Side chats: Bring back reuses the model-switch handoff, so the main thread never says a side chat came in

[spadaval]

Problem

When you Bring back a side chat, the main thread shows this:

That row was built for switching models. It shows the model before and after the handoff, which here are the same model (6.1 Sol → 6.1 Sol). Nothing in it says a side chat was handed in, which side chat it was, or how to open it. If you didn't click the button yourself a minute ago, you can't tell what happened.

As far as I can tell, Bring back reuses fork merge-back, which goes through the provider-switch handoff path. The delivery works fine. But the UI around it still describes a model switch, and side chats never got their own design for it.

What would help

A handoff row for Bring back that names the side chat that came in and links to it, for example "Side chat 'why add clamp next to sum?' brought in", with the title opening that side chat. A model switch would keep the row it has today.

The fact that Bring back can't be undone is a separate, smaller bug. I've filed it as an issue (#32763) with a minimal fix that doesn't depend on this.

Is this a direction you'd want?

Created with Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code.