Bots: Bots-only sidebar and the Bot side panel (bot chat activity C2)

[sambitcreate]

Slice C2 of Bot chat activity. It stacks on #476 (C1, the workbench shell), which stacks on #477 (B) and #475 (A). Plan: docs/superpowers/plans/2026-10-14-bot-chat-activity-c2-sidebar-panel.md.

What changes for people

• The sidebar on Bots pages lists only Bots. It works like Grok's:

  • A pinned Bot sits at the top with a ★.
  • Bots that are working show their faces and "Thinking…".
  • A Bot waiting on you shows a soft "Needs you" pill.
  • An unread reply shows a dot.
  • You can search (accents fold for Latin script).
  • Each row has a right-click or ••• menu, which Shift+F10 and the Menu key also open.
  • Back, Search and New Bot sit at the top of the sidebar body.

• The Bot side panel is built on C1's WorkbenchPanel, with four tabs:

  • Activity: every step, grouped by reply.
  • Files: replaces the Files dialog.
  • Memory
  • Routines

  It sits beside the chat, and floats only where the workspace panel would also float. The environment shortcut toggles it on a Bot's chat. On Bots pages the workspace surfaces, Quick View and the mini player are hidden, with their state kept.

• Opening the panel. File chips, ••• Files and "Memory updated" now open the panel.

• One ••• menu everywhere: Profile, Files, Memory, Routines, Advanced, Pin to top, then Delete Bot. Each item has an icon.

• /bots opens your most recently used Bot. The list page is gone. With no Bots you see the starter page.

• Onboarding: the Bots feature tile shows the side-panel toggle.

Under the hood

• Main:
  • bots:live:summary gains needsYou and lastReplyAt.
  • A new desktop-only bots:attention signal carries { botId }, through an electron-free wireBotAttention seam.
  • bots:changed with a botId now re-reads only that Bot's summary.
  • The Aiden Remote wire is unchanged: test:aiden-remote passes, and BotLiveSummary has no Remote consumer.
• Renderer:
  • One refcounted live store per Bot (use-bot-live.ts) is shared by the chat and the panel. It survives same-commit remounts.
  • Pin, last-viewed and seen-reply preferences are per device and stored in localStorage, never synced.
  • Unread compares the latest reply against the newest reply the chat has shown, using main's clock. A reply that finishes after you leave mid-stream still lights up.
  • One shared turn walker (bot-turns.ts) feeds both the chat recap and the Activity log.
• C1 shell: WorkbenchPanel gains optional surface and tabMenu props and per-panel width bounds. The defaults keep the workspace exactly as it was; the workspace-panel and environment-focus e2e tests pass.
• Test harness: Bots tests now run with NODE_ENV=test (renderer/main/bots/test-env.ts), so TanStack Router behaves as a client and navigation tests are real. A guard throws if the router ever falls back to server mode.

Rulings and deviations

These are recorded in spec §8/§17 and .memory/bot-chat-activity.md:

• The refcounted store replaces the plan's context-only provider.
• The sidebar tools sit in the sidebar body, because in the title bar they would overlap the window controls.
• The Activity tab always shows the full log. The Chat activity level governs only the in-chat recap.
• /bots waits up to 800 ms for summaries, then falls back to updatedAt.
• "Erase memory" keeps the shared destructive button.

Known, parked

These are listed in spec §17:

• summary reads are per Bot, not batched;
• the workspace sidebar loses its search text when you leave Bots;
• focus returns to the panel toggle, not the composer;
• chip names show only the basename;
• Greek tonos and Arabic harakat are not folded in search;
• plus a few test-only gaps.

Test plan

• tsc --noEmit, lint, test:ci-policy
• test:bots (805), test:bot-runtime (188), test:sidebar (94), test:aiden-remote (920), test:onboarding, test:remote-chat (150)
• Full npm test
• Playwright, --fail-on-flaky-tests: bots-sidebar-panel (new), bots-starter, guided-setup, workspace-panel, environment-focus
• Screenshots of the built app in light, dark and Reduce Motion: sidebar, the four tabs, the menu, empty search, focus rings
• Owner: a VoiceOver pass over the sidebar rows (Needs you and unread in each row's name) and the panel tabs
• Owner: a by-eye look in the running app across themes

Process

Built by subagents task by task. Each task got its own review and fix rounds, then an Opus whole-branch review, one final fix wave, and a re-review with every finding addressed.

CI notes

Run 38570083858 had two failures, neither in files this PR touches:

• Desktop tests (core-git): scripts/worktree-file-io.test.mjs "editor operations reject a symlinked ancestor…" hit an uncaught write EPIPE, because runEditor calls child.stdin.end and the editor exits first. It is the same race seen on Bot chat activity 3/5: Extract a reusable workbench shell from the environment panel #476 and is still unfixed on main.
• Electron E2E (3/3): tests/e2e/chat-message-queue.spec.ts:481 "a response finishing while the queue editor is open waits for the saved edit" flaked. The first attempt never saw "Saved after completion" within 10 s, and retry Use catalog-driven runtime model limits #1 passed. --fail-on-flaky-tests failed the job, as intended. (job)

I reran the whole run once. No timeouts were raised and no retries were added.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[very-hermes-bot]

Hermes Review Bot

Confidence: 5

Engine: agy/gemini-3.8-flash-high
Review mode: full
Head: 392d8b710cc2b82bf5ef6186bd5e88541c3658c5
Generated: 2026-10-14T13:19:41+00:00
Reviews: 1

Summary

Slice C2 replaces the former /bots list page and standalone files dialog with a Grok-style Bots-only sidebar and an integrated side panel built on the shared WorkbenchPanel beside the Bot chat. On any /bots route, the sidebar lists exclusively Bots with working avatar animations, accent-folded search, a pinned hero card, "Needs you" indicators, and unread dots, while /bots itself redirects to the most recently used Bot's chat or the starter carousel when none exist. The Bot side panel introduces four fixed tabs (Activity, Files, Memory, and Routines) with independent state storage, scoped width constraints, and complete suppression of workspace environment surfaces while in Bots mode. A refcounted live store per Bot ensures that the chat transcript and the Activity tab share a single IPC subscription without conflicting or dropping updates upon remount. Maintainers should double-check the window-level useBotNotificationsSync hook mounted in RootContent to verify that live summary invalidations for bots:changed and bots:attention stay properly scoped to individual bot IDs across multi-window setups.

Confidence Score: 5/5

Fully traced and verified across all changed files, main IPC handlers, renderer state stores, preference persistence, focus management, and e2e test specifications.

📁 Important Files Changed

• renderer/main/bots/bot-sidebar.tsx: Implements the Bots-only sidebar with search, hero pinned view, working avatars, "Needs you" badges, unread dots, context/dropdown menus, and paired Mac integration.
• renderer/main/bots/bot-workbench.tsx: Wraps the Bot chat in the WorkbenchPanel with fixed Activity, Files, Memory, and Routines tabs, managing width bounds, tab focus, and Escape handling.
• renderer/lib/use-bot-live.ts: Implements BotLiveStore, a refcounted per-window store ensuring the chat and Activity tab share a single bots:live:subscribe IPC feed without colliding.
• renderer/main/bots-view.tsx: Replaces the legacy BotList index with a replace-redirect to the last-viewed or newest-active Bot, falling back to the starter carousel when no bots exist.
• renderer/lib/bot-sidebar-preferences.ts & renderer/main/bots/use-bot-sidebar-preferences.ts: Manages local storage for per-device pinning, last-viewed timestamps, and reply-seen watermarks with versioning and validation.
• renderer/lib/bot-notifications-sync.ts: Centralizes IPC notification handling for bots:changed and bots:attention in the renderer window, invalidating only the affected bot queries.
• main/services/bot-runtime/live-projection.ts & main/services/bot-runtime/bot-attention.ts: Augments BotLiveSummary with needsYou and lastReplyAt, and broadcasts the lightweight bots:attention event on question/approval state changes.
• renderer/main/bots/bot-menu.tsx: Consolidates the unified ••• menu (Profile, Files, Memory, Routines, Advanced, Pin/Unpin, Delete Bot) with focus guard handling.

Findings

No findings.

Sequence Diagram

sequenceDiagram
    autonumber
    participant Main as Main (Bot Runtime)
    participant Sync as Renderer (BotNotificationsSync)
    participant Query as TanStack Query Cache
    participant Sidebar as BotSidebar
    participant Chat as BotChatPane
    participant Panel as BotWorkbench (BotPanel)

    Main->>Sync: notify("bots:attention", { botId })
    Sync->>Query: invalidateQueries(["bot-live-summary", botId])
    Query->>Main: invoke("bots:live:summary", botId)
    Main-->>Query: BotLiveSummary (needsYou, lastReplyAt)
    Query-->>Sidebar: re-render row (shows "Needs you" / Unread dot)
    Sidebar->>Chat: navigate to /bots/$botId/chat
    Chat->>Main: markViewed(botId, replyAt)
    Chat->>Panel: open panel tab (Activity / Files / Memory / Routines)
    Panel->>Chat: reuse shared BotLiveStore (single live subscription)

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Last reviewed commit: 392d8b710cc2
Reviews (1) · Comment /hermes review to trigger a new review · /hermes review full for full re-review

[pullfrog]

Important

Three reproducible regressions need attention before merging: same-file chips can show stale contents, same-route sidebar actions can do nothing, and hiding the panel can leave its Memory menu interactive.

Reviewed changes: Reviewed the complete C2 diff against its stacked C1 base, including the desktop runtime seams, renderer behavior, tests, and mobile contract implications.

• Bots Sidebar: Replaces the workspace sidebar on Bots pages with pinned and activity-ordered Bots, search, attention/unread indicators, shared menus, and paired-Mac rows.
• Bot Panel: Adds Activity, Files, Memory, and Routines on the shared workbench shell, with independent state, width, focus handling, and route-aware shortcuts.
• Live State And Navigation: Shares one live subscription per Bot, refreshes summaries per notification, extracts the shared turn walker, and redirects /bots to the most recently used Bot.
• Coverage And Onboarding: Adds behavioral renderer/runtime tests and Electron e2e coverage, corrects the client-mode router harness, and updates the onboarding illustration.

Validation: TypeScript, 220 focused tests, and test:aiden-remote passed; three additional diagnostic probes reproduced the inline findings. Android verification was blocked by an unavailable offline Gradle plugin and an online retry reporting Tool 'shell' timed out after 120000ms. Native iOS and Electron e2e were not run on this Linux runner; hosted CI is not yet green.

  ^{｜ Fix all ➔ ｜ Fix 👍s ➔ ｜ View workflow run ｜ Using gpt-6.1-sol ｜ 𝕏}

[pullfrog]

[P2] Refresh a newly requested file even when its path is already selected. If the Bot edits the file currently visible in Files, clicking the new edit chip leaves the previous contents on screen: this sets the same path, so no second bots:files:read runs. The new side-panel interaction makes this possible without closing the file viewer first.

Technical details

# Same-path file requests leave stale contents

## Affected sites
- `renderer/main/bots/bot-panel-files.tsx:80-84`: a new scoped request is marked handled but only updates `path`.
- `renderer/main/bots/bot-panel-files.tsx:108-134`: the document read depends on `active`, `botId`, `path`, and `documentAttempt`, not a newly applied request.
- `renderer/main/bots/bot-chat-pane.tsx:836`: every chip creates a new request, including later edits of the same file.

## Reproduction
1. Open `plan.md` from a chat chip and leave Files selected.
2. Have the Bot edit `plan.md`, producing another file entry/chip.
3. Click the new chip while the existing viewer remains open.
4. The viewer still shows the old document and the read count remains one. A diagnostic probe using the real chat/workbench and a mutable file-read fixture reproduced this.

## Required outcome
- Each newly applied file request must refresh its document even when its path is unchanged, while preserving the existing Bot scoping and refresh-error behavior.
- Extend the behavioral panel suite with a same-path edit whose returned contents differ; assert that clicking the new chip shows the new contents.

[pullfrog]

[P2] Make same-route menu actions change the displayed subpage. Open a Bot's Profile at /bots/$botId, enter Instructions using its row, then choose Profile from that Bot's sidebar menu: Instructions stays visible because this navigation targets the unchanged URL. Advanced has the equivalent problem after a local subpage transition while the URL still has ?page=advanced.

Technical details

# Sidebar actions can be no-ops on the current Bot page

## Affected sites
- `renderer/main/bots/bot-menu.tsx:228-232`: Profile and Advanced act only through URL navigation.
- `renderer/main/bots-view.tsx:108-112`: displayed `page` is local state; it synchronizes only when `botId` or parsed `initialPage` changes.
- `renderer/main/bots-view.tsx:159-161`: Instructions, Advanced, and Memory can be entered locally without updating the URL.

## Reproduction
- Mount the actual `BotsView` and `BotSidebar` at `/bots/bot-1` with the client-mode router.
- Click Instructions, then choose Profile in the sidebar row's menu for Bot 1.
- After navigation settles, the URL remains `/bots/bot-1` and `Instructions for Planner` is still rendered. This reproduces without making any unsaved edits.

## Required outcome
- An explicit Profile or Advanced menu choice must select that surface even if its requested URL already matches the current route.
- Keep the displayed subpage and external navigation actions coordinated, and cover this with the actual routed page rather than a navigation-only fixture.

[pullfrog]

[P2] Include panel-owned portals in the close lifecycle. With Memory options open, environment.toggle closes and makes the panel inert, but its portalled menu remains open and interactive because focus is outside #bot-panel. Selecting Edit then opens a Memory dialog for the hidden panel instead of dismissing the panel's controls.

Technical details

# A hidden Bot panel leaves its Memory menu active

## Affected sites
- `renderer/main/bots/bot-panel-context.tsx:132-145`: close detects focus only through DOM ancestry and does not dismiss panel-owned portals.
- `renderer/main/root-view.tsx:148-150`: the environment command invokes the panel toggle while a dropdown is open.
- `renderer/main/bots/bot-memory-page.tsx:180-191`: Memory options uses the shared portalled DropdownMenu.
- `renderer/components/ui.tsx:1639-1652`: DropdownMenuContent renders through a Radix Portal.

## Reproduction
1. Open the Bot panel on Memory and focus/open an entry's Memory options menu.
2. Invoke `environment.toggle` while focus is on the portalled Edit item.
3. The panel becomes closed/inert, but Edit and Delete remain available outside it.
4. Selecting Edit opens the Edit memory dialog. A diagnostic probe reproduced this through CommandSystemProvider's `app:command` notification and the actual panel actions/content.

## Required outcome
- Hiding the panel must also dismiss its active owned overlays and restore focus to a visible non-inert target, or defer the toggle while the overlay owns the interaction.
- Add behavioral coverage for the command while a panel-child menu is focused, not only for Escape inside the panel DOM.

## Framework reference
- Radix menu content uses portal/focus-scope handling: https://github.com/radix-ui/primitives/blob/main/packages/react/menu/src/menu.tsx