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feat: add sidekick - parallel chat companion for active sessions #20713

Closed as not planned

Description

@sihy233

Is your feature request related to a problem?

When working with opencode on long-running agent tasks, users have no way to discuss or review the agent's progress in real-time. They must wait for the task to complete before they can comment, ask questions, or course-correct. This creates a frustrating idle period during complex operations.

Describe the solution you'd like

A Sidekick feature: a lightweight, parallel chat-only conversation that runs alongside the main session. The sidekick:

  • Reads the parent session's messages in real-time (snapshot at prompt time)
  • Has its own independent context window (no shared context pollution)
  • Cannot execute any tools (chat-only companion)
  • Allows users to inject sidekick conclusions back into the parent session's context
  • Appears as a sidebar tab in the TUI (no layout changes needed)

This gives users a "waiting room" experience where they can monitor, discuss, or simply chat while the main agent works.

Describe alternatives you've considered

  1. Separate terminal session: Users could open a second opencode instance, but it wouldn't have access to the main session's context.
  2. In-session comments: Adding comments to the main session would pollute the agent's context window and potentially confuse the model.
  3. Read-only viewer: A viewer without chat capability, but this doesn't allow users to discuss or annotate progress.

Additional context

Implementation is ready as a PR. The sidekick is modeled as a child session with kind: "sidekick" and parentID pointing to the main session, with comprehensive route guards, tool blocking, and TUI integration.

Activity

  1. added
    coreAnything pertaining to core functionality of the application (opencode server stuff)
    on Apr 2, 2026
  2. github-actions commented on Apr 2, 2026

    @github-actions
    Contributor

    This issue doesn't fully meet our contributing guidelines.

    What needs to be fixed:

    • The title should start with [FEATURE]: (e.g., [FEATURE]: add sidekick - parallel chat companion for active sessions)

    Please edit this issue to address the above within 2 hours, or it will be automatically closed.

    If you believe this was flagged incorrectly, please let a maintainer know.

  3. github-actions commented on Apr 2, 2026

    @github-actions
    Contributor

    This issue has been automatically closed because it was not updated to meet our contributing guidelines within the 2-hour window.

    Feel free to open a new issue that follows our issue templates.

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