fix(coding-agent): preserve backslash escapes in user messages

closes #6105

packages/coding-agent/CHANGELOG.md

@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
 ### Fixed
 
 - Fixed `--session` and `SessionManager.open()` to reject non-empty invalid session files without overwriting them ([#6002](https://github.com/earendil-works/pi/issues/6002)).
+- Fixed user-message transcript rendering to keep visible backslashes in Markdown escape sequences such as `\"` ([#6105](https://github.com/earendil-works/pi/issues/6105)).
 - Fixed assistant messages stopped by output length to show a visible incomplete-response error ([#4290](https://github.com/earendil-works/pi/issues/4290)).
 - Fixed `--no-session --session-id` so ephemeral CLI runs can use deterministic session IDs for provider cache affinity ([#6070](https://github.com/earendil-works/pi/issues/6070)).
 - Fixed disk BMP image files to be detected, converted to PNG, and attached through `read` and CLI `@file` inputs ([#6047](https://github.com/earendil-works/pi/issues/6047)).

packages/coding-agent/src/modes/interactive/components/user-message.ts

@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ export class UserMessageComponent extends Container {
 				{
 					color: (content: string) => theme.fg("userMessageText", content),
 				},
-				{ preserveOrderedListMarkers: true },
+				{ preserveOrderedListMarkers: true, preserveBackslashEscapes: true },
 			),
 		);
 		this.addChild(this.contentBox);

packages/tui/CHANGELOG.md

@@ -2,6 +2,10 @@
 
 ## [Unreleased]
 
+### Added
+
+- Added an opt-in Markdown renderer option to preserve source backslash escapes for transcript rendering ([#6105](https://github.com/earendil-works/pi/issues/6105)).
+
 ## [0.80.2] - 2026-06-23
 
 ## [0.80.1] - 2026-06-23

packages/tui/src/components/markdown.ts

@@ -98,6 +98,8 @@ export interface MarkdownTheme {
 export interface MarkdownOptions {
 	/** Preserve source list markers instead of normalizing them. */
 	preserveOrderedListMarkers?: boolean;
+	/** Preserve source backslash escapes instead of normalizing escaped punctuation. */
+	preserveBackslashEscapes?: boolean;
 }
 
 interface InlineStyleContext {
@@ -498,6 +500,10 @@ export class Markdown implements Component {
 
 		for (const token of tokens) {
 			switch (token.type) {
+				case "escape":
+					result += applyTextWithNewlines(this.options.preserveBackslashEscapes ? token.raw : token.text);
+					break;
+
 				case "text":
 					// Text tokens in list items can have nested tokens for inline formatting
 					if (token.tokens && token.tokens.length > 0) {

packages/tui/test/markdown.test.ts

@@ -654,6 +654,26 @@ describe("Markdown component", () => {
 		});
 	});
 
+	describe("Backslash escapes", () => {
+		it("should normalize escaped punctuation by default", () => {
+			const markdown = new Markdown(String.raw`"\"`, 0, 0, defaultMarkdownTheme);
+
+			const lines = markdown.render(80).map((line) => stripAnsi(line).trimEnd());
+
+			assert.deepStrictEqual(lines, [`""`]);
+		});
+
+		it("should preserve source backslash escapes when configured", () => {
+			const markdown = new Markdown(String.raw`"\"`, 0, 0, defaultMarkdownTheme, undefined, {
+				preserveBackslashEscapes: true,
+			});
+
+			const lines = markdown.render(80).map((line) => stripAnsi(line).trimEnd());
+
+			assert.deepStrictEqual(lines, [String.raw`"\"`]);
+		});
+	});
+
 	describe("Pre-styled text (thinking traces)", () => {
 		it("should preserve gray italic styling after inline code", () => {
 			// This replicates how thinking content is rendered in assistant-message.ts