Sidebar: let the project scope picker hold more than one project

[Andreas-Froyland]

Before submitting

• I searched existing issues and did not find a duplicate.
• I am describing a concrete problem or use case, not just a vague idea.

Area

apps/web

Problem or use case

The project scope picker above the thread list holds one project at a time. So I either look at a single project, or I look at everything.

Neither is what I want most of the time. I usually have two or three repos that are connected, and I want them in one list, because the work in them belongs to the same task. I also use T3 Code for different purposes on different computers while sharing one account, so "All projects" drags in a lot of threads that have nothing to do with what I am doing right now.

The result is that I keep flipping the picker between projects to follow one piece of work.

Proposed solution

Let the scope picker hold more than one project.

• Plain click behaves exactly as it does today and scopes to one project.
• Cmd/Ctrl+click, or Cmd/Ctrl+Enter from the keyboard, adds or removes a project and leaves the popup open so several can be marked in a row. The search text survives toggling.
• "All projects" clears the scope.
• The trigger joins the selected names, and hovering it shows the full list once they stop fitting.
• The scope is remembered, so going to Settings and back, or restarting, does not lose it.

The thread list then shows the union of the selected projects.

Cmd/Ctrl+click marks additional projects while the popup stays open:

The closed picker joins the selected names, truncating when they get long:

Hovering reveals every selected project:

Full interaction: project-multi-select.webm

Why this matters

Related repos are common. A frontend and its API, or an app and the library it depends on, produce threads that are really one stream of work, and the sidebar cannot show them as one today.

It also keeps the picker useful as projects pile up. Right now the only way to see two projects is to see all of them, and that gets worse the more you add.

Smallest useful scope

The modifier toggle and the union filtering are the parts that matter. The rest is optional:

• the hover tooltip only exists because long labels truncate
• persistence could be dropped and the scope reset per session

Single project selection is untouched either way, so anyone who never uses the modifier sees no change.

Alternatives considered

Grouping the sidebar by project or environment (#7836) reorganizes the whole list. This narrows it instead, and the two could coexist.

An environment filter (#6955) is a different axis. Several of the repos I want side by side live in the same environment, so filtering by environment does not separate them.

Global thread filters (#6696) filter by status rather than by project, so that solves a different problem.

Staying on "All projects" and scrolling works, but that is the noise I am trying to get away from.

Risks or tradeoffs

The modifier is not discoverable on its own, so it needs a line in the user guide. Single click does not change, so it stays out of the way if you never reach for it.

A long label needs truncation and a hover to stay readable, which is more state in an already dense row.

A remembered scope has to drop projects that disappear, otherwise you are filtering on something you can neither see nor clear.

Examples or references

Cmd/Ctrl+click to extend a selection is the same gesture as Finder, Explorer, and the VS Code file tree, so it needs little explaining.

Contribution

• I would be open to helping implement this.

Working Demo

#9614

[olafura]

This gist is a demonstration of how this feature could be built or customized with the Qt/QML branch. It is an example to try and adapt, not a complete implementation of the discussion request or a feature shipped in upstream T3 Code.

I made a Qt-sidebar prototype for several project selections. Ctrl/Cmd+click or Ctrl/Cmd+Enter toggles them without clearing the search or closing the popup; plain selection chooses one. All projects clears the filter. Its single-project rail buttons are hidden so they do not conflict with the picker. This gist uses the repository's existing Rosé dashboard example, with the controls above the page.

Selections persist locally. Only the first 50 global Settled rows are published by the current bridge, so older matching rows outside that batch are unavailable. Native sidebar arrows follow visible rows; global traversal shortcuts still use the unfiltered page order.

Demonstration gist and setup.

The screenshot uses demo data.

Code and checks assisted by Codex.

[olafura]

Sorry for the lack of context this is showing how using this technique in the linked discussion would help with your issue #10708