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feat: verb-first navigation - #21

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Maxaubert merged 10 commits into
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feat/20-verb-first-nav
Aug 31, 2026
Merged

feat: verb-first navigation#21
Maxaubert merged 10 commits into
mainfrom
feat/20-verb-first-nav

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@Maxaubert

@Maxaubert Maxaubert commented Aug 31, 2026

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Closes #20.

The rail names what you want to do, not what you happen to have. One navigation axis instead of two.

What changed

Before After
Images / Video / Audio / PDF / Documents / Archives Convert / Compress / Resize / Upscale / Remove BG / Generate / Tools
Queue belongs to the file type Queue belongs to the verb, and holds several kinds at once
Options keyed by (category, operation) Options keyed by (workspace, convert group)
Coloured operation switcher in the sidebar Gone: the rail is the operation

The two-column INPUT / OUTPUT queue is unchanged: same columns, same result rows, same re-run behaviour. A group header appears only when a queue actually holds more than one group, so the everyday single-kind batch looks exactly as it always has.

Tools is the one two-level tab: a grid of one-off verbs grouped by what they act on (PDF, Archives), each opening an ordinary workspace with a back control.

Two corrections made while implementing

  1. The grouping axis is the convert group, not the raw file kind. familyFormats already unions pdf + document + text into one family, so a .pdf, .docx and .txt batch together. Grouping by kind would have split them into three and broken a batch that works today. Convert therefore also accepts PDFs, which my first draft wrongly excluded.

  2. The tab-to-tool mapping is not 1:1. Repacking a .cbz on the Convert tab is the archive engine with op repack, not the convert tool. Added engineFor(tab, group, card) to resolve it per group.

The rule that makes it work

A selection may never span two convert groups, because one options panel can only describe one target set. Most of this already existed: range selection already restricted itself to the anchor's group, and addItems already auto-selected only the first group. The one real gap was ctrl+click toggle, which appended across groups; it was invisible only because a queue used to hold a single category. convertGroup also gained an archive branch, without which a .cbz batched with a .docx.

Session migration

session.json goes to v2. A v1 blob is migrated, not discarded: each category queue moves to the tab its remembered operation names, merging duplicates. Options are dropped, because they were keyed by an axis that stops existing and re-deriving them per group would guess wrong more often than it would help. Files survive an upgrade; format settings reset once.

Deleted

src/shared/catalog.ts, OperationSwitcher.tsx, and the two tests that only covered the catalog (replaced by tabs.test.ts and tabs-registry.test.ts, which still assert every navigation route resolves to a real engine module).

Verification

  • 404 unit tests, 38 e2e tests, typecheck, lint and prettier all clean.
  • Ran the built app and drove the rail, the Tools grid and a tool workspace by hand.
  • The mixed-kind queue and kind-scoped panel are covered by unit tests rather than e2e: adding files to the UI needs a real OS drop or native dialog, and faking one would mean a production-only test seam.

Design: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-08-31-verb-first-navigation-design.md
Plan: docs/superpowers/plans/2026-08-31-verb-first-navigation.md
Mockups: docs/mockups/verb-first/index.html (variant A)

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01MSq6HRwmaRKAv1t2hrdkJB

Maxaubert and others added 7 commits August 31, 2026 14:32
@Maxaubert @claude
feat(nav): add the verb-first tab model
1e827ed 
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MSq6HRwmaRKAv1t2hrdkJB
@Maxaubert @claude
feat(nav): rekey queues to tabs, scope selection to one convert group
737a1ca 
Range selection already enforced the group rule; toggle did not, which only
stayed invisible while a queue held one file type. convertGroup gains an
archive branch so a .cbz cannot batch with a .docx. v1 sessions migrate their
files into the tab shape rather than being discarded.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MSq6HRwmaRKAv1t2hrdkJB
@Maxaubert @claude
feat(nav): drive the whole workspace from the verb rail
6dbd1ad 
Rail becomes the verb; the queue belongs to what you are doing and can hold
several convert groups at once, with a header per group and the options panel
scoped to the selected one. Drops the OperationSwitcher (the rail names the
operation now) for a scope chip that says what Run will act on. Adds the Tools
grid and its per-card workspaces. shared/catalog.ts is gone.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MSq6HRwmaRKAv1t2hrdkJB
@Maxaubert @claude
chore: 0.4.0, document verb-first navigation
3111c7d 
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MSq6HRwmaRKAv1t2hrdkJB
@Maxaubert @claude
fix(nav): give each Tools card its own glyph
6d5fee0 
Reusing convert/resize/upscale made Split, Burst and Extract read as the same
action at a glance. Unpack and pack now differ by arrow direction.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MSq6HRwmaRKAv1t2hrdkJB
@Maxaubert @claude
fix(nav): honour the one-group rule on ctrl+click, and name groups no…
0c18ef5 
…t files

Self-testing the real UI with files in it found three things:

- ctrl+click on a row from another group did NOTHING. App.tsx still swallowed
  the click with the old guard, contradicting the reducer (which moves the
  selection) and the approved design. The reducer owns the rule; the guard is
  gone.
- The scope chip named the file KIND, so a pdf plus a txt read as '2 PDFs'
  when it runs as one document batch. It now names the convert group.
- The Run button said 'Convert 2 files', which in a mixed queue hides which
  two. It now says 'Convert 2 images'.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MSq6HRwmaRKAv1t2hrdkJB
@Maxaubert @claude
feat(nav): archive work becomes ordinary Convert; trim the options panel
e4799af 
Owner feedback:
- Tools always opens its grid. Landing back inside the last card hid every
  other tool.
- The scope banner is gone, and options no longer appear at all until files
  are selected. Offering PNG/JPG targets with an empty queue invited a choice
  that could not be acted on.
- Archive to PDF, PDF to CBZ and archive repack are Converts, not Tools: they
  turn a file into another file, which is what people go to Convert for. The
  Archives section and the Extract card are gone from Tools.
- Both directions now exist: a PDF offers comic containers, an archive offers
  PDF, and either still offers its own family.
- The window holds up at its 900x580 minimum: the queue was squeezed until
  filenames truncated to one letter, and the drop zone kept 212px it did not
  need once files existed.

Routing now depends on the TARGET as well as the source, and targets are the
intersection across the selection so a pdf+docx pair never offers CBZ. The
page-render quality is pageQuality, not quality: one option bag can now reach
either the convert tool (where quality is a preset STRING) or the archive
tool, and Number of 'balanced' is NaN.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MSq6HRwmaRKAv1t2hrdkJB
@Maxaubert
Maxaubert force-pushed the feat/20-verb-first-nav branch from 0e8ee9c to e4799af Compare August 31, 2026 13:56
Maxaubert and others added 3 commits August 31, 2026 16:06
@Maxaubert @claude
fix(nav): render exactly one options panel
eb29681 
Converting a PDF to CBZ showed two Target format grids, two Resolution
sliders and two Quality controls: the panel was a flat list of
`tool === x &&` lines, and two of them lost their guard in a reformat, so
the Convert tab rendered its own options AND the archive tool's.

Replaced the list with a single function that returns one panel, so a
missing guard cannot duplicate anything again. Audited all 26 combinations
of tab, file kind and engine-changing target in the running app; every one
renders one of each section.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MSq6HRwmaRKAv1t2hrdkJB
@Maxaubert @claude
feat: drop the built-in preview window; open files in the default app
a44ffb1 
Filesmith carried its own viewer: a second BrowserWindow with image, video,
audio, PDF and Markdown renderers, a media transport bar and an audio
visualiser, plus the IPC to keep its file list in sync with the queue. That is
a second app living inside this one, for a job the desktop already does.

Double-click and the context menu now hand the file to whatever the OS uses
for it. Removes previewWindow.ts, PreviewWindow.tsx, MediaBar.tsx,
AudioVisualizer.tsx, lib/markdown.ts, the PreviewItem/PreviewPayload types,
six preload APIs and the file:bytes / file:text handlers that existed only to
feed it. About 1,000 lines gone.

The fsmedia:// protocol stays: generated-image thumbnails still use it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MSq6HRwmaRKAv1t2hrdkJB
@Maxaubert @claude
feat: move results to a Completed tab; drop the output column
9393b14 
Every workspace spent half its width on files the user had already finished
with, and results were scattered across seven screens. The queue is now one
column of the files you are working on, and everything produced lands in a
Completed tab pinned to the bottom of the rail, newest first, each row saying
which verb made it.

Completed is a view rather than a verb, so it is not in TABS: it takes no
dropped files, has no options panel, and does not move when the rail is
reordered.

Also sets the PDF page-render quality default to 100 as asked. Measured on a
184-page comic: at 150 DPI that is 1471 KB/page (264 MB), against 476 KB at
q92 and 270 KB at q85. Not a bug, just what quality 100 costs.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MSq6HRwmaRKAv1t2hrdkJB
@Maxaubert
Maxaubert merged commit e6afe07 into main Aug 31, 2026
1 check passed
@Maxaubert
Maxaubert deleted the feat/20-verb-first-nav branch August 31, 2026 15:07
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feat: verb-first navigation (Convert, Compress, Tools rail)

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@Maxaubert