Feature request: `paste_transform` — pipe clipboard through a shell command before insertion

[rndjams]

Pre-submit Checks

• I have searched Warp issues and there are no duplicates
• I have searched Warp known issues and my issue is not there

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Feature request: paste_transform — pipe clipboard through a shell command before insertion

Summary

When pasting output from AI TUI tools (Kiro CLI, Claude Code, GSD, and similar) into Warp, the clipboard contains rendering artifacts that make pasted code syntactically broken. Warp should expose a config hook that pipes clipboard content through an arbitrary shell command before inserting it into the input block.

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Problem

Modern AI coding assistants render responses in styled terminal panels. Their /copy to clipboard commands capture the rendered buffer rather than raw message text. Two artifact classes land in Warp on every paste:

1. Box-padding bleed. TUI code blocks indent content by a fixed amount (typically 2 spaces). Every interior line carries that prefix. Heredoc content and config file values arrive with leading whitespace that breaks syntax:

# What lands in Warp after Cmd+V from Kiro CLI:
cat > ~/.config/app/config << 'EOF'
  [settings]
  timeout = 30
EOF

The [settings] and timeout lines have 2-space indent — the heredoc writes a broken config file silently.

2. Soft-wrap line splits. Lines that exceed the TUI's render width split at the column boundary. A single-line Python expression:

session_valid = python3 -c "import os,time; exit(0 if time.time() < os.path.getmtime(os.path.expanduser('~/.cache/app/token')) + 7200 else 1)"

arrives in Warp as two lines:

  session_valid = python3 -c "import os,time; exit(0 if time.time() < os.path.getmtime(os.path.expanduser('~/.cache/app/token')) + 7200
  else 1)"

This is a SyntaxError if pasted into a shell.

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Proposed solution

Add a paste_transform field to [terminal.input] in ~/.warp/settings.toml:

[terminal.input]
paste_transform = "tui-clean -"  # https://github.com/rndjams/tui-clean

Semantics:

• Warp pipes clipboard content through the specified command (stdin → stdout) before inserting into the input block.
• On non-zero exit or empty stdout, fall back to the original clipboard content — never silently drop a paste.
• Unset by default; no behavior change for existing users.
• Command runs in a login shell so PATH and user environment are available.

This is a power-user escape hatch. The correct long-term fix is for TUI tools to emit clipboard content via OSC 52 (bypassing the render buffer entirely — see root cause note below), but that requires changes across multiple third-party tools. paste_transform gives users relief before those upstream fixes land.

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Alternatives considered

ZLE bracketed-paste override. In iTerm2 and traditional terminals, zsh's ZLE widget can intercept and transform paste content before it reaches the shell. Warp's input block bypasses the bracketed-paste protocol entirely, so this approach does not apply here.

Manual fixclip alias before each paste. Running pbpaste | tui-clean - | pbcopy before pasting works but breaks the Cmd+C → Cmd+V flow.

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Root cause note

The underlying issue is that Kiro CLI, Claude Code, GSD, and similar tools copy the rendered terminal buffer on /copy to clipboard rather than raw message text. The correct fix for each tool is to emit an OSC 52 escape sequence with plain-text content, bypassing the render pipeline. Separate issues filed with upstream tools:

• Kiro CLI: kiro-cli: /copy to clipboard copies rendered TUI buffer, not raw message text kirodotdev/Kiro#8814
• GSD: [Feature]: Use OSC 52 for TUI copy — write raw message text to clipboard, not rendered buffer open-gsd/gsd-pi#69

paste_transform bridges the gap while those land.

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Impact

• Affected: any Warp user who pastes generated code from an AI TUI assistant
• Severity: high — pastes are silently syntactically broken, not visually obvious
• Frequency: every paste from Kiro CLI, Claude Code, GSD, or similar
• Workaround cost: manual extra step before every paste, or OS-level system permission grants

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Platform

• macOS arm64 (Apple Silicon)
• Warp v0.2026.05.20.09.21.stable_03
• zsh 5.9

Does this block you from using Warp daily?

No, but it breaks every AI-generated heredoc and multi-line expression paste.

Is this issue specific to Warp?

The artifact exists in all terminals. The ZLE workaround handles it transparently in iTerm2, Ghostty, and kitty. The Warp-specific gap is that Warp's input block does not participate in the bracketed-paste protocol, so the ZLE fix has no effect here.

[oz-for-oss]

@rndjams

Here's what I found while triaging this issue:

This appears to be a feature gap rather than an existing Warp setting: Warp has terminal input paste handling, but no documented paste_transform or equivalent clipboard filter hook today. I found related clipboard-fidelity reports such as #10450, but not enough matching issues to mark this as a duplicate.

Maintainer details

I concluded that feature request for a configurable paste-time transform hook so Warp can clean clipboard text from AI TUI tools before inserting it into the terminal input..

Triage summary

This is best classified as an enhancement request for terminal input paste handling. The report provides a concrete workflow: clipboard text copied from AI TUI tools can contain rendered-buffer artifacts, and the requested Warp-side mitigation is a user-configurable paste transform command before inserting into the input block.

Evidence from the codebase

• app/src/terminal/input.rs handles editor paste events by reading ctx.clipboard().read(), deriving text via the editor's clipboard_text_content, and inserting it with PlainTextEditorViewAction::Paste.
• app/src/terminal/view.rs handles terminal-level paste by reading clipboard content, converting it with clipboard_content_with_escaped_paths, optionally wrapping with bracketed-paste control sequences when writing directly to the PTY, or inserting directly into the input.
• app/src/util/clipboard.rs currently only chooses plain text vs escaped paths and optional newline-to-space conversion; it does not expose a command/filter hook.
• app/src/settings/input.rs, app/src/settings/editor.rs, and the generated docs/settings schema list terminal input settings, but no paste_transform or equivalent paste filter setting.

Duplicate check

I searched all open repository issues with pagination. I found related clipboard/paste issues, especially #10450 about copied terminal output preserving visual layout, but not two or more existing issues requesting this same configurable paste-transform hook. Leaving duplicate_of empty.

Suggested next step

This likely needs product/security review before implementation because it would execute user-configured shell commands during paste. Areas to specify include which paste paths are transformed, whether image/file-path pastes are excluded, execution environment, timeout behavior, failure fallback, UI/settings discoverability, and whether command execution should be constrained or explicitly marked as advanced/power-user behavior.

This is my automated analysis and may be incorrect. A maintainer will verify the details.

Powered by Oz

[rndjams]

Related issue filed: #11609 — URL soft-wrap: AI TUI output splits URLs across rows — CMD+click opens truncated fragment

To clarify the boundary between these two issues:

• Feature request: paste_transform — pipe clipboard through a shell command before insertion #11608 (this issue) — paste path: artifacts from TUI-rendered clipboard content land in the Warp input block on Cmd+V. Fix: paste_transform config hook.
• URL soft-wrap: AI TUI output splits URLs across rows — CMD+click opens truncated fragment #11609 — click path: URLs in block output split across rows by TUI soft-wrap; CMD+click opens only the first fragment. Fix: URL-fragment join pass in the tokenizer before link validation.

Different code paths — both need independent fixes. #11609 is also related to #6541 (OSC 8 rendering, which would supersede the heuristic if it lands first) and #9908 (same link_detection.rs subsystem).