#Composer

In Hunea (and in most similar products), the highest-frequency surface is the input box — internally called the composer.

It is not a “fixed bottom bar that scrolls inside itself when the draft gets long”. It lives in the same scrollable document as the transcript above. Write more lines and it grows downward with you; even when it fills the viewport, it scrolls with the whole document instead of opening a second scroll region inside the box. That matches the altscreen / main-document layout described in the Overview.

When empty you see a placeholder like Enter to send Prompt (this copy will be improved later). Prompt styling follows user_input_style (cx / cc / ms), but usage is the same: draft here, insert references, refill history, then send.

A quick preview of how it feels:

A consistent experience inside the TUI, just like the other software you use every day.

#Send and newlines

Default semantics:

Yes, that many ways to insert a newline — for compatibility. Pick the one you like.

If you prefer “Enter for newline, chord to send”, set swap_enter_and_send = true: Enter inserts a newline, and Shift + Enter / Ctrl + J send. Alt + Enter / Ctrl + M always insert a newline and are unaffected by the swap.

Before send, a few checks run:

1. Draft is empty after trimming whitespace → do not send
2. No model selected yet → toast asking you to configure a model
3. A conversation turn is already running → toast that a request is in progress
4. Selected provider unavailable, or OpenAI-compatible endpoint missing base_url → blocked with a toast

Past those checks, the draft becomes a user message in the transcript, the composer clears, and the turn actually starts.

#Text editing

Editing keys mostly follow familiar readline / shell habits:

Implementation choices you will feel while typing:

• Undo is grapheme-grouped. Continuous input of the same emoji / combining character does not force half-character undos; opening an external editor with Ctrl + G, sending, etc. become undo boundaries.
• Undo depth is composer_undo_limit (default 50, range 1..200), process-local only — not written into the session.
• Kill buffer keeps only the latest Ctrl + K / word-kill result; Ctrl + Y is not a full system clipboard.
• If the draft already has a completed selection, ordinary typing, paste, newline, and delete keys replace/delete that selection instead of inserting beside it.

Paste uses bracketed paste: large text arrives as one unit, newlines are normalized (\r\n and lone \r become \n), and “selection present → replace selection” still applies.

With a non-empty draft, Ctrl + C defaults to clearing the draft first (ctrl_c_clears_input = true) rather than starting exit confirm; empty input still uses the exit-confirm path. On clear, plain-text drafts are also recorded into message history for later refill; drafts with image attachments are not forced into that text history.

#Mouse

The main UI defaults to app-captured mouse (see Overview), so on the composer you can:

• Click: place the cursor at that character (empty drafts have nothing to hit, so a click will not force a position)
• Drag: create a selection over input text; with a selection, typing / paste / delete use replace-selection semantics
• Middle-click: copy the current screen selection (same selection path as middle-click on the transcript)

The goal is more natural long-prompt editing in place, with less need for external tools.

#External editor

When a long draft is painful inside the TUI, Ctrl + G dumps the current content to a temp file, suspends the TUI, opens an external editor, then writes the result back after you save and quit.

• Editor command comes from external_editor; if unset, Hunea tries VISUAL, EDITOR, then common platform editors
• GUI editors (VS Code / Cursor / Zed / Sublime, …) need a “wait until closed” flag, e.g. ["code", "--wait"], otherwise Hunea returns to the TUI as soon as the editor process starts
• When the draft becomes multi-line, the status area may briefly show ctrl+g to edit in …; set show_external_editor_helper = false to hide it
• External-editor write-back is one undoable whole-draft replace: Ctrl + Z returns to the draft from before the editor opened

#Prefix completion and attachments

This part will be optimized in the future — there are quite a few trigger symbols, which isn't great for learning and using

The content here will be updated once it's optimized

Several “type a prefix → popup” features live in the composer. They anchor on the token near the cursor rather than a separate command line:

#@ files, skills and images

• @ is the unified mention: the default All mode searches files and skills together, ← / → switch between the All / Files / Skills scopes, and Tab cycles through them.
• Ordinary files: insert a path reference (e.g. @src/main.rs). The TUI does not expand file contents into the prompt on send; the model should use a read-style tool when it needs the body. That keeps user instructions and file snapshots from mixing (this may evolve, but the current design is intentional).
• Images (png / jpeg / gif / webp today): selection becomes an image placeholder tag in the draft and is sent as a structured attachment. The selected model must support multimodal / vision, or the request will error.
• Selecting a skill creates a structured binding: on send the skill body is expanded per the binding and a visible @skill-name marker is left in the conversation.
• Popup height is file_picker_popup_height (default 9 rows); width is full terminal width; vertically anchored at @, flipping sides when space is tight.

##

Selection replaces the current token with a readable name and attaches the matching binding on the message. At send time the runtime can tell “user body” from “attached custom prompt”. Skill binding goes through the @ mention (see above).

#/ slash menu

The menu only appears when the whole input is in “slash-command query” shape (empty input, type /, then filter). Typing / in the middle of a long draft does not suddenly open the full menu — same rule as the Slash Menu docs.

#History refill

Two ways to bring back something you wrote before, with different emphasis:

1. Blind refill (Up / Down)
   Under suitable boundary conditions (often an empty draft, or the cursor at the very start/end of the draft), ↑ / ↓ walk local + persisted message history and drop old text into the input.
   In a multi-line draft with the cursor in the middle, up/down prefer moving inside the draft and will not accidentally page history.
2. Message history panel (Ctrl + R / /resend)
   Opens a full-screen / panel-style history list when you want to search, inspect, then choose.
   Global history size is capped by message_history_limit (default 100).

#Status line and styling

A status line can sit under the input (status_line / status_line_2) for branch, directory, current model, throughput, time-to-first-token, and so on. Unconfigured — or when nothing can resolve — the status line hides instead of leaving a blank row.

user_input_style only changes how in-progress input and sent user messages look; it does not change send, completion, or mouse semantics.

#Config cheatsheet

All under [tui]; restart to apply:

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Overall, Hunea’s composer aims at “comfortable long input in a terminal” — unbounded growth, clickable/selectable mouse, escape hatch to an external editor, history refill, in-place @ / # / / completion — without secretly stuffing file contents into the prompt.