Custom Render Rules (turn your own regex matches into inline badges)

What it is

Custom Render Rules let you define your own rules for how Omniscio draws conversation text. Each rule is a regular expression; wherever it matches the text of a message — both an agent's output and your own messages — that piece of text is replaced with a small inline badge instead of plain words. A badge can have a color, an optional icon, an optional label built from the match, and an optional clickable link.

The idea is to make the things you care about jump out of a wall of text. For example, turn every PR #1234 into a clickable badge that opens the pull request, turn TODO into an amber flag, or turn a ticket id like JIRA-42 into a link to your tracker.

You manage the rules in Settings → Sessions → Custom Render Rules.

Where to find it

The rules are managed in Settings → Sessions → Custom Render Rules, and that section is the only place they live: it lists your rules in order, carries the master on/off toggle at the top, and provides the Add rule button along with the live preview where a pattern is tested against a sample line before it is saved. Nothing needs enabling anywhere else — once a rule is saved it applies to every conversation you open.

How it behaves

How to add a rule

1. Open Settings → Sessions → Custom Render Rules.
2. Click Add rule and fill in:
   • Pattern — the regular expression to look for (e.g. PR #(\d+)). This is required.
   • Flags (optional) — regex flags, limited to a safe set: i (case-insensitive), m (multiline), s (dot matches newlines), u (unicode). The global flag is applied for you — you don't add g.
   • Tone — the badge color (see below).
   • Icon (optional) — a small glyph shown before the label (see below).
   • Label (optional) — the text the badge shows (see Label & link templates). Leave blank to show the matched text as-is.
   • Link (optional) — an http/https URL to open when the badge is clicked (see Label & link templates).
3. Use the built-in "test it" preview — type a sample line and Omniscio shows exactly how the badge (and its resolved link) will look before you save.
4. Save. From then on, matching text in every conversation renders as your badge.

You can add, edit, reorder, toggle, and delete rules at any time. Order matters: at each spot in the text, the first rule (top-down) that matches wins, so put more specific rules above more general ones. Toggling a single rule off (its checkbox) keeps it in the list but stops it rendering.

There is also a master toggle at the top of the section: turning it off disables all custom rendering at once without deleting any of your rules; turning it back on restores them.

Badge options

Tone (color)

Pick one of six semantic tones, so a badge reads the same as the rest of the app:

neutral · accent · success · warning · danger · info

Icon

An optional small icon shown before the label. The set is a curated list (kept short on purpose so a badge never pulls a huge icon library into the app):

tag · check-circle · x-circle · alert-circle · alert-triangle · info · git-pull-request · git-merge · git-branch · rocket · flag · star · zap · bug · clock · shield · link · circle-dot

Label & link templates

Both the label and the link are templates that can pull pieces out of the regex match using $ placeholders:

• $0 — the whole match.
• $1 … $9 — the capture groups (the parts of your pattern in parentheses).
• $$ — a literal $.

Examples, using the pattern PR #(\d+):

• Label PR $1 on a match of PR #1234 shows a badge reading PR 1234.
• Link https://github.com/me/repo/pull/$1 makes that badge open pull request 1234.
• Leave the label blank and the badge just shows the matched text (PR #1234).
• Leave the link blank and the badge is non-clickable (just a visual marker).

A link is only made clickable if the finished template resolves to an http/https address; anything else is ignored (the badge still shows, it just isn't a link). Clicking a badge link opens it with Omniscio's normal external-link opener, exactly like any other link in a message.

Safety guarantees

Because chat text can come from an AI, Omniscio renders these badges defensively:

• No raw HTML. A badge is a real Omniscio UI component, not injected markup — a rule can't smuggle HTML or scripts into a message.
• http/https links only. Any other scheme (javascript:, file:, …) is refused, so a link can never run code or reach the local machine.
• Bad or dangerous regexes can't break the app. A pattern that fails to compile is skipped, never thrown; a zero-width match (one that matches "nothing") is stepped over so it can't loop forever; and both the amount of text scanned per message and the number of badges per text node are capped, so a greedy or pathological rule can't wedge a message.
• Code and links are left alone. Matching runs on the parsed message structure after Markdown is understood, and deliberately skips code blocks, inline code, and existing links — so your rules never rewrite a code sample and never nest a badge inside a link, and they can't break bold text, headings, or other Markdown.
• Zero cost when unused. If you have no rules (or the master toggle is off), the message-render path is exactly what it always was — nothing extra runs and there is no performance cost.

The rules run entirely on your device as part of drawing the message; nothing is sent anywhere, and there is no AI/token cost.

For agents

Where it lives

• Setting keys: customRenderRules (the list of rules) and customRenderRulesEnabled (the master toggle) — see settings-reference.md.
• Shape + validation: custom-render-rules-settings.ts (tones, icon whitelist, template fields, and the size caps) and its IPC schema custom-render-rules-settings.ts.
• Settings UI: CustomRenderRulesSettings.tsx (add/edit/reorder/toggle/delete + the live "test it" preview).
• Matching engine (pure, unit-testable): custom-render-rules.ts — compiles rules, applies the $-templates, splits text into text + badge segments, and holds the http/https, zero-width, and cap guards.
• Render integration: rehype-custom-render-rules.ts — a rehype pass that runs inside the lazy Markdown chunk and skips code/pre/a nodes; the badge component is AmcRenderRuleBadge.tsx; the compiled rules reach it via useCompiledRenderRules.ts.
• Rulebook + invariants: .claude/memory/contracts/custom-render-rules-contract.md.

Related

How the rest of a message renders around your badges — the prose, the tool activity, the code — is on the Agent message display page, and Mermaid diagrams is the other automatic, safe transform applied to chat text. Because the rules are stored as ordinary settings, they are also listed with every other one on the Settings reference page.

• agent-message-display.md — how the rest of an agent's message (prose, tool activity) renders around your badges.
• mermaid-diagrams.md — another safe, automatic transform of chat text (fenced diagrams into pictures).
• settings-reference.md — the full list of settings, including customRenderRules and customRenderRulesEnabled.