galaxy/specs/zachlloyd/restore-fast-forward-state/PRODUCT.md

Restore Fast Forward State Across Sessions — Product Spec

Figma: none provided

Summary

Persist the last state of the fast-forward button for agent conversations across app restarts using Warp's existing session restoration flow. If a restored conversation had fast forward enabled before quit, it should come back enabled after launch; if it was disabled before quit, it should come back disabled.

Problem

Fast forward is currently a per-conversation control during an active session, but that choice is lost when Warp restarts. Users who intentionally enabled or disabled fast forward for a conversation have to remember and re-apply that choice after session restoration, which makes restored agent conversations feel inconsistent and unreliable.

Goals

• Preserve fast-forward state for restored agent conversations across app restarts.
• Keep the behavior per conversation rather than turning it into a global setting.
• Make the restored state reflect the user's last explicit choice, even if they toggled it shortly before quitting.
• Ship the behavior behind a feature flag that is enabled by default for dogfood builds.

Non-goals

• Changing the user's default autonomy settings or global fast-forward preference.
• Changing the visibility or semantics of the existing fast-forward button.
• Persisting state for brand-new conversations that were never created/restored through the normal session restoration flow.
• Syncing this preference across machines or through server-side conversation storage.

Figma

Figma: none provided

User Experience

Core behavior

• Fast-forward state is remembered per agent conversation.
• Session restoration is the source of truth for when this behavior applies. If Warp restores a conversation on launch, the restored conversation should use the same fast-forward state it had when the app last saved session state.
• The remembered state should apply whether the restored conversation is shown in the standard terminal/blocklist UI or reopened into fullscreen agent view.

State rules

• If fast forward was on for a conversation before quit, it is on after launch.
• If fast forward was off for a conversation before quit, it is off after launch.
• Different restored conversations can come back with different fast-forward states.
• New conversations that do not yet have persisted state continue to use the current default behavior until the user explicitly toggles fast forward.

Timing expectations

• If the user toggles fast forward and then quits or restarts Warp without taking another conversation action, the newly selected state should still be restored.
• The user should not need to send another message, receive another response, or otherwise advance the conversation for the new fast-forward state to stick.

Feature flag behavior

• The behavior is gated by a dedicated feature flag for remembering fast-forward state across sessions.
• That flag is enabled by default for dogfood builds.
• If the flag is disabled, restored conversations fall back to current behavior instead of honoring the persisted fast-forward override.

Success Criteria

1. A restored conversation that had fast forward enabled before app restart still shows fast forward enabled after restore.
2. A restored conversation that had fast forward disabled before app restart still shows fast forward disabled after restore.
3. Two restored conversations with different pre-restart fast-forward states each restore their own state correctly.
4. Toggling fast forward immediately before restart is enough to preserve the new state.
5. Restoring a conversation into fullscreen agent view preserves the same fast-forward state.
6. Conversations persisted before this feature ships continue to restore safely and default to the existing non-fast-forward behavior.
7. Disabling the remember-state feature flag restores the current behavior without breaking conversation restoration.

Validation

• Unit tests covering persistence and restoration of the per-conversation fast-forward state.
• A restoration-focused test showing that a persisted conversation round-trips through SQLite-backed restore with the expected fast-forward mode.
• Manual verification:
  • enable fast forward, restart Warp, confirm it stays enabled
  • disable fast forward, restart Warp, confirm it stays disabled
  • repeat with multiple restored conversations and fullscreen agent view

Open Questions

None.