feat(cli): add /paste for multi-line input - #286
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Pasting a multi-line query at the CLI prompt sent each line to the LLM as its own request, because the terminal delivers every newline as if Enter had been pressed. Bracketed paste would fix that properly, but chzyer/readline cannot do it and every terminal encodes the paste a little differently, so this takes the portable route instead. /paste switches to a `...:` continuation prompt and collects lines until Ctrl+D is pressed on an empty line, then sends the whole text as one request; Ctrl+C discards it. Collected lines are taken verbatim (a leading `/` is content) and are kept out of the line-based history file. Ctrl+D at the main prompt now echoes `^D` rather than `exit`, so the same key reads sensibly in both places.
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Included review availability: 2 reviews are currently available. Your included PR review attempts over the past 7 days set your current allowance at 5 reviews per hour. WalkthroughThe CLI adds ChangesMultiline paste workflow
Priority: ➖ Normal Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~20 minutes Severity of issue fixed: Medium Merge Risk: 🔵 Low · up to The multiline paste workflow submits collected input as one request, but a retained whitespace-preservation concern remains for pasted content. Sequence Diagram(s)sequenceDiagram
participant User
participant ChatLoop
participant Readline
participant QueryHandler
User->>ChatLoop: enter /paste
ChatLoop->>Readline: collect continuation lines
Readline-->>ChatLoop: return on Ctrl+D or Ctrl+C
ChatLoop->>QueryHandler: submit collected text as one query
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Up to standards ✅🟢 Issues
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| Category | Results |
|---|---|
| Complexity | 1 medium |
🟢 Metrics 30 complexity · 0 duplication
Metric Results Complexity 30 Duplication 0
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Actionable comments posted: 1
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Inline comments:
In `@internal/chat/client.go`:
- Line 705: Update the line-processing logic around the return using
strings.Join so it removes only lines whose strings.TrimSpace value is empty,
while preserving every remaining line exactly, including leading and trailing
whitespace. Add a regression test covering indentation on the first nonblank
pasted line.
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docs/changelog.mddocs/guide/cli-client.mdinternal/chat/client.gointernal/chat/commands.gointernal/chat/paste_test.gointernal/chat/ui.go
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Trimming the joined text stripped leading whitespace from the first non-blank line and trailing whitespace from the last, which contradicts the promise that /paste takes lines as written. Drop only the leading and trailing blank lines instead.
AntTheLimey
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One thing worth a follow-up rather than blocking this: handlePaste
and the chatLoop branch that dispatches to it are at 0% coverage
under go test -cover, so everything beyond
collectPastedInput/trimBlankLines is verified only by hand. That
is the interactive wiring, which is exactly where this defect class
lives, and make test currently proves nothing about it. chatLoop
was 0% before this PR too, so it is not a regression, but if the
pattern gets reused for other readline-driven commands it would be
worth a PTY-based test.
Everything else checks out. I drove the real binary through a
pseudo-terminal against fake MCP and Ollama backends rather than
relying on the unit tests: the send path produced exactly one
/api/chat call whose content was "line one\nline two" (a real
newline join, checked with %q), cancel and empty-paste printed the
right messages and left the prompt usable, /paste worked again
immediately after a cancel with no residual interrupt state, and
Ctrl+D at the main prompt echoed ^D and exited 0. Inspecting the
history file after that run confirms no pasted or cancelled text
reaches it. The collector itself handles indentation, inner blank
lines, slash-prefixed content and empty or single-line pastes
correctly, and paste_test.go covers all but the single-line case.
The CodeRabbit whitespace thread is genuinely fixed against current
code. I could not pin down which function Codacy's "1 medium
complexity" finding names, since the check-run API returns no
annotations for it, but all three new functions sit at cyclomatic
complexity 5, so I doubt it matters. make test, make lint,
gofmt, go vet and the copyright-header test all pass; package
coverage moves 50.8% to 50.7%, entirely from the untested wiring
above. Docs and changelog match the shipped behaviour, including the
key bindings and the ^D change, which I note is just dropping a
previous override of readline's own default rather than new
behaviour.
On merge order: this conflicts textually with #288 in
docs/changelog.md and docs/guide/cli-client.md, where both sides
simply append their own entries. The Go side merges clean with no
semantic overlap, which I confirmed by building the merged tree.
Either can land first.
2 participants
Fixes #57.
Pasting a multi-line query at the CLI prompt sends each line to the LLM as a separate request, because the terminal delivers every newline as if Enter had been pressed. The proper fix is bracketed paste, but
chzyer/readlinehas no support for it and each terminal encodes pastes slightly differently (Terminal.app, Ghostty and Windows disagree on CR versus LF), which is what sank the earlier attempt. Given how few people drive this through the CLI rather than the web client or an MCP host, this takes the portable route instead./pasteswitches to a...:continuation prompt and collects lines until Ctrl+D on an empty line, then sends the whole text as one request; Ctrl+C discards it. Collected lines are taken verbatim, so a leading/is content, and they are kept out of the line-based history file. Ctrl+D at the main prompt now echoes^Drather thanexit, so the same key reads sensibly in both places.Tested with unit tests on the collector and by driving the real binary through a pseudo-terminal for the send, cancel and empty cases;
make testandmake lintpass.Summary by CodeRabbit
New Features
/pastecommand for submitting multi-line input as a single request./, are preserved as content and excluded from history.^Dbefore exiting when used at an empty prompt.Documentation
/pastebehavior.