qwen-code/docs/developers/daemon-ui

Daemon UI SDK — Developer Guide

The @qwen-code/sdk/daemon subpath ships shared UI primitives for daemon clients. The current adoption target is web chat and web terminal; native local TUI, channel, and IDE integrations keep their existing default paths while the daemon UI contract stabilizes. This guide covers the API surface introduced by PR #4353 (the unified follow-up to PR #4328's shared UI transcript layer).

Three-layer model

Daemon SSE wire (NDJSON envelopes)
   │
   ▼
normalizeDaemonEvent(envelope) → DaemonUiEvent[]
   │
   ▼
reduceDaemonTranscriptEvents(state, events) → DaemonTranscriptState
   │                                            { blocks, currentToolCallId,
   │                                              approvalMode, toolProgress, ... }
   ▼
daemonBlockToMarkdown(block) / ToHtml / ToPlainText  ← your renderer plugs here

• Normalizer: takes raw daemon SSE envelopes, returns typed UI events
• Reducer: accumulates events into a transcript state machine
• Render helpers: project state blocks to renderable strings

Quick start

import {
  DaemonSessionClient,
  createDaemonTranscriptStore,
  normalizeDaemonEvent,
  daemonBlockToMarkdown,
  selectCurrentTool,
  selectApprovalMode,
} from '@qwen-code/sdk/daemon';

const session = await DaemonSessionClient.createOrAttach(client, {
  workspaceCwd,
});
const store = createDaemonTranscriptStore();

for await (const envelope of session.events({ signal })) {
  const events = normalizeDaemonEvent(envelope, {
    clientId: session.clientId,
    suppressOwnUserEcho: true,
  });
  store.dispatch(events);
}

// Read state from any subscriber
store.subscribe(() => {
  const state = store.getSnapshot();
  const currentTool = selectCurrentTool(state);
  const mode = selectApprovalMode(state);
  const markdown = state.blocks.map(daemonBlockToMarkdown).join('\n\n');
  myRenderer.render({ markdown, currentTool, mode });
});

Event taxonomy (28+ types)

DaemonUiEvent is a discriminated union of all UI-facing events:

Chat-stream events

Event	When
user.text.delta	User message chunk arrives from daemon
assistant.text.delta	Assistant streaming chunk
assistant.done	Prompt completion (from sendPrompt resolve)
thought.text.delta	Agent reasoning chunk
tool.update	Tool call lifecycle (running / completed / cancelled)
shell.output	Shell tool stdout/stderr chunk
permission.request	Tool needs user authorization
permission.resolved	Permission decision arrived
model.changed	Session model switched
status / debug / error	Status / debug / error blocks

Session-meta events (PR-A)

Event	When
session.metadata.changed	Session title / display name updated
session.approval_mode.changed	Mode toggled (plan / default / yolo / auto-edit)
session.available_commands	Slash command list refreshed

Workspace events (PR-A, Wave 3-4)

Event	When
workspace.memory.changed	QWEN.md / memory file modified
workspace.agent.changed	Sub-agent created / updated / deleted
workspace.tool.toggled	Builtin tool enabled / disabled
workspace.initialized	qwen init completed
workspace.mcp.budget_warning	MCP child count approaching cap
workspace.mcp.child_refused	MCP server refused due to budget
workspace.mcp.server_restarted	Manual MCP restart succeeded
workspace.mcp.server_restart_refused	Manual restart blocked

Auth device-flow events (PR-A, Wave 4 OAuth)

auth.device_flow.{started,throttled,authorized,failed,cancelled}

Each carries the daemon's deviceFlowId. Failed events carry a closed-enum errorKind (closed enum — see KNOWN_DEVICE_FLOW_ERROR_KINDS exported from @qwen-code/sdk/daemon for the canonical list, currently: expired_token / access_denied / invalid_grant / upstream_error / persist_failed / not_found_or_evicted).

Render contract (PR-D)

Three projection helpers, one preview helper. All discriminate on block.kind or preview.kind:

daemonBlockToMarkdown(block, { sanitizeUrls?, maxFieldLength?, locale? })
daemonBlockToHtml(block, { sanitizer?, ...renderOpts })
daemonBlockToPlainText(block, renderOpts)
daemonToolPreviewToMarkdown(preview, renderOpts)

Cookbook: render a transcript to markdown

const markdown = state.blocks
  .map((b) => daemonBlockToMarkdown(b, { sanitizeUrls: true }))
  .join('\n\n');

Cookbook: render to sanitized HTML for SSR

import DOMPurify from 'dompurify';
import MarkdownIt from 'markdown-it';
const md = new MarkdownIt();

const html = state.blocks
  .map((b) => {
    // Two-stage pipeline: markdown → HTML → DOMPurify
    const rawHtml = md.render(daemonBlockToMarkdown(b));
    return DOMPurify.sanitize(rawHtml);
  })
  .join('\n');

Or use the built-in conservative HTML renderer (no markdown parsing, just HTML escape):

const html = state.blocks
  .map((b) => daemonBlockToHtml(b, { sanitizer: DOMPurify.sanitize }))
  .join('\n');

Cookbook: copy-paste plain text

const plain = state.blocks.map(daemonBlockToPlainText).join('\n');
navigator.clipboard.writeText(plain);

Tool preview taxonomy (13 kinds)

Kind	Surface
ask_user_question	Multi-choice question with options
command	Bash-style command + cwd
file_diff	File edit with oldText/newText or patch
file_read	Path + optional line range
web_fetch	URL + HTTP method
mcp_invocation	MCP server + tool + args summary
code_block	Language-tagged code snippet
search	Query + result count + top results
tabular	Columns + rows (capped at 50, truncation flagged)
image_generation	Prompt + optional thumbnail URL
subagent_delegation	Agent name + task
key_value	Generic label/value rows
generic	Fallback summary

Each has a daemonToolPreviewToMarkdown projection. Custom renderers can dispatch on preview.kind for rich per-type display (file diff with syntax highlighting, MCP server badge, image thumbnail, etc.).

State selectors (PR-E)

selectCurrentTool(state); // → DaemonToolTranscriptBlock | undefined
selectApprovalMode(state); // → 'plan' | 'default' | 'auto-edit' | 'yolo' | undefined
selectToolProgress(state, toolCallId); // → { ratio?, step? } | undefined
selectPendingPermissionBlocks(state); // → ReadonlyArray<DaemonPermissionTranscriptBlock>
selectTranscriptBlocks(state); // → ReadonlyArray<DaemonTranscriptBlock>
selectTranscriptBlocksOrderedByEventId(state); // sorted by daemon-monotonic id

// PR-K — sub-agent nesting
selectSubagentChildBlocks(state, parentToolCallId); // direct children only
isSubagentChildBlock(block); // type guard: was this tool invoked inside a sub-agent?

currentToolCallId is automatically maintained by the reducer:

• Set when a tool enters in-flight status (running / in_progress / pending / confirming)
• Cleared when tool enters terminal status (completed / failed / cancelled / etc.)
• Unknown statuses leave it untouched (forward-compat)

Cancellation propagation (PR-E)

When assistant.done.reason === 'cancelled', the reducer walks every in-flight tool block and force-sets its status to 'cancelled'. Daemon does not guarantee a terminal tool_call_update for every in-flight tool when the parent prompt is cancelled — this propagation prevents UI spinners from spinning forever.

Sub-agent children are cancelled together with their parent because cancellation iterates every in-flight tool block in toolBlockByCallId, not just the current pointer.

Sub-agent nesting (PR-K)

When the main agent delegates to a sub-agent (the Task tool, or equivalent), the daemon stamps parentToolCallId and subagentType on the child tool calls via tool_call._meta. The reducer reads both and:

• Mirrors parentToolCallId + subagentType onto DaemonToolTranscriptBlock
• Resolves parentBlockId (the parent's transcript block id) when the parent block is already in state; otherwise leaves it undefined and back-fills when the parent block later appears

Out-of-order arrival (child before parent) is handled transparently. A child whose parent gets trimmed by maxBlocks keeps parentToolCallId for selector queries, but parentBlockId is nulled (the dangling id would no longer resolve via blockIndexById).

import {
  selectSubagentChildBlocks,
  isSubagentChildBlock,
} from '@qwen-code/sdk/daemon';

// Render a parent tool block, then walk children:
function renderToolBlock(state, block) {
  if (block.kind !== 'tool') return renderOther(block);
  const children = selectSubagentChildBlocks(state, block.toolCallId);
  return (
    <ToolBlock block={block}>
      {children.length > 0 && (
        <Indent>
          {children.map((c) => renderToolBlock(state, c))}
        </Indent>
      )}
    </ToolBlock>
  );
}

// Or filter top-level vs. nested at render time:
const topLevel = state.blocks.filter((b) => !isSubagentChildBlock(b));

selectSubagentChildBlocks returns direct children only. Walk recursively to render nested sub-agents (a sub-agent inside a sub-agent). Daemon does not emit cycles, but renderers walking up via parentBlockId should still detect them defensively (e.g., depth cap or visited set).

Self-references (parentToolCallId === toolCallId) are dropped by the normalizer before reaching the reducer.

Time semantics (PR-B)

interface DaemonTranscriptBlockBase {
  eventId?: number; // PRIMARY sort key — daemon-monotonic
  serverTimestamp?: number; // PREFERRED display — daemon-authoritative
  clientReceivedAt: number; // FALLBACK — local clock
  createdAt: number; // @deprecated alias for clientReceivedAt
}

Always sort by eventId (use selectTranscriptBlocksOrderedByEventId) when displaying long sessions. The daemon-monotonic cursor is preserved across SSE replay-after-reconnect; client clocks are not.

Always format display timestamps from serverTimestamp (with fallback to clientReceivedAt). Multiple clients viewing the same session see the same "5 minutes ago" only when both read from the daemon clock.

import { formatBlockTimestamp } from '@qwen-code/sdk/daemon';

const label = formatBlockTimestamp(block, {
  locale: 'zh-CN',
  timeZone: 'Asia/Shanghai',
  timeStyle: 'short',
});

Adapter conformance (PR-G)

Validate your adapter projects the SDK's reference corpus to semantically equivalent output:

import { runAdapterConformanceSuite } from '@qwen-code/sdk/daemon';

it('my adapter conforms to daemon UI corpus', () => {
  const result = runAdapterConformanceSuite({
    reduce: (events) => myReducer(events),
    renderToText: (state) => myRenderer(state),
  });
  expect(result.failed).toEqual([]);
});

The fixture corpus (DAEMON_UI_CONFORMANCE_FIXTURES) covers chat, tool lifecycle, file edits, MCP, permissions, MCP budget warning, cancellation, malformed payload redaction, OAuth, command updates, and sub-agent nesting. (Count is derivable at runtime — read DAEMON_UI_CONFORMANCE_FIXTURES.length.)

Format-agnostic — your adapter can render to ANSI / HTML / markdown / JSX; the framework only checks semantic content via expectedContains and expectedAbsent.

Error categorization (PR-A)

DaemonUiErrorEvent.errorKind is a closed-enum propagated from the daemon's typed-error taxonomy (when the daemon stamps it):

import type { DaemonErrorKind } from '@qwen-code/sdk/daemon';
// 'missing_binary' | 'blocked_egress' | 'auth_env_error' | 'init_timeout' | 'restore_timeout'
// | 'protocol_error' | 'missing_file' | 'parse_error' | 'budget_exhausted'

Renderers should branch on errorKind for actionable affordances:

function errorAffordance(errorKind?: DaemonErrorKind): React.ReactNode {
  switch (errorKind) {
    case 'auth_env_error': return <button>Re-authenticate</button>;
    case 'missing_file':   return <button>Choose file</button>;
    case 'blocked_egress': return <span>Network blocked — check proxy</span>;
    default:               return null;
  }
}

Tool provenance dispatch (PR-A)

DaemonUiToolUpdateEvent.provenance is a closed-enum (builtin / mcp / subagent / unknown). With serverId?: string when mcp. Use it for icon dispatch and badging:

function toolIcon(event: DaemonUiToolUpdateEvent): React.ReactNode {
  switch (event.provenance) {
    case 'mcp':      return <McpIcon server={event.serverId} />;
    case 'subagent': return <SubagentIcon />;
    case 'builtin':  return <BuiltinIcon name={event.toolName} />;
    default:         return <GenericIcon />;
  }
}

The SDK has a mcp__<server>__<tool> naming heuristic fallback — even when daemon doesn't explicitly stamp provenance, MCP tools are detectable.

Debug reason categorization

DaemonUiStatusEvent.debugReason is a closed-enum the normalizer stamps when it projects a debug block instead of a typed event (mirrored onto DaemonStatusTranscriptBlock for transcript consumers):

import type { DaemonUiDebugReason } from '@qwen-code/sdk/daemon';
// 'unrecognized_event' | 'unrecognized_session_update' | 'malformed_payload'

The canonical list is exported as DAEMON_UI_DEBUG_REASONS. Reason names are wildcard-named categories: unrecognized_* means the daemon sent a frame this SDK version has no case for — forward-compat noise, developer diagnostics rather than conversation content. malformed_* means a frame the SDK does know arrived with an unusable payload — a real defect signal.

Renderers should branch on debugReason, not the debug text — the text prefix is diagnostic wording and changes without notice:

function hideDebugBlock(reason?: DaemonUiDebugReason): boolean {
  // Hide forward-compat noise by category so reasons a newer SDK adds are
  // covered automatically. Defect signals and client-dispatched debug
  // events (which carry no reason) keep rendering.
  return reason?.startsWith('unrecognized_') ?? false;
}

status events never carry a debugReason, and neither do debug events dispatched by clients themselves (e.g. Web Shell's model-switch summary) — both must keep rendering.

Forward-compat principles

Every layer in the daemon UI SDK follows the forward-compat principle: unknown values do NOT throw; they degrade gracefully.

• Unknown daemon event types → debug event with the raw type name, stamped with an unrecognized_* debugReason (see above)
• Unknown tool status → currentToolCallId left untouched (no clear)
• Unknown error kind → errorKind undefined (renderer falls back to text)
• Missing serverTimestamp → falls back to clientReceivedAt
• Unrecognized preview shape → generic kind with summary

This means SDK can ship ahead of daemon emission. PR-A's tool provenance heuristic, PR-B's three-location timestamp extraction, and PR-E's unknown-status preservation are all examples of "ready when daemon sends; safe when it doesn't."

Cross-references

• PR #4328 — base PR with the shared UI transcript layer
• PR #4353 — this PR (unified completeness follow-up)
• Issue #3803 — daemon mode proposal
• Issue #4175 — Mode B v0.16 implementation tracker