ADR asktool-draft-survives-session-switch: AskTool drafts survive a card remount

• Status: Accepted
• Date: 2026-10-20
• Issues: #1765
• Amends: the "Request transitions" rule in docs/spec/04-ux/11-asktool-question-card.md

Context

The card's question index and draft answers were component state. Switching sessions unmounts the card — Composer renders it only while the active session has a head ask — so returning to the same pending ask remounted a fresh card at question one with every answer cleared. The ask itself survived because it lives in the store; only the in-progress answers were lost, which made the user redo the whole card.

The existing specification froze the opposite behavior: "Unsubmitted card drafts are local to the mounted card and are reset when it is replaced." That rule predates the session-switch case and no longer matches what users expect.

Decision

Draft answers and the open question index live in the app store, keyed by requestId (askDrafts). AskToolCard reads and writes that entry instead of owning useState, so unmounting and remounting the same request is harmless. A missing entry falls back lazily to an empty draft at read time; the card does not seed the store during render.

The draft is dropped when the ask is resolved or dismissed, when its tool call finishes, when the session's asks are cleared, and when a pending-queue reconcile removes the ask. Drafts remain renderer memory, like pendingAsks; they are not persisted across an application restart and never leak between requests.

Consequences

• Switching sessions and returning to the same pending ask keeps the selected options, the custom text, skipped markers, and the open question.
• Resolved, dismissed, and removed asks leave no draft behind.
• AskToolCard becomes a controlled view over store state; it keeps no draft-local useState.
• The "Request transitions" section of the asktool card spec is amended: drafts belong to the request, not to the mounted card instance.

Validation

pnpm test:e2e:asktool-card adds E2E-ASKTOOL-draft-survives-session-switch: it selects an option, advances to question two, unmounts the card, remounts the same requestId, and asserts the open question and the earlier selection survive. The existing compact-card flows keep passing. pnpm typecheck and pnpm lint cover the renderer types and style tokens.