The "agent still being set up" submit gate was triggering on every
session that briefly transitions through STARTING — including local
quick-chat, which has no prepare phase and has its agent live within
~100ms. The eager-init quick-chat e2e tests (chat/quick-chat.spec.ts
and chat/message-queue.spec.ts) wait for the editor to become
editable, then press Cmd+Enter. The race made wrappedSubmit a no-op
exactly when the test was firing — message dropped, agent never saw
it, downstream assertions failed.
Split the merged isStarting flag in useSessionState: keep the broad
flag (still used for the workspace-prep loading UI), and expose
isPreparingEnvironment as a separate signal that's only true while
prepareProgress.status === "preparing". Thread it through chat-input-
area → chat-input-container → useChatInputContainer and gate the
submit-disabled tooltip on it instead of the broad isStarting.
Net: Docker / Sprites bootstrap still surfaces the "agent still being
set up" message and disables submit; quick-chat / local sessions stop
silently dropping in-flight messages.
José Almeida
7851052634