fix: /Link to note opens a live note picker instead of a dead [[

[chasehuh]

Closes #82.

The bug

/ → Link to note was a dead end. It rewrote the slash trigger into [[
(optionally seeded with the typed query) and stopped there — the picker never
reopened, leaving a stranded [[dep in the user's prose with no popup and no
discoverable way forward.

Root cause

The obvious suspect is the empty-query guard in noteLinkSource:

if (!query && !context.explicit) return null;

That is only half of it, and fixing it alone would have changed nothing.

The apply dispatch used userEvent: "input" and set a selection.
@codemirror/autocomplete@6.20.3 getUpdateType reads that as neither
input.type nor input.complete — "input" is not a parent event of
"input.type"; the dot-prefix relation runs the other way — falls through to
tr.selection ? UpdateType.Reset, and ActiveSource.update forces every source
Inactive. An inactive source is never re-queried, so [[dep was just as dead
as bare [[. Only an explicit startCompletion — or a real keystroke, which is
why the bug read as flaky rather than deterministic — could bring the popup back.

The fix

Both handoffs (Link to note, and bare New note, which had the same dead
trigger) route through one openNotePicker helper that dispatches the trigger
and then calls startCompletion. The explicit flag that sets is also what
lets a query-less [[ list the whole catalog without weakening the guard
that keeps a stray bracket pair from popping the list open mid-sentence.

The Link handoff is additionally marked link-only via a StateField holding
the trigger's document offset. Link is a peer hyperlink, never a nesting create
(#80) — with no match, Create "…" would otherwise sit pre-selected one
Enter from filing the "linked" note as a sub-note of the one being
edited (#81). The offset (rather than a boolean) scopes the flag to the one
trigger it was set for, and it clears as soon as an edit overlaps the brackets
themselves, so deleting them and typing [[ by hand restores pick-or-create.

A zero-match link-only picker shows a non-actionable No note matches "…" row
rather than closing — an empty result closes the popup, and a closed popup over a
live [[ is exactly the dead trigger this is fixing. Keeping the source active
means backspacing narrows straight back to real notes.

Also excludes the active note from link candidates: self-linking is never useful.

Before / after

Gesture	Before	After
/ → Link to note	[[, popup closed	[[, picker open on the full catalog
/dep → Link to note	[[dep, popup closed	[[dep, picker open, filtered to "dep"
/dep → Link to note, no match	Create "dep" pre-selected → sub-note	No note matches "dep", nothing created
/ → New note (no title)	[[, popup closed	[[, picker open, Create appears once titled
hand-typed [[dep	pick or create	unchanged (#77)

Tests

New lib/editor/note-links.dom.test.ts drives the real autocompletion()
plugin in a mounted EditorView — a source-level test cannot see this bug class,
since the popup dies inside CodeMirror's transaction handling, not in what the
source returns. 9 of its 10 cases fail against the pre-fix code; the tenth is
the hand-typed [[ control, which passes both ways by design.

Covered: picker opens on bare and seeded handoff; narrowing across a space;
no Create in a link-only picker and createNote never called; recovery from a
non-matching query; the picked note inserting [Title](/n/{id}); New note
still offering Create; and link-only not leaking onto a hand-typed [[.

Verification

• pnpm vitest run — 355 passed / 34 files, including the True sub-notes: parent_id tree in sidebar (Zed project-panel feel) #80 create≠link matrix untouched
• pnpm exec tsc --noEmit — clean
• pnpm build — clean
• eslint on the touched paths — 8 problems before, 8 after (all pre-existing); no new debt

Notes

• [[ remains a transient trigger; storage is still plain [Title](/n/{id})
  Markdown, so the CRDT, publish, and note_revisions paths are untouched. The
  state field is local editor state and never reaches Yjs.
• agentnoteCompletion sits in the shared extension array used with and without
  yCollab, so the CRDT path gets the same behavior by construction.
• The fix uses only public API (startCompletion); the RCA's dependence on
  getUpdateType internals cannot silently reintroduce the bug on an upgrade,
  and the DOM tests would catch it if it tried.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated (UTC)
memo	Ready	Preview	Aug 5, 2026 7:37am