Owner ruling (keyboard round 2026-10-06): Esc (or any key) does ONE
action, on the topmost active layer. The plan-open-while-dictating
double-act was the symptom: the plan popup listened at WINDOW level
with no claim, and same-node window listeners all fire — the global
chain (registered first) cancelled the dictation while the plan's own
listener closed the plan. One Esc, two actions.
The law (now the house pattern, documented at the chain):
- field-level handlers claim at their element (focus in a field: the
field's action) — unchanged, already correct
- every SURFACED layer claims at the DOCUMENT level with preventDefault
+ stopPropagation — document fires before the window chain, so the
chain stays silent under any surface
- the window chain is the bottom-up fallback: dictation (a live capture,
NOT a surface — it survives the Esc that closes a plan or overlay),
then abort (escAbortTarget layers its own targets)
Converted to the claim: plan popup, session overlay, chain table,
settings dialog, setup dialog, the delete/abort dialogs (window-level
stopPropagation was never enough — same-node listeners all fire), and
the stats popover. Popovers (popover-dismiss), menus, model picker, and
the sidebar context menu already claimed correctly.
1427 tests, tsc, lint, build green.
Owner-approved full pass (tooltip wave, 2026-09-25). Mechanism: icon/pill
controls ride the styled Radix tooltip via a new Hint composition
(components/ui/hint.tsx) — the shared primitive adopted as-is, no
restyling; the shortcut appends as an em-dash suffix off the LIVE registry
(a rebind in Settings → Keyboard changes the suffix): "Dictate — ⌘D".
Surface-owned keys (Esc closes, Enter submits) ride a raw binding prop.
Native title= stays only for truncation-reveals (dock spans, the rename
field) and menu-interior abbreviations (MenuShell untouched). One
em-dash pattern; per-state truth on the send square (busy = "Stop the
reply — Esc", idle = "Send — ↵"), Enter on the plan verdict's accept,
"Stop dictation (Esc)" kept verbatim per the owner's flag.
Copy: the dev-speak cull — no pipeline/prober/tier/wave vocabulary
anywhere a user reads. New pins in tests/tooltip-mechanism.test.tsx
(hintText composition, asChild no-wrapper-DOM, the auto-update hint
constant); dock truncation titles pinned native; graph-chrome + settings
pins updated to the new copy.
Live-verified on :3001 — 12.6ms hover appearance (no native 1s lag);
glyphs render on every suffixed surface (⌘D, ⌘K, ⌘⇧F, ⌘,, ⌘B, F2, ↵,
Esc); per-page probes confirm Settings entry, Home logo, session search,
Start session, Close sidebar, model + thinking pills, stats summary,
rename title, plan chip, coverage ring, send square, cost button, node
search (⌘F), graph gear, settings close (Close — Esc), keyboard section
"Fixed — part of this screen", auto-update hint, light-mode "Coming
soon", the three slot rosters, graph-tools hint. Esc still closes the
settings dialog.
amosblomqvist