Don't scroll a view up to fill blank space while its content is loading

The layout scrolls a view up if its origin is past the bottom of its
content, to avoid showing blank space (e.g. after a resize). But it measures
content height by the lines loaded so far, and command/pty tasks load
asynchronously. So when a view is re-rendered while scrolled down, the layout
would yank it to the top because only a fraction of the content has been read
yet, then leave it there once loading finished.

Track whether a command task is actively reading (set synchronously when the
task is created, so a layout pass in between sees it; cleared at EOF, but not
when stopped, since that means a newer task is taking over) and skip the
scroll-up clamp for such views. onEndOfInput already re-clamps once loading
completes.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

pkg/gui/layout.go

@@ -88,7 +88,13 @@ func (gui *Gui) layout(g *gocui.Gui) error {
 		if !view.CanScrollPastBottom {
 			maxOriginY -= newHeight - 1
 		}
-		if oldOriginY := view.OriginY(); oldOriginY > maxOriginY {
+		// Don't scroll up while the view's content is still being loaded: its
+		// height only reflects what has been read so far, so clamping to it now
+		// would yank the view to the top even though more content is on the way
+		// (e.g. when re-rendering a diff the user was scrolled into).
+		manager := gui.getViewBufferManagerForView(view)
+		stillLoading := manager != nil && manager.IsLoading()
+		if oldOriginY := view.OriginY(); oldOriginY > maxOriginY && !stillLoading {
 			view.ScrollUp(oldOriginY - maxOriginY)
 			// the view might not have scrolled actually (if it was at the limit
 			// already), so we need to check if it did

pkg/gui/pty.go

@@ -72,6 +72,12 @@ func (gui *Gui) newPtyTask(view *gocui.View, cmd *exec.Cmd, prefix string) error
 
 	cmd.Args = withPtyGitConfig(cmd.Args, runtime.GOOS)
 
+	// Mark the view as loading synchronously now, before the layout pass: the
+	// actual task is created in afterLayout (below), which runs after layout, so
+	// without this the next layout pass would clamp the scroll position to the
+	// not-yet-loaded content.
+	gui.getManager(view).StartLoading()
+
 	// Run the pty after layout so that it gets the correct size
 	gui.afterLayout(func() error {
 		// Need to get the width and the pager command again because the layout might have

pkg/gui/tasks_adapter.go

@@ -18,6 +18,10 @@ func (gui *Gui) newCmdTask(view *gocui.View, cmd *exec.Cmd, prefix string) error
 	).Debug("RunCommand")
 
 	manager := gui.getManager(view)
+	// Mark the view as loading synchronously (before the task's goroutine runs
+	// and before the next layout pass) so the layout doesn't clamp the scroll
+	// position to the not-yet-loaded content.
+	manager.StartLoading()
 
 	// Snapshot the view width here, on the UI thread, so the task goroutine
 	// doesn't read the view's live dimensions while it streams output. It's

pkg/tasks/tasks.go

@@ -78,6 +78,11 @@ type ViewBufferManager struct {
 	taskKey   string
 	onNewKey  func()
 
+	// Whether a command task is currently reading content into the view. While
+	// this is true the content is still growing, so callers (e.g. the layout)
+	// must not clamp the view's scroll position to the amount loaded so far.
+	loading atomic.Bool
+
 	// beforeStart is the function that is called before starting a new task
 	beforeStart  func()
 	refreshView  func()
@@ -162,6 +167,21 @@ func (self *ViewBufferManager) ReadLines(totalLines int) {
 	}
 }
 
+// IsLoading reports whether a command task is currently reading content into the
+// view, meaning the content is still growing.
+func (self *ViewBufferManager) IsLoading() bool {
+	return self.loading.Load()
+}
+
+// StartLoading marks the view as loading content. It must be called
+// synchronously when a command/pty task is started, before the task's goroutine
+// runs, so that a layout pass happening in between doesn't clamp the scroll
+// position to the not-yet-loaded content. It is cleared when the task reaches
+// the end of its input.
+func (self *ViewBufferManager) StartLoading() {
+	self.loading.Store(true)
+}
+
 func (self *ViewBufferManager) ReadToEnd(then func()) {
 	if ch := self.readLines.Load(); ch != nil {
 		readLines := *ch
@@ -379,6 +399,11 @@ func (self *ViewBufferManager) NewCmdTask(start func() (Cmd, io.Reader), prefix
 							// whether to scroll) and sets the origin, both of which
 							// are UI-thread-only, so run it there.
 							_ = self.onUIThread(self.onEndOfInput)
+							// The content is fully loaded now, so it's safe again for the
+							// layout to clamp the scroll position to it. We deliberately
+							// don't clear this when stopped (rather than EOF'd), because that
+							// means a newer task is taking over and is still loading.
+							self.loading.Store(false)
 							callThen()
 							// Any read requests that were queued while we were reading are
 							// now trivially satisfied, since we've read everything. Fire