[FEATURE] Let responses color parts of the text (e.g. questions to the user in green) #105651

Feature request

Let the assistant use colored text in its responses in the terminal UI.

Today

In a reply, color comes only from Markdown that the renderer maps to the theme: inline code gets the accent color, and fenced code blocks get syntax highlighting. The model can't color a word or line on purpose. ANSI escape codes in a response aren't rendered as color.

Main use case: make questions stand out

When a reply asks me something, the question should be impossible to miss. For example, a line like "Do you want me to reap slot 4?" at the end of a long status reply would show in green (or another color the theme reserves for "needs your answer"). The rest of the reply stays the default color. In a long agent session, questions are easy to skim past in plain white text, and a missed question stalls the work.

Other uses

Status replies would also be faster to scan with color:

• a red "failed" or "blocked", and a green "landed" or "passed"
• a muted timestamp or footnote

Right now the only workaround is to put words in backticks so they pick up the accent color. That changes what the text means (it reads as code), and it gives you only one color.

Possible shapes

• A small set of semantic color spans the renderer maps to the current theme (e.g. question, success, error, warning, muted). Colors stay theme-safe and readable in light and dark themes.
• Or let a user setting allow a limited subset of ANSI SGR color codes in responses.

Semantic names seem safer than raw colors, because they follow /theme and stay readable.

Related

• Per-speaker text color customization (user vs. assistant messages) #82201 (per-speaker text color) is about the color of whole messages, not color within a response.