fix(ui): honor Alt/Cmd+Backspace and take the keyboard while opening

[forketyfork]

Two reported bugs in the recent-folders overlay, the shared cleanup they pointed at, and a test-discovery gap found while verifying the fixes. No tracking issue existed for any of these; linkage can be added during cleanup if issues are filed retroactively.

Solution

1. Resize-settle debug logging (ec9ef56)

Nothing in the resize-settle lifecycle was logged, so there was no way to tell from architect.log why a terminal entered the sweeping animation, how long the hold lasted, or why it ended. Three log.debug lines now cover it:

session 2: resize settle hold started, 80x24 -> 120x40
session 2: resize settle hold re-armed mid-sweep by a 4096-byte chunk, rearm 1/2
session 2: resize settle hold released after 1240ms (quiet), rearms=1, sweep 1400ms

The release reason comes from a new ResizeSettleRelease enum whose classifier mirrors the exit branches of resizeSettleHoldActive, so quiet (agent settled on its own), max_duration (hit the hard cap while still streaming), no_response (never reacted to the SIGWINCH) and session_gone are distinguishable. Requires [logging].min_level = "debug".

2. Recent-folders input fixes (7315020)

⌥/⌘Backspace did nothing special. The handler at recent_folders_overlay.zig matched SDLK_BACKSPACE without reading modifiers at all, so every variant deleted one byte.

The first key after ⌘O was lost. startExpanding sets .Expanding for the ~200 ms animation, but both the SDL_EVENT_TEXT_INPUT and SDL_EVENT_KEY_DOWN gates tested state == .Open. The event fell through UiRoot to runtime.zig:1803 and was typed into the focused terminal — not merely dropped.

Rather than patch the two call sites, both patterns became shared:

• src/ui/text_edit.zig is now the single source of truth for backspace semantics (DeleteScope, scopeFromMods, backspace): ⌘ clears, ⌥ deletes a word, plain deletes one UTF-8 codepoint. A survey found four text inputs with four different behaviors; all now use it.

  Input	Before	After
  Worktree name	1 byte / ⌘ clear / ⌥ word	shared (plain now UTF-8-safe)
  Recent folders search	1 byte only	full set
  Reader search (⌘F)	1 byte only	full set
  Story search (⌘F)	1 byte only	full set
  Diff comment editor	UTF-8 / ⌘ clear, no ⌥	full set, ~15 lines of inline UTF-8 walking removed

• ExpandingOverlay.State.isOpenOrOpening() replaces state == .Open wherever the question is "does this overlay own the keyboard / is it visible". The worktree overlay was dropping ⌘T and ⌘1–9 into the terminal during its own expand; pill_group.zig had the same comparison spelled out six times.

startCollapsing also now reverses from the overlay's current size instead of snapping to full size first, which the mid-expand close path would otherwise have made visible.

3. Test registry gap (bab75d6)

The new tests passed without running. Zig only collects tests from files it analyzes; src/main.zig keeps an explicit registry for exactly that reason, and three files were missing from it — including gfx/shimmer.zig, whose tests had never run. Confirmed with a deliberately failing canary that the suite reported green, then by inspecting the test-name table in the compiled binary.

Registering them takes the suite from 283 to 302 tests. Since transitive reachability depends on which decls Sema happens to analyze, the rule is now "list every file with tests, explicitly", enforced by scripts/check-test-registry.sh in just lint (already run by CI).

4. Text-field editing across the app (90096f7)

Follow-up from testing the branch: the search fields had no visible caret, ⌘A did nothing, and ⌘C/⌘V were unhandled — so text could not be pasted into a field at all (which is also why the emoji step in the test plan below was untestable).

text_edit now exposes a TextInput that owns the buffer plus the state a focused field needs (caret blink phase, select-all flag) and handles the macOS editing keys. All five fields store their text in one, so behavior can no longer drift between them:

• Blinking caret in all three search bars (recent folders, reader ⌘F, story ⌘F); the worktree name and diff comment fields keep theirs, now driven by the same clock. Reader and story request frames while their search is open, without which the caret cannot blink under idle throttling.
• ⌘A highlights the whole field; the next keystroke, paste or Backspace replaces it. In the diff comment editor the highlight follows the wrap, one band per visual line.
• ⌘C / ⌘V copy and paste. Pasting multi-line text into a one-line field drops the newlines; pasting into the worktree name field drops characters it would reject when typed.

The model is append-only by design (agreed with the author before implementing): the caret sits at the end and the only selection is "everything". Caret movement, partial selection and click-to-position are not included and would be a separate change.

⌘1–9 quick-select in the recent-folders picker is checked before the field's own ⌘ shortcuts, so it keeps winning.

Review feedback

Copilot flagged grep --include in scripts/check-test-registry.sh as GNU-only. Verified and replied inline: macOS ships BSD grep, GNU compatible 2.6.0-FreeBSD, which supports --include, and CI's Linux runner is GNU grep — so neither environment breaks. The duplicated-work half of the observation was real and is fixed: the count is now a loop counter instead of a second recursive grep.

5. Field overflow and emoji sizing (1017708)

Two more issues found while testing: a long pasted line rendered past the search bar's edges, and emoji were drawn enormously larger than the text around them — in fields, and also in reader mode and stories.

Both come from drawing a text texture at whatever size SDL_ttf hands back. Measured on this machine at 14 pt:

	result
TTF_FontIsScalable(Apple Color Emoji)	false — one fixed 160 px bitmap strike
TTF_GetFontHeight at ptsize 14	210
"hello"	30 × 17
"hi 🙂"	174 × 160
TTF_SetFontSize(emoji, 14)	returns true, changes nothing

So a single emoji in a string makes the whole line ~9× the text height. The terminal never hit this because font.zig scales every rendered glyph into its cell; UI text had no equivalent.

The new src/ui/text_render.zig does the same job per line: split the string into emoji and text runs, render each with the font that owns it, scale the emoji runs to the text line height, compose into one surface. drawClippedTail draws a line inside a fixed box — tail-aligned so the caret end stays visible — and fades the leading edge into the field's own fill rather than cutting mid-glyph. The search bar now renders its prefix, query and match count as separate pieces so the query can be clipped to the space between them.

Adopted by the search bars, recent-folder entries, reader and story document text, and diff comments. Static labels (buttons, badges, "Reader Mode") keep the cheap single-render path.

Baseline follow-up (0ff51f0) — the first cut scaled the emoji surface to the text line height, which left the glyph sitting a pixel high. That surface is the emoji font's entire line box (160×210: a 160×160 glyph over 50 px of empty descent padding, baseline at the 160 px ascent), so fitting the box to the 17 px line put the emoji baseline at 13 against the text's 14. It now scales by the ascent ratio, which makes the glyph exactly the text ascent tall and puts both baselines on the same line; the empty descent padding that then hangs past the line box is clipped by the blit. The pixel math rounds rather than truncates — at these sizes one pixel of bias is exactly what the eye catches.

Verification

Both bugs are covered by tests confirmed to fail before the fix and pass after — the backspace test reports expected "dev/github/" found "dev/github/architec" and the expand-animation test fails outright on the old gates. Same for the interrupted-collapse geometry (expected 220, found 400).

zig build clean · zig build test 325 + 3 passed · zig fmt --check clean · just lint "No issues found".

TextInput is covered by unit tests (blink cycle, ⌘A replace-on-type, Backspace scopes with and without a selection, modifier gating so plain letters and ⌃/⌥ combos fall through, max_len and the character filter) and the recent-folders overlay has component-level tests driving real SDL events through handleEvent.

text_render is covered by unit tests for run splitting (ZWJ sequences, keycaps, skin tones, emoji at both ends) and emoji scaling, baseline placement against the real measured metrics, plus a test that opens the real Apple Color Emoji font and asserts a composed line comes back at the text line height instead of 160 px. That test was confirmed to fail when the scaling is removed (expected 17, found 160).

Not covered by automated tests: clipboard round-trips (⌘C/⌘V call into SDL, which needs a window), caret / selection / fade rendering, and the reader/story/diff adoptions of the shared field — those are verified by build and inspection only.

Test plan

• ⌘O, then immediately start typing — the first character lands in the search field, not in the shell behind it.
• In that search field: ⌥Backspace removes one path segment at a time, ⌘Backspace clears it, plain Backspace removes one character.
• Press ⌘O twice in quick succession (inside the 200 ms expand) — the panel reverses smoothly from its current size instead of jumping to full width first.
• ⌘T, then immediately press a digit — the worktree shortcut is handled by the overlay rather than reaching the terminal.
• ⌥Backspace in the worktree name field, the ⌘F search in reader (⌘R) and story overlays, and a ⌘D diff comment — all delete a word; ⌘Backspace clears each field.
• A caret blinks in the recent-folders search, and in the reader (⌘R → ⌘F) and story search bars.
• In each field: ⌘A highlights the text, then typing replaces it, ⌘C copies it, ⌘V pastes. In the diff comment editor the ⌘A highlight should follow the wrapped lines.
• Copy an emoji elsewhere, then ⌘V it into a diff comment and press Backspace once — the whole character disappears, not a fragment. (This is now testable; it was not before, which is why it was left unchecked on the first round.)
• Copy a multi-line block of text and ⌘V it into the recent-folders search — it arrives as a single line with the newlines dropped.
• ⌘V a string with spaces and slashes into the worktree name field — only the characters the field accepts when typed should appear.
• With [logging].min_level = "debug", toggle grid/full on a live codex session and confirm ~/Library/Logs/Architect/architect.log shows the hold start → re-arm → release lines with a sensible reason.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR fixes input handling bugs in UI overlays (Backspace modifier semantics and keyboard capture during the opening animation), adds diagnostics for the resize-settle lifecycle, and closes a Zig test-discovery gap by explicitly registering test-bearing files and enforcing that via lint.

Changes:

• Introduces src/ui/text_edit.zig as the shared, tested implementation of macOS-style Backspace behavior (plain/⌥/⌘) and wires multiple overlays to it.
• Standardizes “overlay owns keyboard while expanding” by adding ExpandingOverlay.State.isOpenOrOpening() and updating event gates/toggles accordingly (including smoother mid-expand collapse).
• Adds resize-settle debug logging + release-reason classification, and enforces explicit Zig test registration via scripts/check-test-registry.sh + just lint.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 19 out of 19 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
src/ui/text_edit.zig	New shared helper for consistent Backspace semantics (UTF-8 safe) with tests.
src/ui/components/worktree_overlay.zig	Uses shared backspace logic; fixes overlay key gating during open/expanding.
src/ui/components/story_overlay.zig	Delegates backspace handling to shared helper for search field.
src/ui/components/recent_folders_overlay.zig	Fixes modifier-aware backspace + keyboard capture during expand; adds tests.
src/ui/components/reader_overlay.zig	Delegates backspace handling to shared helper for search field.
src/ui/components/pill_group.zig	Uses isOpenOrOpening() to collapse other overlays consistently.
src/ui/components/help_overlay.zig	Uses isOpenOrOpening() for toggle gating.
src/ui/components/expanding_overlay.zig	Adds isOpenOrOpening() and fixes interrupted collapse geometry; adds tests.
src/ui/components/diff_overlay.zig	Delegates backspace handling to shared helper for comment editor.
src/session/state.zig	Adds resize-settle release-reason classifier + debug logs; adds tests.
src/main.zig	Registers additional test-bearing files to ensure tests actually run.
src/app/layout.zig	Adds debug log for resize-settle hold start with old/new dimensions.
scripts/check-test-registry.sh	New lint check to enforce explicit test registration (see comments).
README.md	Documents immediate keyboard capture and consistent Backspace semantics.
justfile	Runs test-registry check during just lint.
docs/perf-debugging.md	Documents new resize-settle debug tracing and meanings.
docs/development.md	Documents Zig test discovery/registration requirement.
docs/ARCHITECTURE.md	Documents the new ui/text_edit.zig module and overlay gating convention.
CLAUDE.md	Updates contributor guidance to match new conventions/checks.

Suppressed comments (1)

scripts/check-test-registry.sh:37

• Same portability issue as above: this summary line also uses GNU grep’s --include, which will break on BSD grep. Reuse the same find ... -exec grep ... pipeline here as well.

echo "test registry: all $(grep -rl '^test ' src --include='*.zig' | wc -l | tr -d ' ') files with tests are reachable"

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 20 out of 20 changed files in this pull request and generated no new comments.