Rename Agent Mode chats and sessions to tasks

[marksftw]

Closes #639

Summary

• Rename user-facing Agent Mode chats and sessions to tasks across navigation, history, dialogs, settings, MCP controls, accessibility labels, and Maple-owned error strings.
• Preserve Chat Mode wording and Maple’s internal session APIs, storage, runtime flow, and task-creation semantics.
• Add only the small shared-component parameters needed to show chat in Chat Mode and task in Agent Mode, including routing the sidebar action to each mode’s existing new-item callback.
• Change the default visible Agent title from New agent session to New task.

Scope

This PR is a user-facing language change only:

• It does not match, parse, or rewrite user messages, Goose output, framework notices, or ordinary runtime errors.
• It does not queue New Task requests during initialization.
• It does not change folder selection, runtime startup parameters, or task persistence timing.
• The Agent sidebar action uses the existing createSession() flow only when Agent settings are unlocked; Chat Mode continues to use its existing addChat() flow.

The separate initialization/disabled-state behavior improvement is tracked in #645.

User impact

Agent Mode consistently presents durable work as tasks while Chat Mode retains chat terminology. Existing Agent history and internal session data remain unchanged.

Validation

• bun run typecheck
• bun test — 131 passed
• bun run lint — 0 errors, 12 pre-existing warnings
• Prettier checks for the changed frontend files
• cargo fmt --all -- --check
• cargo test — 123 passed
• git diff --check

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Agent Mode now presents sessions as tasks, uses “New task” defaults, rewrites selected errors and framework notices, and supports deferred task creation through project-root selection while preserving chat-mode behavior.

Changes

Agent task experience

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Task titles and framework notices frontend/src-tauri/src/agent.rs	Adds task title defaults, targeted framework-notice rewriting, bounded timeline rendering, and related tests.
Backend task lifecycle errors frontend/src-tauri/src/agent.rs	Updates model-lock, creation, loading, MCP, deletion, rollback, permission, and execution messages to use task terminology.
New task creation and Agent UI frontend/src/components/AgentMode.tsx, frontend/src/components/Sidebar.tsx, frontend/src/components/chat/ChatTurn.tsx, frontend/src/components/DeleteChatDialog.tsx	Adds deferred task creation and task-specific labels, actions, accessibility text, empty states, and deletion copy.
Task errors, MCP copy, and history settings frontend/src/services/agentMcpErrors.ts, frontend/src/services/agentMcpErrors.test.ts, frontend/src/components/agent/AgentMcpControls.tsx, frontend/src/components/settings/*, frontend/src/components/UpgradePromptDialog.tsx	Adds targeted Agent error normalization and updates MCP, upgrade, account deletion, and history settings wording.

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~25 minutes

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant User
  participant Sidebar
  participant AgentMode
  participant ProjectRootChooser
  User->>Sidebar: Select New Task
  Sidebar->>AgentMode: requestNewTask()
  AgentMode->>AgentMode: wait for initialization and unlocked settings
  alt project root exists
    AgentMode->>AgentMode: createSession()
  else project root missing
    AgentMode->>ProjectRootChooser: chooseProjectRoot()
  end

Loading

Possibly related PRs

• OpenSecretCloud/Maple#607: Updates shared Agent runtime and session-creation paths.
• OpenSecretCloud/Maple#622: Modifies the Agent model-lock validation path updated here.
• OpenSecretCloud/Maple#627: Adds MCP paths extended here with task-specific wording.

Suggested reviewers: anthonyronning

Poem

I’m a rabbit with tasks in my queue,
“New Task!” is the button I chew.
Old titles transform,
Errors take task form,
And MCP words hop neatly through.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	The changes match the issue by updating Agent-mode UI copy, labels, and errors to task terminology while leaving Chat mode and internal session concepts intact.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	No clearly unrelated changes appear; the edits stay within Agent-mode terminology, supporting UI, dialogs, settings, and related error copy.
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly summarizes the main change: renaming Agent Mode chat/session terminology to tasks.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch codex/agent-task-terminology

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View logs

[devin-ai-integration]

✅ Devin Review: No Issues Found

Devin Review analyzed this PR and found no bugs or issues to report.

[AnthonyRonning]

We don't need legacy / backwards compatibility stuff in this new code.

[marksftw]

Should be resolved now.

[marksftw]

oh shoot, resolving branch conflicts real quick

[AnthonyRonning]

Needs rebase.

[marksftw]

Needs rebase.

yeah I caught that just as I hit the review button

[AnthonyRonning]

Requesting changes because this PR has expanded substantially beyond the terminology change described in #639.

The intended scope is to change user-facing Agent terminology from “chat/session” to “task,” while leaving internal session APIs, storage, and existing behavior unchanged.

This PR currently includes two additional categories of work:

1. It changes New Task behavior, including initialization queuing, folder-selection flow, runtime startup parameters, and when an empty task is persisted.
2. It introduces string matching and rewriting for messages and errors emitted by Goose.

The New Task behavior may be fixing a legitimate problem, but it should not be bundled into a terminology PR. Please revert those behavioral changes here. If the current New Task flow is broken or inadequate, document the existing behavior, the desired behavior, and the relevant edge cases in a separate issue, then address it in a focused PR with direct tests.

I also do not want Maple matching exact Goose prose and rewriting it. This is brittle, couples Maple to Goose’s English wording, and risks modifying content based on text rather than a structured signal. The tests confirm the string-matching implementation, but they do not make that integration boundary maintainable.

Please remove the Goose string-rewriting logic from this PR. If Goose exposes user-facing session terminology that Maple needs to translate, handle that separately through a structured design—for example, typed error/notice categories from Goose, or a single adapter that maps Goose events into Maple-owned enums and presentation copy. That design deserves its own issue and PR.

For this PR, please keep the changes narrowly limited to:

• Static user-facing Agent labels, descriptions, dialogs, tooltips, and accessibility text.
• Small shared-component parameters needed to display “chat” in Chat Mode and “task” in Agent Mode.
• Maple-owned user-facing error strings where changing the literal at its source is straightforward.
• The default visible Agent title changing from “New agent session” to “New task.”

Please do not include runtime-flow changes, new task-creation semantics, initialization state handling, or rewriting of unstructured Goose content. Once the PR is reduced to that scope, I’ll review it again.

[marksftw]

Removed the two feature-specific runtime text rewriters so this PR remains a static Maple UI terminology change and does not scan or alter user or Goose text.

What changed:

• Removed the Rust framework-notice transformer that searched assistant and system messages for exact Goose phrases and changed session to task.
• Removed the frontend runtime-error transformer that searched ordinary errors for session phrases.
• User messages, Goose assistant and system text, and ordinary non-MCP errors now pass through without terminology rewriting. The existing system-notice display length limit is unchanged.
• Kept the pre-existing MCP connection-error sanitizer, which classifies and cleans up MCP connection failures rather than performing Task/Session terminology rewriting.
• External messages may therefore continue to say session, including messages such as Session not found.

Validation: cargo test (123 passed), frontend tests, type checking, formatting, and linting all passed. This is included as the separate commit b4719d4.

[AnthonyRonning]

Thanks—removing both runtime text rewriters addresses my Goose/error-mapping concern.

The other requested scope change is still outstanding. The PR still contains the New Task behavioral changes, including:

• isNewTaskRequested and the initialization-time queue
• the effect that processes a deferred New Task request
• returning a path from chooseProjectRoot
• passing an explicit project root through startRuntime and createSession
• creating a persisted task immediately after folder selection
• keeping the New Task action enabled while initialization is running

Those are functional changes, not terminology changes. Please remove them from this PR and restore the previous initialization, folder-selection, runtime-start, and session-creation behavior.

I understand that the shared sidebar needs a mode-aware label and may need a small callback parameter so a button labeled “New Task” does not execute Chat Mode’s addChat() behavior. That narrow shared-component adjustment is fine. The new deferred-creation state machine and folder-selection semantics are not.

If the existing New Task action has a behavioral bug, please document it separately with the current behavior, desired behavior, and edge cases, then address it in a focused PR with direct tests.

Please also update the PR description after removing this behavior; it currently still advertises initialization queuing and the disabled-state fix. Once that remaining behavior is separated, the terminology PR will match the requested scope.

[marksftw]

Updated: the latest head removes the remaining New Task behavior expansion so this PR is limited to the requested terminology change.

What is now in place:

• Removed isNewTaskRequested, the deferred-request effect, and all initialization-time queuing.
• Restored chooseProjectRoot, startRuntime, and createSession to their previous signatures and flow; there is no explicit-root threading or task creation after folder selection.
• Restored initialization locking, so New Task is disabled while Agent settings are initializing or otherwise locked.
• Kept only the narrow shared Sidebar callback allowed in the review: Chat Mode uses its existing addChat() path, while Agent Mode uses its existing createSession() path once unlocked.
• Removed both Goose/runtime text rewriters; user messages, Goose output, and ordinary runtime errors are not terminology-scanned or rewritten.
• Updated the PR description so it no longer advertises queuing or the disabled-state fix.

The separate transition/disabled-state improvement, including the current behavior, desired behavior, edge cases, persistence decision, and required direct tests, is tracked in #645.

Relevant commits: 570b759 and 4a84ffc.

Validation: 131 frontend tests and 123 Rust tests passed, along with type checking, formatting, git diff --check, and lint with 0 errors (12 pre-existing warnings).

[AnthonyRonning]

The requested scope changes are now addressed. The Goose/runtime string rewriting is removed, the New Task behavior work is separated into #645, and this PR is appropriately limited to user-facing terminology plus the minimal mode-aware sidebar routing.

Approved. Please squash and merge this PR.