[idea] "Mark unread" action for agents (re-flag a seen agent)

[yasinozmeen]

idea / problem

The agents panel already has the seen/unseen color logic — blue when unseen, green once I've looked at it. But there's no way to manually flip a green agent back to blue when I've only glanced at it and want to come back to it later.

requested change

Add a Mark unread action to the agents right-click menu. One important detail: it should stick even for the agent I'm currently looking at. Today the active tab gets marked seen again on window focus and on agent activity, so a manual unread on the current agent wouldn't survive. So I'd treat a manual unread as sticky — automatic "seen" doesn't override it — and clear it only when I actually switch into that tab. (This builds on the agents right-click menu from my other idea, the Close one.)

Ekran.Kaydi.2026-06-29.14.59.36.mov

why you want this

When I'm watching many agents, I often glance at one but want to deal with it later. Being able to re-flag it as unread keeps it visible instead of blending into the green "seen" ones. Working local build, all tests passing — happy to PR if you like the idea.

[daviddwlee84]

+1 — this is exactly the "agent finished but I haven't reviewed it yet" gap. I built a working shell-level version to confirm the sticky semantic holds today: herdr pane report-metadata <pane> --source review --custom-status "⭐ REVIEW" sets a flag that is orthogonal to agent state — a pane keeps custom_status:"⭐ REVIEW" while agent_status flips to idle, so glancing in doesn't clear it (exactly the "sticky, auto-seen doesn't override" behavior you describe). Since herdr pane list surfaces custom_status, I also drive a fuzzy "review inbox" from it. What's missing is a native, discoverable trigger — a right-click "Mark unread" on the agents panel is the natural surface, and a plugin-contributed context-menu item (#906) would let it be user-defined.

[ggermade]

+1, and the unattended case is what makes the sticky semantic essential rather than nice-to-have. My usual pattern: I leave the screen on with a pane running, switch to another application, and come back some time later. The pane finished while I was away, herdr had focus, so the completion was consumed and it is green by the time I look at it. I never read a word of it.

From there it is invisible. The green check is indistinguishable from panes I actually reviewed, so the finished work quietly falls off my queue and I only notice much later, if at all. A manual Mark unread in the agents right-click menu fixes it, but only if it survives window focus and later agent activity the way you describe. A version that gets cleared the next time the outer terminal regains focus would not help this case at all.

[gjermundgaraba]

Another use case here:
I want to be able to mark an agent as "unread". The use case is for when I accidentally open an agent that I dont want to deal with yet. So then then I want to jump back (or somewhere else) and mark the previous agent as “unread”.

I'd be happy to own implementing, testing and following this up if there is desire for this (or help test and review).

[rsclafani]

+1, same gap here. An agent finishes, I peek at the result in its tab (which immediately flips it to seen/idle), decide it needs a closer look later, and it's gone from the visual work-queue with nothing marking it as still-open.

Specific ask: put "Mark unread" in the agent's right-click context menu in the sidebar, not just a command-palette action. That's the fastest path when scanning a list of 10+ agents. Should only flip the read/seen bit for display; shouldn't touch the actual lifecycle state (idle/working/blocked).

For what it's worth on implementation: the seen field is already there and the sidebar already sorts on it (agent.view.set), it's just read-only today. Checked the full socket API (herdr api schema, 89 methods) and there's no mark_unread/ack/dismiss anywhere, so this looks like it'd just need a setter (agent.set_seen(false)) exposed through the CLI/context menu.

Workaround in the meantime: herdr pane report-metadata <pane> --state-label "idle=UNREAD" wired into ui.sidebar.agents.rows gets a visible marker back, but it's display-only and doesn't touch the real seen bit.

[adamdehaven]

Rather than "Mark unread" what about forcing into a new lifecycle state, followup etc.? Rather than being invoked via the agent, this status would be via manual trigger only (e.g. right-click > "Mark for followup"

[kaansio]

A short focus dwell would cover the accidental-selection case without requiring manual cleanup:

• focus the pane immediately;
• keep its done/unread state and attention priority for about one second;
• mark it seen only if it remains focused when that second expires;
• keep it unread if the user leaves sooner.

This matters with a priority-sorted panel and a direct shortcut to its first row. Selecting the top agent currently acknowledges it at once, so the row drops before the user has necessarily read it. A dwell would make quick cycling non-destructive. Manual Mark unread would still help after someone deliberately reads a result and defers the work.

Observed on Herdr 0.8.0 stable with agent_panel_sort = "priority".

[yasinozmeen]

Heads up: I'm unsubscribing from this thread, so I won't be following up here anymore. The idea is still worth doing — @gjermundgaraba offered to implement it, and @adamdehaven's followup state / @kaansio's focus-dwell suggestions are good directions. Feel free to carry it forward without me.

[dustinbyrne]

+1 here. Often, I like to peek at the results of an ended turn to see if it's a quick reply or something I need to think about. If I'm already in the middle of another cognitive task, I'd prefer to come back to it later. "Mark unread" would be a great way of signaling this state.

That, or I've just selected the wrong session and now I need to deal with it in that moment or risk forgetting about it.

[pallerdev]

+1, same trigger here: I open an agent's tab by accident while scanning the list, it flips to seen immediately, and there's no way back short of re-triggering agent activity. A "Mark unread" entry in the agents panel right-click menu, sticky against auto-seen like others describe above.
From my personal side, I think is amazing feature for those users that work on many workspaces and agents at same time.

[matrixise]

+1, mark unread would be really useful: I often move between agents just to check in, and that informational glance already clears the done marker.

[ndeville]

+1 from me, with a scale angle: I run 20+ Claude agents across 5 spaces (Herdr 0.9.0, macOS).

When an agent finishes, I often read its output, decide it needs a proper answer later, and move on to the next one. By then the Done marker is gone, so the agent drops out of my visual work queue and I have to remember it myself. With this many agents, I lose track.

A Mark as unread entry in the agent's right-click menu, plus a keybinding, would make the sidebar a usable task list. It should stay sticky until I focus that agent again, as others described above.

---

Update: my workaround until this lands. It uses pane metadata, the same idea @daviddwlee84 described above.

• Marker: a small local plugin toggles a pane token, herdr pane report-metadata <pane> --source nic.agent-later --token later=🔵 to set it and --clear-token later to clear it. The agents row shows it through the token: rows = [["state_text", "tab", "$later"]].
• Sticky: the plugin keeps the marked pane ids in HERDR_PLUGIN_STATE_DIR and re-applies them from a [[startup]] hook, so marks survive a server restart. Nothing clears them except me.
• Trigger: a plugin action "Mark for later / clear" with contexts = ["pane", "tab"], plus a hotkey (Hammerspoon on macOS, Cmd+Opt+R while Ghostty is in front) that runs the same script on the focused pane.

It works, but 2 gaps remain that only Herdr can close:

1. Plugin action contexts are global, workspace, tab, pane and selection. There is no agent context, so the action can't sit in the right-click menu of an agent row. I have to focus the agent (or its tab) first, which is exactly what clears the Done state.
2. The token is display only, so the marker can't take part in priority sorting the way a real unread state would.

A native "Mark as unread" on the agent row, or an agent context for plugin actions, would solve both.