Chat shows assistant as thinking after page refresh without new message

[kiosvantra]

Bug Description

Refreshing the Hermes Workspace chat view can make the assistant appear to enter a "thinking" / generating state even though the user did not submit a new message.

This looks like a frontend state/reconnect issue rather than actual autonomous assistant behavior. The UI seems to conflate one or more of these states:

• loading session/model metadata after page remount
• reconnecting to an existing stream/SSE connection
• recovering from an interrupted SSE stream
• an actual assistant generation triggered by a new user message

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open Hermes Workspace and enter an existing chat session.
2. Send a message and let the assistant respond, or interrupt/refresh while a stream may still be active.
3. Refresh the browser page.
4. Return to the chat screen.
5. Observe that the assistant may show a "thinking"/pending generation indicator without a new user message being sent.

Expected Behavior

Refreshing or remounting the chat view should not display assistant generation unless a new user message was explicitly submitted or a real backend generation is actively in progress.

The UI should distinguish between:

• loading chat/session metadata
• refreshing model/capability information
• reconnecting to a stream
• recovering from a disconnected/interrupted stream
• assistant generation

Actual Behavior

After refresh, the chat UI can appear as if the assistant started thinking/generating on its own. This is confusing because no new user message was submitted.

Suggested Fix

• Do not create a new chat POST/stream on component mount unless there is an explicit new user message.
• Clear or reconcile stale pending/generating state when the page reloads and the prior stream is gone/interrupted.
• Cancel or mark orphaned streams on refresh/unload where possible.
• Use separate UI states/labels for "loading", "reconnecting", or "recovering stream" instead of reusing the assistant "thinking" indicator.
• If the backend reports an interrupted/disconnected SSE stream, reflect that as stopped/interrupted rather than still pending.

Evidence / Notes

Local logs showed normal model/capability refresh activity around the page refresh, plus prior SSE client disconnect/interruption events. No evidence indicated that a new user-submitted chat message was intentionally sent by the user during the refresh.

Environment

• App: Hermes Workspace
• Mode observed: Workspace connected to Hermes Gateway in zero-fork mode
• Browser action: manual page refresh / chat view remount