your screenshot as a more compact view.

However, for long running turns I have another suggestion which by default hides a lot more of the tool noise. See #288 -- for me it reduces the need to change the tool invocations to icons as the noise is hidden by default anyway.

#288 is a spike and would need more work before it's ready for submission but I wanted to share the idea with you.