AssetManager DevPlan

Asset Manager UI — Dev Plan

Companion pages: Technical Index · Animation Roadmap (Sub-goal A) · Region Editor Dev Plan (Sub-goal B) · Regions Guide

Status: SHIPPED (A0–A3). All four phases have landed on feature/cross-platform-full. Region rows route to the Region Editor (Sub-goal B) as designed. The sections below are retained as the design record; see "Implementation notes" at the end for how the shipped code maps to this plan.

Source of this design: Animation Roadmap §Sub-goal A.

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Why deferred

• Depends on Region Editor. The Asset Manager is a router, not an editor — each row opens the type's own editor in the detail pane. Regions are the only asset type with no in-place editor today, so the Asset Manager can't route Region rows anywhere until Region Editor exists.
• Pure additive UI, no urgency. Every library singleton already exposes its inventory by name; nothing is blocked on this. It can ship any time after its one dependency lands.
• User asked to defer it in favour of the Region Editor.

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Goal

One top-level "show me everything I've saved" view that surfaces every saved asset across every type and routes each to its own editor. Today each asset type hides behind its own dialog / sidebar / library singleton — users hunting an old asset must remember which dialog owns it.

Today's state (asset inventory surfaces)

Asset type	Library singleton	Current surface
Regions	FractalRegionLibrary	Toolbar combo + FloatingMenu
Colour themes	UserColorThemeLibrary	ColorThemeEditorView window
Animations	AnimationLibrary	AnimationEditorView window
User equations	UserEquationStore	Dialog from menu
Sandbox sources	SandboxEquationStore	Dialog from menu
UserBulb sources	UserBulbStore	Dialog from menu
Slideshow configs	SlideshowConfigLibrary	Dialog from menu
Watermarks	UserWatermarkStore	Embedded in regions; no manager

There is no cross-type view.

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Design sketch

Three-pane Avalonia view, VS-Code-Explorer shape:

• Left — type tree: Regions / Themes / Animations / Equations / Sandbox / UserBulb / SlideshowConfigs / Watermarks.
• Middle — filterable list of the selected type's assets.
• Right — detail / edit pane. Defers to the type's existing editor (Asset Manager is a router, not a new editor).

IAssetSource abstraction

New interface in Abstractions/:

public interface IAssetSource
{
    AssetKind Kind { get; }
    IEnumerable<AssetDescriptor> Enumerate();
    void Open(string name);           // routes to the type's editor
}

public sealed record AssetDescriptor(
    string Name,
    AssetKind Kind,
    DateTime? CreatedAt,
    long SizeOnDisk,
    byte[]? ThumbnailBytes);

Each existing singleton gets a thin one-file adapter implementing IAssetSource. Most already enumerate by name (EnumerateRegionNames, EnumerateAnimationNames, …) so the adapters are trivial.

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Phasing (each phase = one PR / one commit)

Phase	Scope	Risk	Est.
A0	IAssetSource + AssetDescriptor + adapters (no UI)	low	half-day
A1	Read-only three-pane view (list + detail, no editing)	low	1 day
A2	Edit routing — detail pane opens each type's own editor	low	1 day
A3	Bulk ops — export-as-bundle + import-bundle (zip of JSON)	low	half-day

A2 depends on Region Editor for the Region row route. A3 is optional; export and import ship together (import is the inverse of the same zip format).

Risk

Low. No persistence changes, no engine touch. Pure UI on top of existing libraries.

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Open questions

• Thumbnails. Regions/themes/animations could render a small preview; costs a render per asset. Defer to A1 follow-up — ship names-only first.
• Watermarks have no standalone library today (embedded in regions + UserWatermarkStore). Decide whether the manager surfaces the store or the per-region embeds. Lean: surface UserWatermarkStore only.
• Live refresh. If an editor saves while the manager is open, the middle list must refresh. Reuse the existing *SavedToLibrary events each editor VM already raises.

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Implementation notes (as shipped)

• Interface split from the sketch. IAssetSource (in Abstractions/Assets/IAssetSource.cs) carries Kind / DisplayName / Enumerate() / Delete() / ExportJson() — the data side only. The sketch's Open(string) was intentionally left off: routing a row to its editor is a UI concern (UI.Avalonia can't reference Engine where the editors live), so it lives in the shell instead. AssetDescriptor matches the sketch; CreatedAt/ThumbnailBytes are always null today, SizeOnDisk is a serialized-byte approximation (stores pack many assets per JSON file).
• Adapters + registry live in Engine/Assets/ (three of the eight singletons are Engine types). AssetSourceRegistry.All() is the roster; the host injects it into ShellViewModel via a new optional ctor param.
• A1 — AssetManagerViewModel + AssetManagerView (modeless window, opened from the render-surface context menu "Asset Manager…").
• A2 — ShellViewModel.EditAsset routes: Region/Theme/Animation/Watermark to their shell-owned editors by name; SlideshowConfig marks the preset active and raises SlideshowSettingsRequested; the three source editors bubble AssetHostEditorRequested to AvaloniaShellBootstrap (host-owned windows).
• A3 export — multi-select → in-memory zip of <Type>/<name>.json; the host owns the save picker + write via AssetBundleExportRequested.
• A3 import — the inverse. "Import bundle…" (footer) → RequestImport() → AssetBundleImportRequested to the host, which shows an open picker + a single overwrite Yes/No prompt, reads the bytes, and calls back ShellViewModel.ImportAssetBundle(bytes, overwrite) → AssetManagerViewModel. ImportBundle. The VM parses the zip, maps each entry's first path segment to an AssetKind, and routes the JSON to that source's new IAssetSource.ImportJson (json, overwrite). Each entry's own stored Name (not the bundle filename) keys the store; same-name collisions replace or skip per the flag. Per-entry outcome (AssetImportStatus: Added / Replaced / SkippedExists / Failed) is tallied into an AssetImportSummary the host shows back. Full-fidelity round-trip — import deserializes the whole entry, so flags the stores' own SaveEquation helpers drop (Promoted / Kind / bulb chain) survive.
• Live refresh — DONE. The four shell-owned editors (Region / Colour theme / Animation / Watermark) call ShellViewModel.RefreshAssetManagerIfVisible() from their *SavedToLibrary / delete handlers, so a save/delete while the manager is open re-enumerates the middle list immediately. The host-owned source editors + slideshow still rely on open-time re-enumeration + the Refresh button (no shell save event to hook).
• Thumbnails — still deferred (rendering feature, not a quick follow-up). Every asset type's real preview needs either a fractal render through the host pipeline (regions/animations/equations/bulbs — "a render per asset", the cost the plan flagged) or has no meaningful image (equation/sandbox sources are text). Colour themes are the only cheap-ish case and even those route their preview through the render host today, not a self-contained gradient raster. Recommended path when picked up: async host-render into ThumbnailBytes populated after enumeration (so it never blocks the list), with theme swatches as a rasterized-gradient special case; add an image column to the middle list.