Mohamed BoudraandGitHub
3029b5991a
* feat(app): refine workspace pane actions Prioritize Changes when available, keep Files useful before a selection, and reserve desktop diff clicks for selection so comments require the explicit affordance. Move the Changes shortcut to Shift+G to avoid consuming a likely copy variant. * feat(app): improve access to workspace changes
4.9 KiB
Side panel
The companion surface beside the user's work: Changes, Files, the pull request, and anything an agent asks to show alongside its output.
Everything that opens, reveals, hides, or asks about it goes through
packages/app/src/workspace-tabs/side-panel.ts. Nothing else branches on which
surface the current layout uses.
Three renderings, two facts
| Layout | Rendering |
|---|---|
| compact | slide-over overlay, owned by the panel store |
| non-compact + splits | dedicated right pane, owned by the layout store |
| non-compact, no splits | ordinary tabs in the focused pane |
The third case is the one that bites. A native tablet renders one pane at a time and the tab row only lists the focused pane's tabs, so anything routed into a separate side panel pane there disappears with no way back.
Placement
Where a tab lands is an intent the caller declares, not something the store infers
from a paneId that happens to be in scope. WorkspaceTabPlacement
(packages/app/src/stores/workspace-layout-actions.ts) has four modes, and the
difference between them only shows up when the tab is already open somewhere:
| Mode | New tab | Tab already open |
|---|---|---|
pane |
opens in the pane | moves to the pane |
prefer |
opens in the pane | stays where the user left it |
focused |
focused pane | focuses it in place |
ambient |
focused pane | focuses it in place |
pane is a pane-local affordance — that pane's + menu, its empty-state launcher.
The user is placing the tab and expects it to arrive.
prefer is an implicit supporting open — an agent's file link or a failed workspace
setup. It has an opinion about new tabs only. Yanking a tab out of the pane the user
deliberately moved it to is the failure this mode exists to prevent.
ambient differs from focused in one rule: reconciliation opens tabs with nobody
behind the click, and the side panel can hold focus from an earlier reveal, so an
ambient open of something the user works in (an agent, a terminal, a browser) is
pushed out of the side panel. A focused open honours the focused pane whatever it
is, because the user is standing in it.
Deduplication lives in openTabInLayoutFocused, so it obeys the placement intent for
every caller. Do not re-place a tab after opening it.
Lifecycle
The side panel lives in the ordinary split tree, so it is a pane like any other until it empties or the user dismisses it:
- Close pane on the side panel hides it; its tabs are waiting on the next reveal.
- Close pane on any other pane removes it.
- Closing the Side panel's final tab hides the pane. Revealing it returns the empty launcher. This is close-only: claiming or dragging that tab to another pane leaves the empty Side panel visible.
- Nothing takes the last visible pane away.
closePanewill not remove it, and neitherclosePanenorhideSidePanelwill hide it — including the header toggle reachinghideSidePanelafter every other pane is gone. The gate is one check insetPaneHiddenInLayout; do not add a second one upstream.
closePane in the layout store owns that distinction. React renders the button and
does not decide what it means.
Dragging a pane's last tab into another pane collapses the source pane — except the side panel, which the user summons and expects to find again, split size and all.
What the side panel never does
It does not seed itself. Revealing it opens an empty pane with the launcher; the user picks what goes in. Detecting a pull request makes the launcher's card available and opens nothing. A failed workspace setup adds a background tab to the main pane. Running and successful setup never seed tabs.
Routing preference
Settings → General → Open supporting tabs in the Side panel, on by default,
persisted in client app settings as openSupportingTabsInSidePanel. Off means new
supporting tabs land in the focused pane instead. Mobile ignores it. Explicit actions
— the header toggle, a pane's + menu, the empty-state launcher — are never subject
to it. The Changes keyboard shortcut and the diff-stat pill above an agent composer are
supporting opens: they follow the preference and focus an existing Changes tab wherever
the user left it.
The name
The product surface is the Side panel. File Explorer is still the name of the
Files view inside it. Persisted identifiers keep their pre-rename spelling: the pane
id is the literal string "explorer" (SIDE_PANEL_PANE_ID) and the persisted layout
key is explorerPaneIdByWorkspace. The persisted state schema is strict, so renaming
either would fail every saved blob and wipe the layout it describes.