feat(desktop): add focused thread mode#2108
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A thread is where the work actually happens, but it opened into a 380px
right rail it shared with three other panels — one of four interchangeable
occupants of a peek slot. At 100+ messages of humans and agents working
back and forth, that reads as secondary to the channel that merely holds
its root message.
Focus mode makes the thread a place. A right-anchored drawer overlays the
channel content area, leaving a 72px scrim-dimmed sliver of the channel
visible: orientation ("the channel is where you are, the thread is where
you're focused") plus a tall click target back. The sidebar is never
covered, so channel-hopping stays live.
This is additive. The split pane is preserved exactly and is one setting
away; focus is the default. An Appearance setting picks between them —
in-channel toggling comes later, once the surface itself has settled.
Notes on the pieces:
- Scrim fades toward `background`, not black. A black wash is a multiply:
it scales text and surface down together, so dark-on-light text keeps
its contrast ratio and stays readable at any opacity short of a solid
bar. Fading toward the surface colour compresses text against it
instead.
- `shadow-panel-left` is a new token. Tailwind's stock shadows are all
y-offset, so they cast nothing on the drawer's only exposed edge. Both
layers run -x, following the precedent already set by `content-edge`.
A left-only border cannot do this job: it tapers out at each rounded
corner instead of turning it.
- Enter/exit decouple opacity from transform, which a single CSS keyframe
pair cannot. Front-loading the fade leaves the rest of the enter as pure
travel — and stops the drawer's own entrance from exposing its contents'
load order. `AnimatePresence` keeps the drawer mounted through its exit.
- `MessageThreadPanelSkeleton` is extracted because the change pushed
`MessageThreadPanel` past the file-size guard.
- The screenshot helper gains `--local-storage` and `BUZZ_HEADED=1`.
Headless Chromium's software rasterizer mis-renders `backdrop-filter`
under a rounded clip, which the drawer now has; WKWebView is unaffected,
so this is capture-only.
Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
* origin/main: Route lag-tolerant reads to an optional Postgres read replica (#2084) Polish community profile onboarding UI (#2088) fix(cli): report presence subject (#2104) test(desktop): fix Escape-before-mount race in channel browser e2e (#2101) style(desktop): match PendingInviteGate to startup interstitials (#2097) Remove additional agents gallery (#2098) fix(agents): stop the reply loop and the premature kickoff closer (#2094) chore(release): release Buzz Desktop version 0.4.18 (#2091) fix(desktop): recover first community joins (#2087) fix(chart): support CPU-only relay autoscaling (#2086) feat(chart): add relay horizontal autoscaling (#2077) fix: recover community access visibility (#2074) chore(release): release Buzz Desktop version 0.4.17 (#2082) fix(desktop): own native WebSocket lifecycle (#2076) fix(desktop): onboarding defaults — API key field and model search (#2081) feat(desktop): show agent owners in messages (#2080) fix(desktop): restore onboarding provider choices (#2079) Fix Claude onboarding terminal popup (#2078)
morgmart
enabled auto-merge (squash)
July 19, 2026 04:20
wesbillman
approved these changes
Jul 19, 2026
wesbillman
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Approving on Wes's behalf after full review in Buzz.
- CI fully green: all smoke + integration E2E shards, Desktop Core/Build, DCO; branch merged with latest main.
- Diff matches the stated intent; desktop-only. The one shared-code risk —
useAnchoredScroll's mount pin now scrolling in the layout effect with an rAF settling pass (affects every timeline, not just threads) — is covered by the passing scroll-history/timeline-no-shift/virtualization smoke specs, and the unit test was strengthened to assert the new first-frame pin rather than weakened. - Solid details: escape-surface counter is fail-safe (idempotent release, tested); split stays the default so existing users see no change; the new spec runs in the smoke project (2 tests, non-vacuous); the skeleton extraction is a real file split rather than a size-guard bump.
Non-blocking nits: useThreadViewModeSwitch locates the thread body via a global data-testid query (DOM coupling — fine while only one thread panel mounts), and the animation-timing comment blocks are much chattier than repo norm.
Reviewed-by: Brain (Buzz agent) on behalf of Wes
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Summary
Testing
cd desktop && pnpm checkcd desktop && pnpm typecheckcd desktop && pnpm test(3,164 tests)cd desktop && pnpm exec playwright test tests/e2e/thread-focus-mode.spec.ts --project=smoke(2 tests)Screenshots
Screen.Recording.2026-07-18.at.7.42.18.PM.mov