REQUEST: rethink chat-enter, stop answering questions with enter, fix queued messages

[jeske]

Before I explain, I need to lend some street cred to this report.. I am NOT a light user. I am an expert developer/entrepreneur, pounding out code with Kilo.. I prefer it to other UIs for various reasons, even though it crashes, and has bugs etc... Here is my street cred. I might possibly know nsomething about what it feels like to use Kilo... ALOT. (this is a usage report for just me, solo coding)

My most frustrating interaction with Kilo Code, is the way typing into chat and hitting enter will "presumptively" answer questions pending on the user. (accept reject, save discard, etc)

My second most frustrating issue is how often Kilo throws away my chat-input text, intermittently, for no apparent reason, when clicking "approve" or some other accept button.

The state machien in my human brain can not handle the way Kilo chat-enter key answers questions for me. I just want enter to be enter. I want to answer questions by answering questions. Intermixing the two is driving me mad, because I answer "Accept" and "Reject" with equal frequency, but I MUST type my chat into the box before answering them, or the AI starts working again without my feedback.

This is what it feels like to me to use Kilo:

Enter means submit chat, unless there is a pending save/discard, in which case it means discard, unless there is a pending todo list edit, in which case it means accept, ohh shit, just don't hit enter ever... too bad, you hit enter BONK

Not to mention the fact that queued messages never work for me. I hit enter while the AI is working, and I get a queued message, then I watch tool call after tool call respond from Kilo and it never injects my queued message. So I stop/cancel the AI, which usually eats my queued message right there... and if it doesn't often, when the cancel/stop resets, and I enter another messsage, it then eats my queued message. So I am in the habit of copying my queued message out of queued messages, deleting the queued message, hitting stop/cancel, pasting my queued message directly into chat. The interaction is mega-annoying.

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IMO - Kilo woudl be 1000x more sane to use if:

Hitting enter on a chat message would NEVER respond to a Kilo structured tool question of any kind, merely enter message content into the prompt history. I will gladly then hit "save/discard" buttons or whatever is needed to actually answer the question. When I hit enter in a chat, I am NOT trying to answer the "save/discard" question, I am trying to add information that I want the AI to see before it starts working again!

(a debate can be had for chat-box-enter answering an explicit structured multiple choice question prompt, but only that)

ALL QUEUED messages should be delivered after ANY tool call response. Currently the tool call response loop does not inject queued messages, which makes queued messages virtually useless, as they sit there queued while the AI is processing tool call after tool call without the infomration I typed to direct it! WHich means I have to force interrupt the AI, which makes the entire idea of queued messages not useful.

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I appreciate all the work that has been put into Kilo... and I have considered stack-pushing and hacking on Kilo myself. However, there is so much that I would do differently that I fear I would lose myself into yak shaving Kilo and not getting my product done. And so, I humbly offer the feedback above in the hopes people who care about Kilo's future find value in it.

[markijbema]

Hmm, I agree with a lot of this, but not all. I often use chat to give an alternative when kilo asks permission to execute a command. For me the flow of using chat to propose an alternative to a question by kilo works quite well?

I do agree about the queued messages, that doesn't really work for me (and maybe the combination would also work? So i say "no don't start the server, I started it now" and then choose deny for the command starting the server for instance)

[jeske]

i do the same things.. and i suspect there is more similarity than difference here.

The problem i have is that "enter" in the chat box cancels an execute command. So when adding information to the chat, i always have to think about "what will enter do here" and too often i am typing fast and moving fast and I get it wrong.. where my enter does the opposite of what i wanted to the pending question, because i never want my enter to answer the pending question!

The most common problem i have is when the AI has made a diff edit that is pending my approval..90% of the time i have auto.approve write off, because i review all edits. (Put yourself in my frame of mind. I am cowriting 100k+ LOC a week where i read 90% of all diffs!)

Consider this..

There is a pending edit. . I review it. It looks good i want to give the AI some input for the next thing it is going to do, so i cant "approve" it because it will start working again, so i start typing. Before i know it, i have written 4 paragraphs of text and completely forgotten that im typing into a pending edit that i want to approve. I hit enter.. it CANCELS the pending edit. And i realize my mistake..then i have to hit CANCEL again to stop the AI. Then i have to tell it to reapply the pending edit that kilo cancelled on me when i hit enter, then resume what it would do next..this is horrible cycle interrupting flow.

I do not want "enter" in the chat box to EVER imply a.decision to a structured question! Because 50% of the time it is wrong and wasteing my time!

There are only two ways I can see to fix this:

1. Make enter in the chat box never answer a structured question. So i can type on the box hit enter (maybe multiple times) and THEN answer the accept/reject or the command run/cancel.or whatever.
2. Give me the ability to answer the structured question (accept/reject) (run command or cancel) WITHOUT sending to the AI.. let that be a second step that i kick off with my chat message or a continue button.

The current model where i have to type into chat and then remember NOT to hit enter 50% of the time is wasting so much of my time. Because i get it wrong, so kilo gets it wrong, and i have to fix it all the time. Its like a horrible wack a mole game.

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I wrote this in the interet of helping KILO be better for others..but maybe what others are doing with kilo is just not this...

My interactions with kilo bugs and problems and crashing 7 times a day and fighting with vscode (which was never designed for this) are so disruptive that i am 90% of the way through writing a tool to replace Kilo AND vscode.. because i think in can be 2-5x more productive with a tool 10% the size of kilo and vscode that actually does what i want.. i hope im successful, because if not, i will have to roll up my sleeves and fork kilo and vscode, which i really do not want to do.

[jeske]

OMG there is more inconsistency..

Hitting "Approve" on a search-and-replace DESTOYS my entered chat-text. And also, half the time it destroys my chat when I "Approve" a file edit, though this is intermittent so I have no idea why it sometimes does and sometimes doesn't delivery my chat-input to the AI.

The way Kilo is coded right now, it is always working against me, throwing away my information, zigging when I want it to zag.. In one case I can enter chat-text into the box and hit "Approve" in another case I have to "Approve" then wait, then Cancel, then put chat text into the box. THe entire tool is telling me to quit using it.

The way this chat-input box and approval process interacts is absolutely busted.

[rmplbv]

Just opened this repo to suggest the same.

As an alternative, which would also be beneficial for other ux i'm suggestion the reuse of keybindings under workbench.action.chat in #2321.