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Steering & Queueing

Two ways to send a message into a turn that is already running: queue it for when Panda finishes, or steer the run that is happening right now.

Typing while Panda works

A turn can run for minutes, and you often know halfway through that it is heading the wrong way. You do not have to wait for it to finish, and you do not have to stop it either. Type into the composer while Panda is working and the send control splits in two:

• Enter (Queue), hold the message and send it as your next turn, once this one is done.
• Cmd/Ctrl Enter (Steer), push the message into the run that is happening right now.

The legend under the composer names both, and the half that fires on the current keypress is the darker one. Hold the modifier and the button itself flips to the steer icon, so the control you are about to press always shows what it will do.

What steering does

A steered message is handed to the agent at its next action, not at the end of the turn. In practice Panda picks it up before the next tool call and changes course from there, so the work you did not want gets abandoned instead of finished.

If the turn ends before the agent reaches another action, nothing is lost. The message is sent as a normal follow-up instead, so a steer can be late but never dropped.

Steering rides a hook that carries plain text, which sets two limits worth knowing:

• Text only. Attach an image and the message queues instead.
• 5,000 characters. Longer than that and it queues instead.

It also needs an engine that can take a message mid-run, which today means the built-in Claude engine. On Codex and OpenCode the legend says so and Enter simply queues.

What queueing does

Queued messages stack up under the composer with a count, so 2 queued · 1 steering tells you exactly what is waiting and how each piece will be delivered. Before they go out you can edit one, reorder them, or remove one you no longer want.

When the turn ends they are sent in order, as ordinary turns. Queueing is the right choice for the next task rather than a correction: line up three follow-ups, walk away, and come back to all of them done.

When steer is not offered

The legend never silently drops the option. When steering is unavailable it says why in place of the shortcut:

In every one of those cases Enter still queues, so the message is never stuck.

Stopping is still there as the third option. Steer when you want the run redirected, queue when you want it finished first, and stop when you want it abandoned.