What pain point is this feature intended to address? Please describe.
Editing a cell forces re-execution of all dependent cells, which can get cumbersome if there are many dependencies. It's possible to freeze cells to avoid this behavior, but it can be frustrating when a dependent cell starts (invalidating its previous results) before you realize you should have frozen it.
Describe the solution you'd like
If executing a cell with sufficiently expensive dependencies (e.g., dependencies that took >5 s cumulatively to run last time), inform the user that there are dependencies to run (e.g., in a little toast-style status indicator) and offer: (i) Run them, (ii) Switch the current session to a don't care mode where you keep running them, or (iii) Freeze them.
Describe alternatives you've considered
See above; Freezing the cells manually is the only alternative, and that has to happen before you make the expensive changes.
What pain point is this feature intended to address? Please describe. Editing a cell forces re-execution of all dependent cells, which can get cumbersome if there are many dependencies. It's possible to freeze cells to avoid this behavior, but it can be frustrating when a dependent cell starts (invalidating its previous results) before you realize you should have frozen it.
Describe the solution you'd like If executing a cell with sufficiently expensive dependencies (e.g., dependencies that took >5 s cumulatively to run last time), inform the user that there are dependencies to run (e.g., in a little toast-style status indicator) and offer: (i) Run them, (ii) Switch the current session to a don't care mode where you keep running them, or (iii) Freeze them.
Describe alternatives you've considered See above; Freezing the cells manually is the only alternative, and that has to happen before you make the expensive changes.