New Session flow always requires a workspace — cannot start a plain conversation without one

[Leonard-311]

Problem

There is no way to start a conversation without a workspace. Every entry point of the New Session flow first resolves a workspace target:

• The sidebar "New Session" button and the workspace browser's new-session actions all require a workspace.
• With no workspaces at all, WorkspaceRuntime.startSession() (packages/client/runtime/src/client/workspaces/service.ts, ~lines 177–192) just calls this.sessions.clear(), and the composer drops into the "Choose workspace" hero state (workspaceTrigger in packages/client/ui-conversation/src/client/skeleton/InputBar.tsx) with no option to start a plain conversation.

Current behavior vs. backend capability

The backend already supports workspace-less sessions:

• session.create accepts neither workspaceId nor cwd (both optional in the schema) and falls back to the host default cwd; the session is simply not attached to any workspace.
• The sidebar already renders sessions outside every workspace under an "Ungrouped" group (groupByWorkspace in packages/client/ui-workspace).

So only the client New Session flow blocks this use case.

Expected behavior

Allow starting a conversation without choosing a workspace, e.g.:

• A "Start a conversation without a workspace" action in the "Choose workspace" hero, and/or
• startSession() falls back to creating an unattached session (sessions.create({}) + sessions.open(...)) when no workspace target exists, which would land in the existing Ungrouped group.

Environment

• dsh 0.1.0-rc.6 (latest npm release), web GUI (dsh web).

[exoticknight]

I hit the same gap while testing the Web client and ended up making a small interim plugin, dsh-just-chat.

It adds a Just Chat entry on the home screen and in the sidebar. Each click starts a fresh native DSH conversation in its own workspace, so you can get into a chat without picking a project first while keeping the normal model, permissions, attachments, and history flow.

https://github.com/exoticknight/dsh-just-chat

It’s still an isolated-workspace workaround rather than a true workspace-less/Ungrouped session, so the client-side fix you describe is still the proper upstream solution.