vscode: collapse Pull Requests / Recently Closed / Team / Status by default to reclaim sidebar vertical space

[amrmelsayed]

Problem

The Codev sidebar's 7 views (Workspace, Agents, Backlog, Pull Requests, Recently Closed, Team, Status) all default to visibility: "visible", so they render fully-expanded on first install. VS Code's default space-allocation gives each view roughly equal vertical space, which crowds the primary workload surfaces (Agents, Backlog) and forces users to manually drag dividers to reclaim usable room for the views they actually work in day-to-day.

Users can't influence view height ratios via any manifest property (VS Code deliberately keeps sizes user-controlled), so the only lever available is defaulting lower-priority views to visibility: "collapsed" — they render as just their ~22px header until the user clicks to expand.

Scope

packages/vscode/package.json — add "visibility": "collapsed" to four views:

"codev": [
  { "id": "codev.workspace",       "name": "Workspace" },
  { "id": "codev.agents",          "name": "Agents" },
  { "id": "codev.backlog",         "name": "Backlog" },
  { "id": "codev.pullRequests",    "name": "Pull Requests",    "visibility": "collapsed" },
  { "id": "codev.recentlyClosed",  "name": "Recently Closed",  "visibility": "collapsed" },
  { "id": "codev.team",            "name": "Team",             "visibility": "collapsed" },
  { "id": "codev.status",          "name": "Status",           "visibility": "collapsed" }
]

Views that stay expanded by default: Workspace, Agents, Backlog — the three primary surfaces where users spend most time.

Views collapsed by default: Pull Requests, Recently Closed, Team, Status — all "sometimes-useful, discoverability preserved via visible header." Users see the row, know the feature exists, one click to expand.

Not using hideByDefault — that would remove the view from the sidebar entirely and require users to menu-hunt to find them. collapsed keeps discoverability while reclaiming vertical space.

Effect

• 4 collapsed views take ~4 × 22px = ~88px of headers vs. ~4 × 150-200px of expanded content today
• Reclaimed vertical space (~500-700px) flows to Workspace / Agents / Backlog automatically via VS Code's space-allocation algorithm
• Users can still expand any view at any time — the change is a first-render default, not a lock

Caveat for existing users

visibility: "collapsed" only applies on first-install / new-workspace state. Users who have already interacted with these views keep their persisted state. This should be called out in the release notes (packages/vscode/CHANGELOG.md and docs/releases/UNRELEASED.md Polish section) so existing users can manually collapse if they want the new distribution.

Scope discipline

• No other package.json changes
• No source changes
• No test changes required (declarative manifest change, no behavior to unit-test — verify via manual VS Code Extension Development Host smoke)
• Release notes entry in the dual-accumulate pattern (packages/vscode/CHANGELOG.md [Unreleased] + docs/releases/UNRELEASED.md ## Polish)

Related

• Broader Agents-view reshape discussion (in-flight architect design work, not yet an issue). This bugfix is decoupled — it improves the current sidebar layout immediately regardless of any reshape.
• Precedent for visibility: "collapsed": codev.placeholder in the codevPanel container already uses it.

[amrmelsayed]

On it! Working on a fix now.