Feature request for product/service
Chat
Describe the request
Problem
During long agent sessions, you often need to ask a quick side question (“where’s the config file?” / “what’s the test directory structure?”) while the agent is mid-task.
Currently, asking interrupts the agent’s flow and permanently adds the side question + answer to the conversation history. This causes:
- Context pollution — irrelevant Q&A clutters the context window, causing the agent to drift or lose focus on the original task
- Wasted tokens — the side exchange eats into the context budget for the rest of the session
- No undo — you can’t selectively remove a message from history
Proposed Solution
An ephemeral side-question mode (Claude Code calls this /btw), where:
- The user asks a question answered using the current context
- The answer is displayed but not added to conversation history
- The agent’s original task continues uninterrupted
- Minimal token cost (reuses prompt cache)
Prior Art
This is already shipping or in progress across the ecosystem:
| Tool | Status |
|---|---|
| Claude Code | Shipped (/btw command) |
| OpenAI Codex | In progress (ephemeral child threads) |
| Google Gemini CLI | Proposed (overlay-based) |
| OpenClaw | Merged (side-question runner) |
UX Suggestion for Cursor
Since Cursor is GUI-based, this could work as:
- Keyboard shortcut (e.g., Cmd+Shift+B) opens a transient input box
- Response appears in a dismissible overlay/popover
- Escape or click away dismisses — nothing persists to chat history
- Alternatively: a toggle on the chat input that marks the next message as ephemeral
Why This Matters
Context management is the #1 friction point in long agent sessions. The forum already has multiple requests around context cleaning and pruning. Ephemeral questions address the root cause — preventing pollution rather than cleaning it up after.
Uber’s AI team (500+ skills, 5,000 developers) identified context pollution as a key blocker in their Claude Code deployment. The /btw command was cited as one of the most-used features once discovered.
Operating System (if it applies)
MacOS
