add option to disable line numbers in `view` tool output

[lukeed]

I imagine the only avenue for this is CLI argv at process spawn (via new CopilotClient construct)

The tool should report the starting line number and the content, allowing clients to display/wrap as needed.
As it is, the output is (sometimes) visually correct but makes for invalid text-selection for code copy/paste.

Also, current line-numbering doesn't account for max-width of numbers

9.  // example
10. // example

[github-actions]

Thanks for opening this issue, @lukeed!

I've labeled this as an enhancement affecting all SDK implementations (sdk/dotnet, sdk/go, sdk/nodejs, sdk/python) since the view tool is part of the core SDK functionality.

The proposed solution makes sense — allowing clients to control line number formatting while providing the raw data (starting line + content) would improve flexibility and resolve the copy/paste issue you mentioned.

AI generated by Issue Triage Agent

[SteveSandersonMS]

@lukeed The tool's output is designed for consumption by the AI model. In our benchmarking we find that the model does the best job of editing the files when we give it the exact line numbers in this way and don't expect it to be able to count (something LLMs are poor at).

The tool output isn't designed to be consumed by a UI. You can attempt to use it for that, but these tools are really for the agent's use/understanding.

[idan]

@SteveSandersonMS OK but we have a UI need to consume and display code, so it sounds like either

• the existing tool could learn some new tricks / have a mode
• OR clone this tool and call it "view-ui" or whatever and have that one not emit line numbers
• OR something else?

[SteveSandersonMS]

Just to check, are you implying that your application is somehow directly triggering the view tool, or are you saying you're just observing what the agent chooses to do and if it happens to call the view tool then you want to display a visualization of that?

[SteveSandersonMS]

We'll look into whether we can surface multiple representations of the tool output, both the text the agent sees and a more structured representation.

[lukeed]

Just to check, are you implying that your application is somehow directly triggering the view tool, or are you saying you're just observing what the agent chooses to do and if it happens to call the view tool then you want to display a visualization of that?

We're printing the outputs of the agent's trajectory, not calling view directly.

The request is not that we change the default, but instead find a way to surface just the file content slice so that we can apply syntax highlighting and non-selectable line numbers

[LastOfMyKind17]

cc logs available?