You usually know your next prompt before the current reply is done. The model is still streaming its refactor and you already know you'll say “now add tests and run them”. But the composer is locked or a send would interrupt the run, so the thought waits in your head — and half the time it evaporates before the reply lands.
Staging: write now, deliver after the reply
Prompt staging in AI Tab Switch is a queue attached to each AI tab. Type the follow-up while the model is mid-generation; the extension watches the tab's state and delivers the prompt once the reply completes and a short pause has passed — typed into the real composer and submitted, exactly as if you'd been sitting there. Queue two or three and you get a small pipeline per tab, each prompt spaced from the last by 30 seconds plus a random extra of up to a minute, drawn fresh every time, so nothing lands back to back. The card counts down to the next one, and both numbers are yours to change in the extension's settings.
Where it changes the game
- Agent runs. Queue “continue with the next step” against a long coding session and the agent keeps moving without you standing guard.
- Broadcast. Select several sessions and stage the same prompt to all of them — one instruction fanned out to every model you're comparing.
- End-of-day batches. Stage review prompts on tabs still generating and let delivery happen after you've moved on. Combined with completion notifications, the loop closes without you in it.
Delivery you can trust
The unglamorous part is what makes it dependable: delivery retries with backoff if a page re-rendered mid-send, re-finds the composer if the DOM changed, falls back to keyboard-event submission where providers need it, and reports honestly when a tab genuinely can't accept input (a paused agent, a login wall) instead of pretending it sent. Queued prompts survive tab reloads; a capped retry counter stops anything from looping forever.
On ChatGPT there's a second mode — steer — that injects into a run already in progress, for course-corrections instead of follow-ups. Both modes live in the same panel: write the future, let the extension handle the timing. Every subscription starts with a free trial.