Terminal Inline Images E2E Plan

Baseline

1. Start the interactive CLI from main.
2. Return an assistant response containing text -> inlineData(image/png) -> text.
3. Run a tool whose functionResponse.parts contains an image/png.
4. Confirm that main omits the assistant image and reduces tool media to text, while the separate display_image tool from #8217 can display a workspace PNG path.

The global qwen executable is unavailable in the current environment, so the baseline is grounded in issue #8090 and the unchanged main event mapping.

Verification

Shared renderer regression

1. Ask the model to call display_image for a workspace PNG.
2. In direct Kitty or Ghostty, confirm the existing native preview still renders.
3. In a non-native terminal with chafa installed, confirm the existing ANSI preview still renders.
4. Confirm the file-path tool retains its workspace, file-size, and PNG validation behavior.

Inline assistant and tool images

1. Return a 1x1 PNG between two assistant text parts.
2. Confirm the transcript order is text -> image -> text.
3. Return a PNG in a successful tool's top-level and nested functionResponse.parts.
4. Confirm the successful tool row retains its images.
5. Open Ctrl+O and resume the session; confirm successful tool image order is reconstructed from persisted parts. Assistant output resumes its persisted text; assistant inline images are not persisted by the current Core recorder.
6. Return six images in one assistant output and one tool response; confirm the first four render and the row ends with [+2 more images].

Kitty/Ghostty

1. Start the CLI in direct Kitty or Ghostty without tmux or SSH.
2. Repeat the assistant and tool cases.
3. Confirm inline PNGs use the same virtual placement and Unicode placeholders as display_image.
4. Confirm remounting a history row does not retransmit an already-written payload.

chafa

1. Start the CLI in Warp, iTerm2, tmux, SSH, or another non-native environment with chafa installed.
2. Repeat the assistant and tool cases.
3. Confirm PNG bytes render as ANSI symbol rows and stay aligned during normal scrolling.
4. Confirm image data is supplied through stdin and no model-controlled value is used as a command argument.

Placeholders and accessibility

1. Repeat without chafa and outside direct Kitty/Ghostty.
2. Confirm a valid PNG displays [image: <width>x<height> png].
3. Repeat with malformed base64, a payload above 8 MiB, invalid IHDR dimensions, and a non-PNG MIME type.
4. Confirm no raw image sequence is written. Confirm the oversized payload is dropped before UI history, while admitted malformed/non-PNG data uses a deterministic placeholder.
5. Repeat with INK_SCREEN_READER=true; confirm only the placeholder is emitted.

Stream lifecycle

1. Exercise a fresh retry, continuation retry, model fallback, cancellation, stream boundary, tool call boundary, and displayed goal-state event.
2. Confirm fresh attempts discard all staged image/text runs from the failed attempt.
3. Confirm continuations preserve partial output.
4. Confirm every normal boundary commits earlier runs before later status or tool rows.

Automated Evidence

Record final results for:

• focused CLI renderer, component, stream, tool, resume, and compaction tests;
• Core Turn, display_image, config, scheduler, and tool tests;
• npm run lint:ci;
• npm run typecheck;
• npm run build;
• npm run check:serve-fast-path-bundle.

Real-terminal output remains a reviewer hardware step when the local environment has no Kitty/Ghostty session. Reusing #8217's renderer means its existing manual Kitty, Ghostty, cmux, and Warp evidence continues to cover the terminal protocol layer; this plan focuses new manual verification on the inline-data entry point and transcript lifecycle.