openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Webchat streaming replies shift reading position and are hard to read while still rendering [1 participants]

Summary

Preserve reading position while long streamed assistant replies continue rendering in webchat/control-ui.

Problem to solve

In webchat / control-ui, long streamed assistant replies are hard to read because the active message keeps growing while I’m trying to read it. If I pause to read a response before it finishes streaming, the interface keeps updating in a way that makes me lose my place. I often have to scroll back up and re-find where I was. Current behavior is insufficient because it makes longer replies much harder to consume in real time, especially when the answer contains steps, troubleshooting guidance, or technical detail.

Proposed solution

When a streamed reply is rendering in webchat/control-ui, preserve the user’s reading position once they scroll or stop following the bottom of the message. Any of these would help: pause auto-follow when the user scrolls away from the bottom show a “jump to latest” indicator buffer and reveal output in larger chunks instead of constant reflow Implementation idea: auto-follow only while the user is still at the bottom disable auto-follow once they manually scroll preserve reading position until they explicitly jump back to the newest content

Alternatives considered

Shorter replies help a little, but they do not solve the core UI problem. Another partial workaround is to avoid streaming and only show completed responses, but that loses the benefits of live output. The best fix is likely UI-side behavior: preserve reading position during streaming, or stop auto-follow once the user manually scrolls.

Impact

Affected users/systems/channels: users reading long responses in webchat / control-ui Severity: annoying to moderately workflow-disrupting especially bad for troubleshooting or multi-step instructions Frequency: intermittent, but common whenever replies are long enough to read while still streaming Consequence: losing place while reading needing to scroll back up repeatedly slower comprehension more friction during technical tasks

Evidence/examples

A reproducible example is any longer streamed reply in webchat where the user starts reading before the response is finished. This is especially noticeable with: multi-step instructions technical troubleshooting longer explanations No logs are needed because the issue appears to be UI behavior during streaming rather than a backend correctness problem.

Additional information

This feels more like a rendering / viewport-follow behavior issue than a model-output issue. An acceptable fallback would be: disable auto-follow once the user scrolls preserve their place provide a clear “jump to latest” control If you want, I can also give you a shorter Evidence/examples version in case you want to keep the issue tighter.