feat(code): add interactive goal management

[Mason Daugherty (mdrxy)]

Deep Agents Code now supports amending, pausing, and resuming persistent goals while keeping their status visible above the input. Amendments are reviewed before they apply, and paused goals remain saved without driving work or grading until resumed.

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Deep Agents Code now keeps goals visible above the input and lets users steer ongoing goal-driven work without cancelling the current task and replaying work.

• /goal amend <feedback> proposes coordinated updates to the objective and acceptance criteria while preserving unaffected criteria and explicit constraints. The inline review supports accepting, editing, rejecting, or cancelling the proposal before it becomes canonical state.
• /goal pause saves the goal without letting it drive work or grading. /goal resume continues from the existing conversation and checkpoint rather than resubmitting the original task.
• The goal panel shows the current objective and its active, paused, blocked, or completed state.
• Ordinary messages submitted during active goal work retain queue and interruption ordering and steer the next turn under the current goal.

Goal checkpoint changes wait for graph execution and turn-end reconciliation to reach a safe boundary. A goal update accepted during execution applies after the current turn finishes and before a subsequent turn begins. If a user message is already queued, it runs under the updated goal before any synthetic continuation turn.

User stories and before/after examples

Amend a goal without restarting the work

User story: As a user whose requirements change during a long-running task, I want to update the current objective and acceptance criteria without discarding context or repeating work that is already complete.

Before

1. I start a goal to “Add CSV and JSON export with tests.”
2. Partway through, I decide that JSON export is out of scope and CSV must also support streaming.
3. There is no goal-specific amendment flow. I must replace or clear the goal and describe the revised work again, without a review that preserves unaffected criteria and constraints.

After

1. I run /goal amend Remove JSON export, add streaming CSV support, and keep the existing CSV test requirements.
2. dcode drafts a coordinated revision of both the objective and criteria while preserving requirements that the feedback did not change.
3. The inline review lets me accept the proposal, edit its criteria, request another revision, or cancel it.
4. Once accepted, dcode continues from the existing conversation and work instead of replaying the original task.

Pause a goal while keeping it available to resume

User story: As a user who needs to switch to unrelated work temporarily, I want to pause my current goal so it remains saved but does not affect the intervening prompts.

Before

1. I have an active multi-turn goal.
2. To stop that goal from driving later work and grading, I must clear it.
3. Returning to it requires creating the goal again and redrafting its acceptance criteria.

After

1. /goal pause saves the objective and criteria with a paused status.
2. Unrelated prompts run without the paused goal driving work or grading.
3. /goal resume reactivates the saved goal and continues from the existing conversation and checkpoint without resubmitting the original objective.

See the current goal and lifecycle state while working

User story: As a user working across multiple turns, I want the current goal and its status to remain visible so I can tell what dcode is working toward and whether it needs my input.

Before

The current objective is not persistently visible above the input. I must use /goal show or infer its state from earlier transcript messages.

After

• A persistent panel above the input shows the current objective.
• The panel distinguishes active, paused, blocked, and completed states.
• The display follows checkpoint restoration and lifecycle changes, so reopening a thread or changing the goal state keeps the visible status aligned with the saved goal.

Apply in-flight goal changes without reordering queued input

User story: As a user who amends a goal while the agent is still working, I want the current turn to finish safely and my next message to run under the accepted revision in the order I submitted it.

Before

There is no accepted amendment to coordinate with graph execution, checkpoint writes, and messages already waiting in the queue.

After

1. If I accept a goal update during an active turn, dcode waits until that turn and its reconciliation finish before changing the saved goal.
2. The accepted update is applied before a subsequent turn begins.
3. If I already submitted another message, that message runs first under the updated goal; dcode does not race ahead with a synthetic continuation turn.

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Open SWE Review found 2 potential issues.

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Open SWE Review found 1 potential issue.

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[open-swe]

Open SWE Review found 1 potential issue.

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