[BUG] Arrow keys and Escape not working in Kitty/Ghostty terminals (CSI u keyboard protocol issue)

[fanorama]

When using Factory Droid CLI in Kitty terminal, arrow keys and Escape key don't work
properly. Instead of functioning normally:

• Arrow keys output: 9A, 9B, 9C, 9D
• Escape key outputs: 9u

Environment:
• OS: Arch Linux (linux 6.17.9-arch1-1)
• Terminal: Kitty (also affects Ghostty)
• Factory CLI version: [your version]

Expected behavior:
Arrow keys should navigate and Escape should cancel/exit as expected.

Actual behavior:
Keys output raw CSI u escape sequence characters instead of being interpreted correctly.

Root cause:
Kitty use the modern "CSI u" (fixterms/libtermkey) keyboard protocol for unambiguous key
reporting. Factory CLI's terminal input handling library doesn't properly detect or handle these
sequences.

Workarounds attempted (unsuccessful):
• Setting TERM=xterm-256color
• Adding keyboard_protocol none to kitty.conf

Reference:
This is the same issue that affected Gemini CLI and was fixed in v0.18.2:
google-gemini/gemini-cli#7921

[kapdon]

ran into this issue as well.

[UpayanChatterjee]

I am encountering this exact bug as well. To help narrow down the root cause, I ran an strace on the process (strace -o trace.log droid).

Technical Context
The trace reveals that upon startup, the CLI issues \33[?u to the terminal. This explicitly opts into the Kitty Keyboard Protocol. When Numlock is active, Kitty adheres to this protocol by sending extended, colon-separated escape sequences to encode the Numlock modifier state alongside the arrow key presses.

The bug occurs because the CLI's underlying input parser (or the framework it relies on) fails to parse these extended sequences, causing the input to be silently dropped.

Confirmed Workarounds
Until the input parser is updated to support these extended keycodes, the following workarounds successfully bypass the issue:

• Disabling Numlock before using the arrow keys.
• Overriding the terminal environment variable to prevent the CLI from initiating the protocol request: TERM=xterm droid.