The owner's three-part test of the context-injection flow surfaced
timing/visibility bugs, fixed as standing ground rules for ALL background
processes (owner rules, 2026-09-15):
1. THE JOB STARTS AT SEND. triggerGraphContext moves from onFinish to
right after the write-ahead persist in handleChatRequest: its only
input is the first typed message (the topic), just made durable — so
embedding + cosine scan run CONCURRENT with the prober's turn and
the dock blob appears the moment the session starts, not after turn
one finishes. Extraction stays at onFinish (it needs answers
accumulated DURING the turn).
2. DELIVERED CONTENT SHOWS MID-TURN. Steers inserted server-side
(claimed at turn start, persisted write-ahead) used to wait for the
next turn's completion to appear — the full record sync mid-stream
is forbidden (it breaks the SDK's in-place continuation merge), so
adoption was deferred to idle. New append-only seam: core
mergeAdopted() inserts the record's new message ids in canonical
order (in-flight streaming tail kept last) and never rewrites a
local message; any other shape bails to the full-sync-at-idle net.
Wired at three points, no new standing polls:
- turn-start window: three bounded record fetches (400ms/1s/2s)
after a send catch the claimed steer while the turn streams;
self-terminating, survives the submitted->streaming flip.
- jobs-poll settle: mid-turn settles adopt append-only NOW, the
owed full sync still runs at idle.
- wake-adoption poll: each tick adopts persisted wake content, so
steers show at the wake turn's START, not its finish.
The dock stays honest with zero gap: jobs hold "running" while
queued behind a pending question ("delivering context"), then flip
done at claim/delivery — visible from start to delivery, and the
turn-start nudge (useActivity().refresh) clears it within ~150ms.
3. THE MARKER IS CLICKABLE (observability). The knowledge-context
SystemLine becomes GraphContextMarker: quiet line, popover with the
delivered propositions IN DELIVERY ORDER (most similar first — the
order the budget filled), each with its folded understanding level;
Esc / outside pointerdown close. The part data was already the audit
trail — now it's readable at the seam where it landed.
Tests: mergeAdopted unit pins (6), marker render pins (3) — 468/468,
tsc, eslint, build all green; live-smoked end-to-end: blob at send,
marker at t+500ms mid-turn, popover order + levels, instant dock clear.
One shot per chat, fired at the first turn's onFinish: the session's
topic (its only typed message) is embedded as an EmbeddingGemma retrieval
query; the semantically closest graph propositions are selected under the
session's token budget (pure budget, no similarity threshold — the
decided doctrine) and delivered as a marker-only steer through the wake
pipeline, queuing behind pending questions like every sub-agent result.
- contracts: ChatSettings.graphContextTokens (default 1024, max 4096,
step 128, 0 = off); GraphContextData + graphContextText; the
graph-context JobKind + buildGraphContextSteer (id steer_ctx_<chatId>)
- core/graph-context.ts: brute-force cosine top-K, greedy chars/4 fill
under budget, most-recent UnderstandingLevel fold, count cap 64,
parse-don't-cast at the marker seam
- server: embedQuery (role-asymmetric query format, same warm singleton
— vector-space parity by construction); the runner (startGraphContext-
Injection one-shot gates; runGraphContextJob validates ledger parity);
wake branches (chatIdOf/jobIdOf, finalizeJob done, recoverStaleJobs
re-deliver or contextRespawn); abortJob kills context jobs SILENTLY
(nothing was promised in the lesson); turn-service trigger seam
- adapter: data-graph-context flattens to the canonical block (malformed
parts have no model face)
- UI: the budget slider (home dock + /chat/new draft, the session-data
strip); the quiet SystemLine "~537 · 10 propositions"; dock kind
"Knowledge context"; model-picker PUT now spreads settings (a model
pick can no longer clear the sibling override)
Live-smoked end to end on the real embedder + real GLM: seeded ledger
(10 propositions), session on "modal logic: possible worlds and the
necessity box" — job in the dock, queued behind the prober's question,
delivered on the answer, SystemLine in the transcript, wake turn reads
the block and continues the probe. Gates: tsc, lint, 459/459, build.
Three fixes from the owner's resize report:
- Continuous shrink: the marginalia now mounts whenever a question owns
the band and its box width is pure CSS, so it shrinks continuously as
the display narrows. Below MARGIN_MIN_W (220, the owner's floor) it
FADES over the normal 300ms transition instead of hard-unmounting;
widening past the floor fades it back in. No mid-question unmount, no
pop, no invisible limbo.
- Live flank tracking: a ResizeObserver on the dock block replaces the
render-time measurement — the fade floor reacts instantly at any
width (window resize, sidebar toggle, scrollbar changes). The old
measurement went stale during drag-resizes (nothing re-rendered on
macOS until the question rewrapped), so the mount decision popped
late and left a sub-floor sliver visible.
- Phantom-fold mute: resizing rewraps the question text, the browser
re-clamps scrollTop and emits the clamp as a scroll event — the fold
machine read the transient position and flickered the box to the bar
and back. Scroll events within 400ms of a WIDTH change are now
ignored (width-only: stamping the dock's own height morphs
self-muted the machine and swallowed the at-bottom auto re-expand,
leaving the box stuck collapsed — caught in live verification).
Scroll-up/scroll-down fold behavior itself unchanged (verified live:
mute-window scroll ignored, post-mute scroll folds, bottom re-expand
works). Gates: typecheck, lint, 423/423 tests.
Retires the fixed bottom-left plan window (which sat ON the sidebar and
bled into the session). Two placements replace it, per the owner's
lock-in:
- The plan chip in the top bar beside the phase chip — session-level
structure beside session state; opens the full-DAG popup; present at
every width; the access point.
- The plan marginalia: the BARE diagram (no card, no border, no shadow)
in the dock band's right flank — marginalia on the lesson's page, not a
floating widget. The band's reserved height (tall while a quiz is
open) is its canvas; meet-fitted (PlanDiagram's new fill mode) so it
fits both the flank's width and the band's height; live statuses +
the yellow current-node glow; click opens the popup. Mounted only
while a question owns the band — composer mode keeps the reading
view pristine. Folding the dock fades + blurs it out of existence
(300ms), returning to the bottom fades it back in. Rendered only when
the flank holds a real diagram (>= 240px); narrower windows keep the
chip alone.
Files: chat.tsx (chip, DockOverlay marginalia wrapper + flank measure,
PlanWindow removed), plan-window.tsx (PlanWindow → PlanMarginalia),
plan-block.tsx (PlanDiagram fill prop: h-full w-full meet-fit),
tests/plan-window.test.tsx (rewritten for the marginalia).
The rhythm agreed with the owner: the stats/controls row hugs the
composer (8px — reads as the card's metadata, one object), and the
whole cluster floats with deliberate air above the screen bottom
(20px). The 8px straight-edge gap optically matches the 6px pill-to-
pill gap: two rounded pills' corridor reads wider than geometric, so
rounded-rounded gaps run ~2px tighter than straight-edge gaps.
- stats-bar.tsx: pt-4 -> pt-2 (8px under the composer) — shared by
chat and home automatically
- chat.tsx dock block + home.tsx composer wrapper: pb-4 -> pb-5
The dock's reserve auto-measures the block, so the spacer/fold
machinery adapts on its own.
border-b border-border — the same 1px border-border line that
separates the left sidebar (border-r on its container), so the top
bar now reads as its own block with the app's standard separator.
Rounds 1–3 chased a soft fade under the title; the owner called the
final overlay look wrong too. Back to the simple picture: the top bar
is its own block — in flow above the scroller, plain page background,
no gradient, no border, no tone change. It reads as a block because
the transcript starts below it. (Also reverts round 3's overlay
header + pt-14 entirely.)
Root cause of the 'solid bar' look: the scroller began BELOW the
header, so the fade zone sat over plain page background — any opacity
there read as a solid bar, no matter the stops. The owner's picture:
content goes under the title bar, easing beneath it.
- The header is now an overlay (absolute top, z-20) over the
scroller, which fills the column to the very top — same floating-
chrome pattern as the home graph view.
- The wash lives INSIDE the header, behind the title content:
60% background at the very top, ramping down to transparent over
48px — never solid, supports the title, content melts beneath it.
- The transcript gets pt-14 (header 40px + its original 16px), so
scrolled-to-top content clears the floating title.
- Header is pointer-events-none except the sidebar toggle, so the
canvas area under the wash stays draggable/selectable.
Verified live: scroller top = 0 under the 40px overlay header; wash
48px ramping from 60%; first message at exactly 56px on scroll-to-top;
the old below-header edge fade is gone.
Round 1 (h-24, 65% hold via 25% mid) read as a faint tail plus an
abruptly solid band and stretched far into the chat. What the owner
wanted: peak ~60% right under the title, ramping down to transparent
a little below — no full opacity anywhere, short reach. Now h-10
from-background/60 to-transparent: a single gentle ramp.
The header fade was h-5 (20px) from full background opacity — it
read as a solid bar with a quick blur on the edge. Now a 96px wash:
65% under the title, holding softly through ~25% at the midpoint,
melting to transparent — supports the title, never reads as a bar.
Two round-1 follow-ups (owner):
- The overlay painted over the scroller's scrollbar track. The scroller
reserves symmetric gutters (scrollbar-gutter: stable both-edges), so the
overlay's right edge is now inset by the measured gutter — half of
offsetWidth − clientWidth; zero on macOS overlay scrollbars, the real
width on classic platforms. Re-measured on window resize. The headless
shell renders classic scrollbars (11px), so the path is live-verified.
- Wheel over the dock did nothing: the overlay is a SIBLING of the
scroller, so native scroll chaining stops at the overlay (the old
in-flow dock chained for free — a real regression, not a preference).
A non-passive wheel listener on the dock block forwards the delta to
the transcript ONLY when nothing under the cursor can take it: the
question area, textarea overflow, and the model menus keep their
native scrolling, including their own edge chaining; an unhandled
wheel (over a fully-visible box, or at an internal scroller's edge)
scrolls the transcript — so wheel-up over the quiz itself now folds
the box under the cursor.
Verified live: wheel-up over the question box scrolled the transcript
(9460→9100) and folded to the bar; wheel-down handled cleanly; the
overlay inset matches the measured gutter exactly.
The question box folded far too late because the old dock was IN FLOW
inside the scroller: folding it shrank the scroll content, so the fold
had to wait until the learner was a full dock-height past the bottom —
any closer and the browser's scrollTop clamp pinned them back to the
bottom, re-expanding the box (the oscillation the old hysteresis
comments worked around).
The dock now overlays the column bottom (absolute — a sibling of the
scroller, the use-stick-to-bottom pattern, like the scroll button), and
a spacer at the transcript's end reserves its height (DockOverlay
measures its settled block and reports upward; ChatView's dockReserve
state feeds the spacer). At-rest geometry is identical: the spacer
reserves exactly the overlay footprint.
The fold is now VISUAL ONLY: COLLAPSE_DIST 64px (was dock-height+64),
EXPAND_DIST 16px, position-based, no velocity. The reserved tail GROWS
immediately (typing, new variants) but never drops while a question is
open — a shrinking tail would reintroduce the clamp; in chat mode drops
apply (the composer typing-shrink is the old harmless behavior).
expandIntent (2s bar-click suppression) and the teach reveal gate are
unchanged.
Verified live (headless chromium, dev 3001, pending-quiz chat): teach
invitation mounts collapsed; click → expand + bottom; scroll up 200px →
folds to the bar at d=200 with the spacer held (no geometry change, no
yank); back to bottom → re-expands; spacer ≡ overlay footprint.
Note: the overlay spans the column's full width, so on platforms with
classic (non-overlay) scrollbars its gradient/background strip covers
the bottom of the scrollbar track — invisible on macOS overlay
scrollbars; flagged for master.
- New session: literal '+' glyph removed — one lucide PlusIcon (the
duplicated glyph was PlusIcon + text '+').
- Top bar: a small pointer-events-none gradient under the header eases
the scroller into the bar exactly like the dock's bottom fade.
- Option subtext (opt.description): .lh-prose — Source Sans 3; 'I don't
know' copy stays JetBrains Mono.
- 'I don't know': now layout-matched with a radio circle; dashed border
preserved as the deliberate non-answer.
- Separator spacing: options group pb-1 → pb-2 so the gap before the
divider equals the 8px inter-option gap.
The plain user-text div renders Source Sans 3 too (.lh-prose) — the
teaching surface reads in one family, chrome labels stay JetBrains Mono.
Build green; gates clean. The reskin's final live-browser pass runs on
this tree (dev on 3001) — no screenshot tooling in this session, SSR
checked.
COLUMN now spans the session area with a thin margin (px-6, no max
width); DOCK (the composer/question shell) is a deliberate narrower
46rem centered column — same elements, same places, width polish only.
- Session title: font-title (CMU Serif bold) at text-2xl, per the mock.
- MessageResponse's markdown container now carries .lh-prose (Source
Sans 3 + emphasis tokens) on every markdown surface; labels stay
JetBrains Mono. Unlayered plain CSS beats the text-sm utility.
- PhaseChip + PhaseDivider sizes now pull from the declared text ladder
(text-xs) instead of pixel literals.
The model-control wave (user-decided design, 2026-09-12): ONE controller
for the conversation agents (prober/teacher are functionally one agent);
background sub-agents stay config-pinned. pi-ai owns the registry — the
shipped 366-model OpenRouter catalog (cost, context, modality,
thinkingLevelMap), getSupportedThinkingLevels/clampThinkingLevel for the
per-model thinking truth, and streamSimple's automatic clamp. No second
registry to drift out of sync.
Seams:
- config.ts: ReasoningEffort retired for pi's ThinkingLevel
(off|minimal|low|medium|high|xhigh|max). GLM roles go honest at "low" —
pi's catalog says GLM-5.3-flash accepts exactly low|high|max, and the old
"minimal" was silently clamped to low by streamSimple since the swap;
nothing changes behaviorally. visualMaker → qwen/qwen3.8-flash (fixes
the dead qwen/qwen3.8-max slug — the catalog only ships -0902; also the
user's cost pick, 0.15/0.47 per-1M).
- src/agent/models.ts: piEngineFor(role, settings?) — provider+id resolved
from the catalog, thinking level from settings ?? config, CLAMPED to the
model's supported list (a settings change between models can never send
an invalid level). PiEngine gains `level` (observability/tests).
- ChatRecord.settings {model?: {provider, id}, thinkingLevel?} — written
by PUT /api/chats/[id]/settings (replace-whole, no updatedAt churn),
read by chat-handler at turn composition: agents are stateless per turn,
so the change is next-turn-effective by construction. The turns log
still records the ACTUAL billed model (the honest witness).
- GET /api/models: the configured-provider catalog as client-safe DTOs
(core/contracts/models.ts) + config defaults; a second provider joins
the picker by registering it in piModels() — nothing else changes.
- PUT settings validation gate (src/server/model-catalog.ts): unknown
provider/model or unsupported level → 400 carrying the supported list,
never a silent clamp.
- scripts/sync-pricing.ts: regenerated PRICES/CONTEXT_LIMITS from pi-ai's
shipped openrouter.json (offline; same source as the engine + picker).
All 366 models priced; glm's stale 0.15/0.5 → pi's 0.075/0.25, limit
1310720 → 1048576 — cost is inferred at read time, so history re-prices.
- UI (components/model-picker.tsx): stats-bar right side becomes model +
thinking buttons; menus open ABOVE; fuzzy search over "provider id
name" (core/fuzzy.ts — pi's /model pattern); model rows show name/id/
price/context; the thinking menu lists exactly the chosen model's
supported levels (GLM: low|high|max — no dead options, no "off").
Model switch drops an incompatible pinned level (falls back to config,
which clamps honestly) rather than carrying a 400.
Tests (350/350, +15): catalog projection + defaults, the settings gate,
pi thinking truth pinned against upgrades (glm low|high|max; minimal→low;
off→low — GLM cannot disable thinking), the engine factory's
override/fallback/clamp/throw matrix, fuzzy ranking, store round-trip,
and the re-priced folds (usage, stats bar, activity dock).
Live smoke (disposable driver, deleted): catalog route 366 + defaults;
glm+minimal → 400 + supported; turn 1 billed qwen/qwen3.8-flash under
the override; mid-session switch flipped turn 2 to glm; clear-overrides
restored the config pin. ALL CHECKS PASS on real OpenRouter.
The custom-message scheme (user-decided 2026-09-12): system-authored
user-role messages are NOT human messages — they carry marker data parts
only, the adapter owns their model-facing wording, and the UI renders
them under control. Nothing fake is ever persisted as human speech.
The inventory (all migrated):
- probe→teacher handoff wake: was a text-bearing user message rendering
as a fake user bubble; now data-probe-handoff marker-only — the
adapter flattens it to HANDOFF_TEXT (core/contracts/chat.ts), the UI
renders a quiet 'Preparing your plan…' system line.
- plan accept/decline: was boilerplate text ('The plan is accepted…',
'I'd like the plan revised…') masquerading as learner speech — the
decline wasn't even marked; now data-verdict {accepted, at} on its own
message, adapter flattens to verdictText(), UI renders the quiet
verdict marker ('✓ Plan accepted' / '↻ Plan revision requested').
sendVerdict sends TWO REAL MESSAGES when the learner typed a note
(the note as a genuine user message, then the verdict) in ONE turn
via setMessages + sendMessage() — no 409 dance, no double teacher turn.
- sub-agent steers: the abort steer gains its data-subagent-aborted
marker part; the UI keys steer rendering off PARTS (artifact/aborted),
not metadata — metadata stays as pump mechanics only.
- record-adapter: systemTextOf() flattens marker-only messages; steers
keep their text (payload — briefs are content, not boilerplate).
phases.ts: plan→teach advances on data-verdict{accepted:true} only;
learner text alone can never sanction teaching (pinned). data-plan-
accepted retired, no back-compat (user-decided: wiped-data doctrine).
Pinned: record-adapter.test.ts (verdict/handoff flattening, note+verdict
order, steer payload kept, UI-only parts skipped), phases.test.ts
(verdict marker semantics, out-of-order, text-never-fakes), jobs.test.ts
(abort marker part), demos.test.tsx (badge renders off the part, not
metadata).
Live GLM smoke (disposable driver, deleted): probe→conclude→wake→plan→
decline-with-note (revised, still plan)→accept-with-note (teach) — ALL
CHECKS PASS, including marker-only handoff/verdict on the wire and zero
fake human speech in the transcript.
Gates: tsc, lint, build, 335/335.
Two user-reported problems from the muscle-protein-synthesis session,
both diagnosed from the live data (chat_mtxeml9e_6118e59f).
The freeze: after probe_done, the open session never showed the
teacher's wake turn — only navigating away and back loaded it. Not an
agent-switch problem: the server-side handoff worked perfectly
(write-ahead persist, liveness registry, the sidebar's busy dot saw the
wake the whole time). The gap was client attach: the only mid-session
wake detector the open page has is the jobs poll, and probe-phase
sessions have zero job traffic, so that poll is OFF; the post-turn
adoption poll read turnInFlight=false at ~0ms (the wake fires at
~0.75-1.2s, after the pump's grace), adopted, and stopped. Fix: the
post-turn adoption effect now keeps a short WATCH WINDOW after adopting
(~4s, 8x500ms) — if turnInFlight flips true, it hands off to the
existing wake-adoption poll (busy shimmer, adopt at finish).
The mermaid failures: four failed plan_init calls, all caused by ONE
hidden rule — underscores are forbidden in node ids (mps_translation,
net_balance, per_meal). The id regex rejected '_' BEFORE the slug check,
so the specific, actionable message never fired; the generic 'can't read
the edge — expected a[title] --> b[title]' lied (the syntax was exactly
that), and the teacher spent three attempts hunting punctuation it
suspected (colons, commas, multi-word labels) — visible in its own
reasoning trail. Per the user's principle — enforce only the slugs,
free everything else: underscores are first-class slug chars; the id
CANDIDATE class is broad so every bad id reaches the specific slug
message; chained edges (a --> b --> c) expand to pairs; ==>, -.-> are
edge synonyms; any direction header accepted (we layout ourselves);
id["title"] quote pairs are stripped. The tool description, zod
describe, and the teacher's planning prompt now state the one strict
rule instead of the old subset liturgy.
Verified: tsc, 305/305 (the exact muscle-protein mermaid is now a
passing test), lint, build; real-browser puppeteer smoke on live GLM —
the teacher's wake turn appeared in the open page ~50s after the probe
concluded with ZERO navigation, verdict gate + first teach check +
plan window all live in-page (the single console 404 is the app's
missing favicon, environmental noise).
The accept-plan UI lands (docs/probe-teach-split.md §4, formerly the
interim rule): presenting the plan no longer moves the phase — the
learner's ACCEPT does. While the presented plan awaits its verdict, the
composer's send square becomes two stacked buttons (green Accept plan /
red Decline); typed text rides the verdict as his note, Enter keeps
sending plain side questions (phase unmoved), decline asks for a
revision and the buttons stay.
The seam: accept sends a user message carrying a data-plan-accepted
part (PlanAcceptedData in contracts/chat.ts, TeacherUIDataParts
'plan-accepted'); phaseAt3 reads it as the plan→teach event (plan_init
demoted to presentation-only); convertToModelMessages drops data parts,
so the teacher sees only the text. Mid-lesson rewrites need no fresh
verdict — acceptance happens once, at the first presentation.
The teacher's planning prompt now ends the turn at presentation and
waits for the verdict (never teaches into an unaccepted plan).
Gates: tsc clean, 304/304 (phases tests rewritten to the acceptance
seam incl. decline/side-question/failed-init cases; composer verdict
render tests), lint, build. Live GLM smoke ALL PASS: phase pinned at
'plan' after plan_init, presentation turn carried NO check, accept
click flipped the summary to 'teach', then tagged checks moved the map
(current=rates, visited=composite); zero console errors.
The successor of the injected plan blocks (docs/probe-teach-split.md §6):
always on once a tree exists, a zoomed-in window (2:1, ~2¼ node widths)
centered on the CURRENT node, re-centering by pure derivation as tagged
checks move the lesson — statuses derive live from the transcript on
every render (derivePlanStatuses), glow on current, fallback focus on
the lesson's first node, click opens the existing full-DAG popup.
Bottom-left, mirroring the activity dock's bottom-right; hidden on
narrow viewports; the learner's visual polish pass comes later.
PlanDiagram gains a viewBoxOverride (exported); latestTree exported.
Tests: viewBox centering/clamping (pure) + render (hidden pre-plan,
windowed viewBox, glowing current, starting fallback).
- src/core/plan-blocks.ts: pure emission builder — full block on successful
plan_init, neighborhood block when the derived plan state moved since the
newest existing block; the as-of state reads from the block's frozen
snapshot (transcript quiz parts mutate in place on answer, so
re-derivation is post-mutation blind). Idempotent by construction.
- turn-service persistTurn enriches with withPlanBlocks at the canonical
write; chat.tsx adopts the record once the server agrees the turn is
done (endTurn flips only after persist).
- chat-handler: per-request usage collector via agent-level onStepFinish
(StepResult.usage), appended at onFinish to ChatRecord.turns via
appendTurnUsage, idempotent per response message id.
The plan now lives IN the chat (plan blocks, wave-4 item 3) and background
processes live in the activity dock (item 1), so the right sidebar's
tree panel + sub-agent fleet column is retired from the chat view:
- delete components/tree-panel.tsx (three-mode rail/list/graph panel) and
components/sub-agents-panel.tsx; their graph interaction machinery lives
on in plan-block.tsx and fleet observability in activity-dock.tsx.
- app/layout.tsx drops TreePanelModeProvider (the mode no longer exists).
- chat.tsx drops the xl:flex right column; the middle column is the view.
- tests: render-tree-panel.test.tsx deleted; the sub-agents panel suite
removed from demos.test.tsx (dispatch cards' jobs-context stays — the
central poll drives transcript dispatch cards).
- components/plan-block.tsx: hand-built SVG (user decision) — deterministic
layered layout (Kahn topo + longest-path depth, rows centered, authoring
tie-break), bezier edges, the retired panel's status color language.
- PlanBlock renders data-plan-block parts AS CARRIED (frozen snapshots,
never re-derived): kind full = borderless, viewBox = layout extent so
nodes hug the column edges, natural height; kind neighborhood = own
small labeled 'Plan fragment' container with the current node glowing
(pulsing primary halo).
- PlanPopup: full-screen overlay with the LIVE plan — latest tree from the
transcript, statuses derived at click time via derivePlanStatuses
(contracts/plan.ts). Esc / backdrop / X close; drag pan, wheel
zoom-to-cursor, zoom buttons; fit-floor semantics harvested from the
retired tree panel (zoom floor = the fit, pan locks at it).
- chat.tsx: data-plan-block case in the part switch + popup mount.
- src/core/ui-message.ts: TeacherUIDataParts gains "plan-block": PlanBlockData
(additive, type-only — lane touch flagged to master).
- tests/render-plan-block.test.tsx: pure layout (layering, centering,
dangling-edge tolerance), wrap, frozen-snapshot render, live derivation.
One quiet row beneath the composer/question shell (not flush to the
screen bottom; static height, outside the morphing shell):
- LEFT: context window + session cost, clickable → per-turn detail
popover (context, total, unpriced count, one row per turn with
model/steps/cost). All folds from core/prices.ts — sessionCost,
contextWindow, turnCost — no cost math in components.
- RIGHT: model + "Thinking —" — a placeholder slot for the coming
model/thinking-level CONTROL (later work with its contract changes);
display-only today, model read from the last turn's usage,
pretty-printed (Glm 5.3 Flash).
- Data: the record's turns log, seeded on mount, refreshed when the
local stream settles, kept fresh by the existing record re-syncs.
No turns yet → "—" everywhere; unpriceable turns never fold into a
fake $0 (the doctrine).
- formatUsd/formatTokens moved to components/usage-format.ts (shared
with the activity dock); prettyModel joins them, pure + tested.
With continuation coalescing, a job flips done at CLAIM time — while the
learner's own answer turn is still streaming. The poller's settle re-sync
fired on the flip, swapping in a mid-turn record snapshot mid-stream; the
steer after the assistant message broke the SDK's in-place continuation
merge, and the streaming response landed as a SECOND message with the same
id — duplicate React keys in the live transcript (the user's live test hit
it; the record itself stayed clean).
A settle during a busy turn (local stream OR server turnInFlight) now marks
a pending sync; the first idle poll tick adopts the finished record. This
also fixes the latent multi-job race: steer B settling while steer A's wake
turn is in flight would have grabbed the same mid-turn snapshot.
Out-of-lane surgical touch (flagged for master review): the wave-1 poller
block in components/chat.tsx.
The note was the transfer channel of the whole product presented as an
afterthought: an unlabeled one-line slot whispering "optional". Now:
- A labeled composer-TWIN field ("Your thinking") between the options
and Submit, docked with the submit button inside it exactly like the
chat composer's send. The placeholder invites dumping ("Why this
answer? What are you unsure about? Say as much as you like — the
teacher reads all of this."); the word "optional" is banished.
- Enter makes a NEWLINE in the thinking field (it is for dumping, soon
dictated); the button submits. Text-mode answers keep Enter-to-submit.
- Phase-scaled prominence: teaching = a generous dump area, probing =
one quick row (threaded from the session phase via DockOverlay).
- "Other…" (ask questions) is now an editable OPTION ROW — radio circle
that fills on selection + inline input, styled like its siblings — so
picking Other never displaces the thinking field; typed text survives
deselection.
- The answered card promotes the thinking to a quoted first-class
block above the verdict, labeled "Your thinking" — the transcript
reads as a dialogue of thinking, not a buried "Note:" footnote.
The frozen core is untouched (the teacher-facing "Note:" transcript
line in question-core.ts is protocol text, flagged to master).
chat.tsx now uses createChatTransport(chatId): a send racing the wake
pipeline waits for the in-flight turn, merges onto the fresh server
record, and re-POSTs instead of surfacing the 409 banner. Also fixes the
transport's import to the core barrel (shell import law).
The optional "server-ahead heal" line in the jobs poller was considered
and skipped: the racing turn IS the wake turn, whose completion flips the
job to done within a poll tick or two — the existing settle-triggered
syncFromServer already heals the post-merge gap within ~1-2s. The extra
record fetch on every poll tick would double poll traffic for a path the
settle sync already covers.
The weave had nested the right sidebar inside the transcript column
(below the header), so the phase chip sat above the panel instead of left
of it and the panel was bounded by the scroller area. The column is now
a true sibling of the middle column under flex h-dvh, per the UI stream's
original design; TreePanel's aside gets flex-1 min-h-0 so it shares the
column with the fleet panel instead of overflowing it. The plan-graph
viewport (ResizeObserver-measured) now has real size, so the mermaid
view draws.
Headless-verified at 1280x800: panel spans 0..800 top-to-bottom in both
modes, chip right edge < panel left edge in both modes, graph SVG = 9
boxes + 8 beziers, console clean.
chat.tsx woven by hand: UI's session-surface layout (transcript column +
right sidebar as full-height siblings, h-10 header with PhaseChip) wrapped
in sub-agents' JobsContext.Provider; the message map carries both the
steer ternary (steers bypass the Message wrapper — the model-facing glue
text never renders) and UI's PhaseDivider emission (steers are verified
phase-boundary no-ops). Right sidebar = sub-agents' fleet panel column
(SubAgentsPanel above TreePanel, xl-only) carried onto UI's skeleton.
contracts.ts auto-merged (ChatSummary.phase/pendingQuestion + ChatListItem,
additive above the async-protocol section).
Smoke-verified on the merged tree: steer renders bare as its artifact
badge with no learner bubble, no rendered glue text, and no spurious
phase divider at the steer boundary.
The persistTurn id hygiene (2d7b004) only covers NEW writes — records
persisted before it still carry messages with empty SDK ids, and two of
those in one transcript re-trigger the duplicate-React-key error.
- data/chats: backfilled all empty ids (6 messages across 5 records,
msg_<ts>_<hex> scheme matching withMessageIds).
- chat.tsx: key={m.id || `m-${mi}`} on both message branches — even an
unmigrated legacy record can never collide keys again.
NOTE for master at merge: the master tree's data/ needs the same
one-time backfill (any chat saved before the withMessageIds commit).
Three refinements from live testing:
- Steer messages no longer sit inside the user Message container (the
bubble background + right alignment it gave artifact cards). chat.tsx
renders SubagentSteerCard directly in the transcript column — full
width, centered, same register as the teacher's artifacts.
- Research steers render a quiet "Research complete · N sources" badge
(the dispatch-settled idiom), not the full brief: briefs are long, the
wake turn weaves them into the lesson anyway, and the full text stays
persisted in the artifact part — a "view full research" affordance
can be added later without any protocol change. Failures keep the
failure card (the brief explains what went wrong).
- The sub-agents' verification notes (visual/demo builder notes) are
model-facing glue and no longer render on success; failure notes
remain the error explanation.
SSR-verified against a synthetic record: badge + SVG bare in the
transcript (no is-user wrapper), notes/brief confined to the RSC
payload. 229/229, typecheck, lint, build green.
- The three panel modes were three separate fixed-width asides, so a
mode switch jumped the whole transcript column width in one frame:
scrollbar flash, overshoot, re-correct. Now ONE aside animates its
width exactly like the left sidebar (reusing the sidebar-motion
hook, so it inherits the provider's mount-gated transition), with
a FIXED-width inner layer clipped by overflow-hidden — content
never reflows mid-transition.
- The chat header was auto-height: the sidebar toggle (a size-9 icon
button) renders only while the sidebar is closed, so opening it
collapsed the row and slid the title + phase chip up. The header is
now a constant h-10.
The pi-style ack protocol (previous commit) left the client describing the
old world: artifact cards read the ack string as a result ("could not be
displayed"), the only job poller rendered on input-available parts that no
longer exist (so wake turns landed invisibly until re-navigation), steers
rendered as learner bubbles with no SVG anywhere, and server-persisted
assistant messages carried empty SDK ids (duplicate React keys).
- persistTurn (turn-service): fill empty message ids at the canonical write
— server-only messages (last turn's, wake turns') now key uniquely;
client-authored ids untouched.
- chat.tsx: ONE central /api/jobs poll (fast while jobs run, slow discovery
cadence, off for job-less sessions) drives every job surface, re-syncs
once when a job settles (the record already holds the steer + wake
response at flip time), and adopts server-side wake turns via the same
turnInFlight machinery as returning mid-turn. Steers branch to the
artifact card — never a bubble. Composer no longer gates on jobs.
- /api/jobs now reports turnInFlight alongside the job list.
- dispatch-card: the tool-call box — live activity by toolCallId while
running, quiet "delivered"/"failed" one-liner after; the ack is visible
observability, the artifact lives in the steer.
- steer-card: renders the delivered artifact by kind (research brief /
sanitized SVG / sandboxed demo iframe) from the data-subagent-artifact
part; result renderers extracted and exported from the artifact cards.
- sub-agents-panel: right-sidebar section above the plan tree listing
running sub-agents (kind, elapsed, live activity) — vanishes when idle.
- tests: dispatch/steer/panel render tests re-target the new protocol;
persistTurn id-hygiene suite. 229/229 green, build green.
Out-of-lane touches for master review: chat.tsx + components/** (cleared
this wave), app/api/jobs/route.ts, src/server/turn-service.ts, contracts
protocol doc §2. Live-verified on :3003 (full loop, SSR DOM checked).
- Chat page: the tree panel is now a full-height sibling of the whole
transcript column (header + scroller), exactly like the left sidebar —
the session header (name + phase chip) spans from the left sidebar's
edge to the panel's edge instead of riding over the panel.
- Plan graph: the zoom controls sit inside the pan surface, so their
pointerdown started a capture drag and the click never reached the
button (felt dead). startDrag now ignores presses on buttons.
- Fully zoomed out IS the fit view: zooming to the floor snaps to the
centered fit (pure zoomedGraphView), pan is locked there (no drag
begins, cursor-default instead of grab), and sitting at the floor
re-arms auto-fit so later tree edits keep the graph fitting.
- Fit padding 48px → 16px: the default view fits more graph.
- components/phase-divider.tsx: PhaseChip (header, next to the session
title: phase-colored dot + Probing/Planning/Teaching) and PhaseDivider
(the transcript boundary: color-coded dotted rules + a small chip —
'Plan · N nodes' at the plan seam, 'Teaching' at the teach seam; probe
never renders, phases only advance). planNodeCount reads the seam
message's first plan tree.
- chat.tsx: dividers render at MESSAGE boundaries (phaseTimeline, one
linear fold) — the seam is the transition to the message's phase, so
the seam message's prose sits below its divider. requiresReveal now
uses phaseAt3 teach (an occupied node), so probe- AND plan-phase
questions auto-open.
- Retired the part-level plan-divider (artifact registry): the boundary
is message-level, not part-level. Its tests replaced by
render-phase-divider tests; core/phases gains tested phaseTimeline.
The bug: answering a quiz and navigating away mid-turn, then returning,
re-prompted the same question. Root causes: (1) the answer was durable only
at onFinish — every mid-turn view read the stale pre-answer record;
(2) the server had no notion of a turn in flight; (3) remount treated the
stale record as current, with no re-attach path. Worse, the stale dock let
the quiz be answered again, racing two turns into a last-writer-wins
saveMessages clobber.
Fix (four pieces):
- Write-ahead persist in chat-handler: the request body IS the client's
canonical state — saved to disk BEFORE the stream starts. The answer is
durable the instant the request arrives; crashes recover via the existing
mount continuation.
- Turn liveness registry (src/server/turn-liveness.ts): in-memory chatId →
in-flight map with a TTL leak guard; beginTurn rejects concurrent turns
(409) so one turn ever owns a chat. endTurn runs in onFinish AFTER
persistTurn, so pollers that see not-in-flight always read a finished
record; a turn-start failure clears the registry (no lockout).
- GET /api/chats/[id] reports turnInFlight; the chat page passes
initiallyInFlight to the client.
- Client re-attach (components/chat.tsx): while in flight, busy shimmer +
composer gated + mount continuation suppressed; poll /api/chats/[id] until
the turn finishes, then syncFromServer adopts the completed transcript.
Stop stays local-stream only (a server turn has no client request to
abort).
Verified by scripted-model tests: concurrent turn 409 + registry lifecycle,
write-ahead durability mid-turn, failed-turn lockout guard.
The shell now imports through exactly two barrels, enforced by
import/no-restricted-paths (npm run lint):
components/** -> "@/src/core" (pure core API, browser-safe)
app/** -> "@/src/core" + "@/src/server" (server entries)
Zone violations are lint errors with architecture-pointer messages; the
pure-core modules (contracts, question-core, plan-tree, phases, pending,
math-delims, ui-message) may never import agent/server/store.
Supporting moves (direction: IO layers -> core):
- core/index.ts: the core public API barrel
- core/ui-message.ts: moved from src/agent (it was shell-facing all along)
- quiz/ask input zod schemas moved agent/tools -> core/question-core
(the question contract, alongside the grading logic)
- ChatRecord/ChatSummary moved store/chats -> core/contracts (single schema)
- GraphSnapshot/NodeStateClass moved core/graph -> core/contracts (the
/api/graph payload IS a contract; the pure renderer needs only these)
- src/server/{chats,graph,jobs}.ts + index.ts: thin server entries for the
transport layer; GET /api/graph's fold side-effect now lives behind
graphView() instead of inline in the route
Gates: tsc clean, 190/190 tests, eslint clean (law verified to fire on
store/agent/subpath violations), production build clean.
(Repo repair en route: a git object (app/chat/[id] tree) was missing from
the object store — reconstructed byte-exactly via mktree from its blob;
the broken node_modules that stalled the build was cleanly reinstalled.)
Gate 1 found the teacher staying silent after a research brief landed.
The SDK only evaluates sendAutomaticallyWhen inside addToolOutput — an
external setMessages (our syncFromServer) updates the UI but never
triggers the continuation. Fix: syncFromServer checks
lastAssistantMessageIsCompleteWithToolCalls and calls sendMessage()
(itself a valid continuation trigger); plus a mount-continuation effect
for the reload case (job fulfilled while no client was open).
Clicking the collapsed bar set expanded=true and started a smooth
scrollToBottom — but the scroll position was still legitimately inside
the collapse zone (that's why the bar was showing), so the hysteresis
listener re-collapsed the dock on the very next scroll event, then
re-opened it when the scroll arrived: open → snap shut → reopen.
The machine had no notion of intent. Now the bar click sets an
expandIntent flag that suppresses the collapse branch; it clears when
the scrollToBottom promise settles (completion or interruption) or after
a 2s safety net, so a user yanking the scroll away mid-reveal collapses
the dock again instead of wedging it open.
Verified live: click = exactly one transition (bar→open at ~26ms, stays
open, lands at d=1); collapse still healthy afterward; mid-reveal
interrupt re-collapses within ~300ms.
- Chat now remounts per session (key={chat.id}): fresh StickToBottom,
fresh DockOverlay (no cross-session morph from the previous shell
height), fresh useChat.
- Conversation initial="instant" (was "smooth"): the mount scroll to
bottom is a jump, not a slide.
- DockOverlay skips the pending-question scroll/expand effect for the
session's INITIAL pending question (dock starts expanded; the initial
scroll positions us) — previously it fired a second smooth
scrollToBottom right after the library's initial scroll (the visible
'pause, then the quiz pops and pushes everything up').
- The dock-variant fade/rise no longer plays for the session's opening
variant; reserved for mid-session transitions.
Verified live: client-side switch settles at d=1px from the bottom within
one frame of content swap, dock open from the first frame, both
directions (quiz session, plain session).
- Oscillation fix: collapsing the dock frees ~Δpx of flow height; within
Δ of the bottom the browser clamps scrollTop to the new max, landing
the learner AT the bottom, which re-expanded the dock → loop. Now a
hysteresis state machine on the scroller's scroll events: collapse only
when distance-from-bottom > Δ+64 (strictly clamp-proof), expand only
within 16px of the bottom. ~370px dead band; exactly one transition per
direction verified live. Heights measured live per question.
- Reaching the bottom re-expands the dock AND scrolls to reveal it fully
(previously it grew over the content and left you short of the bottom).
- Streaming follow fixed: ConversationContent had h-full, so the observed
content box never grew and use-stick-to-bottom's ResizeObserver never
fired — no auto-scroll during streaming. min-h-full restores growth.
Verified: distance-from-bottom ≤70px transient during a 25s stream,
settles at 1px.
- Animation: the blob's shell morphs height (WAAPI, 180ms) on every
variant change — chat ↔ question ↔ collapsed bar — plus a quick
fade/rise (160ms) on the swapped content. Gotcha pinned in code: never
measure the shell while a morph is in flight (getBoundingClientRect
reads the ANIMATED value and corrupts the next morph's start height);
cancel running morphs before measuring, refresh settled height only
when no morph is running.
- Gradient-over-scrollbar fixed structurally: the dock is no longer an
absolute overlay on the conversation root — it's sticky bottom-0 INSIDE
the scroller (in flow). The transcript scrolls fully clear of the dock,
the fade never touches the scrollbar lane, and the pb-hack clearances
are gone.
- New question while at the bottom scrolls to reveal the dock; scrolled
up → collapsed bar, no yank.
- Thin dark native scrollbar app-wide (8px webkit + scrollbar-width:thin,
dark thumb, transparent track). Note: use-stick-to-bottom sets
scrollbar-gutter: stable both-edges on its scroller — the lane is
outside the content flow by design.
- 'Writing a question…' transcript shimmer while a tool call streams its
input (same slot as 'Thinking…'). Protocol pinned by a test asserting
tool-input-start precedes tool-input-available; scripted mock now
streams tool input as deltas like real providers do. (OpenRouter/
Anthropic often delivers the whole input in ONE delta — then the dock
appears instantly and no indicator is needed or shown.)
Verified live: grow 54→349px and shrink 349→54px fire with correct
from/to; collapse/expand intact; gradient stops before the gutter;
Thinking… observed in-page; 58/58 tests.
amosblomqvist