feat(cli): refine tool output formatting for compact mode

[jwhelangoog]

Summary

Refine tool output formatting in the CLI's compact (dense/grouped) mode to improve readability and information density. This PR makes search and read tools truly terse by removing multi-line payloads and ensures consistent verbiage across listing tools.

Details

1. Compact Mode Refinements

• Terse Summaries: Removed multi-line match lists and file lists from the dense/grouped view for grep_search and read_many_files.
• Consistent Verbiage: Updated list_directory (ReadFolder) summary from "Listed" to "Found" to align with other search tools.
• UI Logic: Updated hasDensePayload to return false for grep and multi-file read results, ensuring the UI doesn't reserve space for expandable payloads that are no longer present.

2. Wrapping & Truncation Logic

• Tool Name Retention: Modified the layout of DenseToolMessage to ensure tool names (up to 25 chars) are not truncated by long descriptions. The tool name now has flexShrink: 0, while the description uses flexShrink: 1 to fill the remaining space and truncate if necessary.
• Single-Line Lock: Guaranteed that the tool name and description appear on the first line of the output, with the result summary allowed to wrap to a second line if space is limited.

Related Issues

Fixes #24634
Fixes #24644

How to Validate

1. Compact View: Run a command that groups multiple grep_search or read_many_files calls. Verify they appear as single-line summaries without lists of matches/files.
2. Truncation: Trigger a tool call with a very long description and a tool name < 25 chars. Verify the tool name remains fully visible while the description truncates.
3. Verbiage: Run list_directory and verify the summary starts with "Found".
4. Tests: Run npm test -w @google/gemini-cli and npm test -w @google/gemini-cli-core.

Pre-Merge Checklist

• Updated relevant documentation and README (if needed)
• Added/updated tests (if needed)
• Noted breaking changes (if any)
• Validated on required platforms/methods:
  • MacOS
    • npm run
    • npx
    • Docker
    • Podman
    • Seatbelt
  • Windows
    • npm run
    • npx
    • Docker
  • Linux
    • npm run
    • npx
    • Docker

[gemini-code-assist]

Summary of Changes

Hello, I'm Gemini Code Assist¹! I'm currently reviewing this pull request and will post my feedback shortly. In the meantime, here's a summary to help you and other reviewers quickly get up to speed!

This pull request refines the CLI's compact output mode to enhance readability and information density. By removing verbose multi-line payloads and standardizing terminology across various tools, the interface becomes cleaner and more consistent. Additionally, layout adjustments were implemented to ensure that tool names are prioritized and remain visible even when descriptions are long.

Highlights

• Compact Mode Refinements: Removed multi-line match and file lists from dense/grouped views for grep and multi-file read tools to improve information density.
• Consistent Verbiage: Updated the summary verbiage for directory listing tools from 'Listed' to 'Found' to ensure consistency across the CLI.
• Layout and Truncation: Improved the layout of tool messages to prevent long descriptions from truncating tool names, ensuring tool names remain visible.

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[github-actions]

Size Change: -1.44 kB (0%)

Total Size: 34 MB

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[gemini-code-assist]

Code Review

This pull request refactors the DenseToolMessage component to provide a more compact UI by removing detailed item lists, such as file lists and grep matches, from the output. It also updates the ls tool's summary terminology from 'Listed' to 'Found' and introduces a new test case for description truncation. Feedback was provided regarding a layout issue in DenseToolMessage.tsx where a missing flexShrink property on a wrapping Box could prevent the description from truncating correctly when terminal width is exceeded.

[github-actions]

✅ 64 tests passed successfully on gemini-3-flash-preview.

🧠 Model Steering Guidance

This PR modifies files that affect the model's behavior (prompts, tools, or instructions).

• ⚠️ Consider adding Evals: No behavioral evaluations (evals/*.eval.ts) were added or updated in this PR. Consider adding a test case to verify the new behavior and prevent regressions.
• 🚀 Maintainer Reminder: Please ensure that these changes do not regress results on benchmark evals before merging.

---

This is an automated guidance message triggered by steering logic signatures.

[jwhelangoog]

Review for PR 24677

Overall, this is a fantastic UI refinement for the compact mode. Reducing the noise from multi-file read tools and grep_search is a big win for information density.

A few specific highlights:

• Layout Management: Utilizing flexShrink: 0 for the tool name and flexShrink: 1 for the description is a very clean and idiomatic way to handle terminal width constraints in Ink while preserving essential context.
• Consistency: Unifying the search result verbiage (list_directory -> "Found") improves the overall cohesiveness of the tool output.
• Testing: The new test cases using renderWithProviders and checking the layout truncation logic are well implemented and follow the project's testing conventions.

One minor observation:

• CI Failures: I noticed that E2E (Chained) and a Windows slow test are currently failing on the PR. It might be worth a quick check to see if changing the list_directory summary text from "Listed" to "Found" tripped up any existing E2E snapshot assertions that were looking for the old string.

[jacob314]