Codex review: needs maintainer review before merge.

Summary
The PR decouples Control UI chat, config, and channel refresh waits, reduces the rendered chat history window, adds focused UI tests, and updates the changelog.

Reproducibility: no. live browser repro was established in this read-only pass. Source inspection gives a clear current-main path for the reported waits: slow chat.history, config.schema, or channels.status work can hold the foreground refresh path.

Real behavior proof
Not applicable: This is a MEMBER-authored maintainer-labeled PR, so the external contributor after-fix real-behavior-proof gate does not apply.

Next step before merge
No repair lane action is needed: the branch has no narrow defect from this review and should continue through normal PR review and merge checks.

Security
Cleared: The diff is limited to Control UI TypeScript, UI tests, and changelog text, with no dependency, CI, secret, install, publish, or supply-chain surface changes found.

Addressed the manual refresh regression called out in the review comment.

Summary:

• Kept default refreshChat behavior non-blocking for tab/app refreshes.
• Added an explicit awaitHistory path for manual refresh callers so the refresh promise resolves only after chat.history applies.
• Routed manual refresh button handling through handleChatManualRefresh, so scroll/reset waits for history while secondary session/avatar/model/command refreshes remain non-blocking.
• Added coverage for both the non-blocking default path and manual-refresh completion behavior.

Verification:

• pnpm test ui/src/ui/app-chat.test.ts ui/src/ui/app-render.helpers.node.test.ts ui/src/ui/app-settings.refresh-active-tab.node.test.ts ui/src/ui/control-ui-performance.test.ts ui/src/ui/controllers/chat.test.ts
• pnpm exec oxfmt --check --threads=1 ui/src/ui/app-chat.ts ui/src/ui/app-chat.test.ts ui/src/ui/app-render.helpers.ts ui/src/ui/app-render.helpers.node.test.ts ui/src/ui/app-render.ts ui/src/ui/app-settings.ts ui/src/ui/app-settings.refresh-active-tab.node.test.ts ui/src/ui/chat/build-chat-items.ts ui/src/ui/chat/history-limits.ts
• git diff --check origin/main..HEAD
• Testbox pnpm check:changed: typecheck passed; lint escalated to all-lane scope from Testbox sync/install artifacts and failed on unrelated unused imports outside this PR diff.

Performance impact estimate for this PR, based on the changed foreground waits and bounded render work rather than synthetic benchmark numbers:

• Chat tab refresh: default refreshChat() now returns after yielding instead of waiting for chat.history to finish. That moves history hydration off the foreground refresh path. Estimated foreground wait reduction is roughly historyLatency -> one UI tick; for a 500 ms history response this is about a 99% foreground wait reduction / ~100x faster return, and for a 2 s history response it is about a 99.7% reduction / ~400x faster return. The transcript still updates when history arrives; this does not make the backend history query itself faster.
• Manual chat refresh: intentionally no speedup claim. It now uses awaitHistory: true so the refresh control preserves the old completion contract: scroll/reset happens after history applies, while secondary metadata refreshes stay non-blocking.
• Large chat rendering: visible history render work is capped from 200 to 100 messages for large sessions, so worst-case transcript item build/render pressure is cut by about 50% for sessions with more than 100 visible messages. This should reduce blank-page/freeze risk from large transcripts, with a “showing last 100 messages” marker for hidden older history.
• Config tab refresh: config.schema no longer blocks the active-tab refresh completion. Foreground savings are approximately (max(schemaLatency, configLatency) - configLatency) / max(schemaLatency, configLatency). If schema rendering/fetching is 5 s and config fetch is 200 ms, the tab foreground wait drops by about 96% / ~25x. If schema is 10 s and config is 200 ms, it drops by about 98% / ~50x.
• Channels tab refresh: the foreground path now waits for the cheap non-probe channel snapshot plus config, then runs the expensive probe/audit refresh in the background. For slow channel probes this removes the probe/audit budget from the initial tab refresh. Compared with the previous 750 ms soft probe budget, the foreground tab wait can save up to roughly 750 ms per refresh in the slow-probe case, and more importantly avoids repeated stuck-looking refresh states while the full probe completes.
• Instrumentation: slow chat/config render timing plus browser long-animation-frame/long-task entries are recorded in the Control UI event log. That is not direct speedup, but it gives us concrete timing evidence for the next virtualization/chunking step instead of guessing.

Net expectation: affected operator actions should feel instant or near-instant when the old blocker was slow history/schema/channel probe work. The largest user-visible wins are in pathological cases: large sessions, slow config schema surfaces, and slow channel status probes. Normal fast paths should be functionally unchanged except for lower render pressure and better diagnostics.

Current verification after rebasing onto latest main:

• pnpm test ui/src/ui/app-chat.test.ts ui/src/ui/app-render.helpers.node.test.ts ui/src/ui/app-settings.refresh-active-tab.node.test.ts ui/src/ui/control-ui-performance.test.ts ui/src/ui/controllers/chat.test.ts
• pnpm exec oxfmt --check --threads=1 CHANGELOG.md ui/src/ui/app-chat.ts ui/src/ui/app-chat.test.ts ui/src/ui/app-render.helpers.ts ui/src/ui/app-render.helpers.node.test.ts ui/src/ui/app-render.ts ui/src/ui/app-settings.ts ui/src/ui/app-settings.refresh-active-tab.node.test.ts ui/src/ui/chat/build-chat-items.ts ui/src/ui/chat/history-limits.ts
• git diff --check origin/main..HEAD
• pnpm ui:build

Re-review progress:

• State: Complete
• Detail: The targeted re-review finished, the durable review comment was updated, and the synced verdict was routed.
• Run: https://github.com/openclaw/clawsweeper/actions/runs/25534140483
• Updated: 2026-05-08T03:05:24.700Z