Historical record

This page records what happened on a date, with its observed failures and limits. It is not a requirement for the current implementation. Current behaviour is in Status.

Project sidebar and Agent canvas

Updated 2026-10-31.

Later the same day the user asked for the canvas and the workspace to be one page. The Agent's files now open in the workspace the person shares with it, and the Graph shows what the Agent did; see One workspace and the Graph. The runs below describe the separate canvas as it was.

Question

The user tried working with the Agent inside a project and found it a poor experience. The project sidebar held almost nothing (Overview, Files, Activity), and while the Agent worked the main area stayed on the project page. They supplied a reference screen with a project block, Overview/Studio/Graph/Agent entries, a Sources section counting Data, Code, Runs, Results & figures and Notes, and a studio of code, table and figure views. They asked for a sidebar like it, and for the canvas to move with the Agent while it works.

The reference set layout weight and hierarchy, not values to copy. Rho has no Graph, so the sidebar shows none. The questions this pass answered:

1. Can a person see what a project holds, by the kind of file they look for, from its sidebar?
2. When the person asks the Agent for something, does the canvas show the files the Agent reads and changes, as it works, without taking over what the person chose to look at?

Setup

• Real runs: a disposable air-study project (data/airquality.csv from R's airquality, scripts/analysis.R, notes.md, README.md), Claude Code 2.1.312 through Westlake HPC (westlakehpc/deepseek-v4.1-flash) over ACP, R 4.5.2, and Chrome 155.0.8059.84 at 1440 × 900 and 390 × 844. The message was typed into the Agent panel and sent with Start: read the table and the script, change the script to compute mean Ozone by Month, write results/ozone_by_month.csv and a bar chart PNG, and run it. Screens were taken every 2.5 s during the turn.
• Script and evidence: work/agent-canvas-20261027/ (ignored by Git): episode.mjs (runs first, second, third, final) and review.mjs (four widths after a turn, without a model).

Observed before

• The sidebar (screens from the earlier real ACP turn in work/agent-ui-live-20261027/real-rendered-1440.png) offered Overview, Files and Activity, the workspaces by identifier, and settings at its foot. Nothing said what the project held.
• While the Agent read input.txt and ran ls, the main area stayed on the project page. The work showed only as rows in the 340 px Agent panel.
• The Documents owner returned an open buffer as it was when first opened. A file the Agent changed with its own Edit or Write tool, or with a command, kept showing its old text in Rho; reopening it did not help.
• agent.activity.capture, the browser's way to show a CSV or image as a file snapshot, located the file by walking its whole directory: a file at the project root was refused and a folder holding more than 64 files failed the scan.

Changed

Rho (web/project.tsx, web/main.tsx, web/sources.ts, web/canvas.ts, web/agent-now.ts, web/overview.tsx, web/shell/workspace.tsx, CSS):

• Sidebar. "All projects" above a project block (initials, name, a menu to switch to another open project). Overview, Studio with its workspaces under it, Agent with a Working or Needs you badge, and Activity with its run count. Sources counts Data, Code, Results & figures and Notes, then Files; + adds a source folder. Counts come from one bounded walk of the project folders (48 folders, 5 levels, 4000 files); a partial walk shows + and says so. Kinds come from file names only. Tables in an output folder (results, output, figures, …) count as results; registered results count there too, file snapshots taken only to show a file do not.
• Sources pages. Each kind lists its files across the project and its source folders, with a filter. A CSV or image opens in its table or media view, text in the editor, a registered result as its exact version. (A later pass shows them in place instead; see Browsing Sources from the sidebar.)
• Studio. Workspaces are tabs at the top of Studio with their view counts. The Agent canvas is the workspace agent-canvas, shown as "Agent canvas".
• Following. Sending a message from the Agent panel opens the Agent canvas and follows the running turn. Each file the Agent's steps name inside the project opens there once: a read as soon as it is reported, an edit or write once it returned. A finished command opens the project files its command line names, and an output that appears or changes on disk during the turn (or in the walk just after it) opens too, without a claim about who wrote it. Code sits on the left, data and figures on the right, at most six per side; a newer snapshot of a file replaces the older one. Every placement is one conditional layout write.
• The Agent's place. The tab of the file the Agent last named carries Reading/Read, Editing/Edited, Writing/Wrote or Running/Ran, live while that step is the newest one running. The topbar shows the Agent and its newest action on every project page, amber when a native permission waits; clicking it follows.
• The person's place. Choosing another tab, typing in a view or going to another page stops following; nothing then opens or moves. "Follow Claude Code" resumes and brings the newest file forward. A followed view is not held, so a replaced snapshot does not linger as a second tab.
• The workspace's older attention bar is not shown on the Agent canvas; its own follow control would have been a second "Follow" with another meaning.
• A tab bar keeps its tab names and moves a view's own controls to a second row when both do not fit. The sidebar is hidden by CSS below 768 px, so no frame shows it before the page knows it is narrow.

Documents 0.4.3 (Rho-plugins/plugins/documents): a buffer with no unsaved text follows its file. On open, changed disk text is adopted as one edit by the author disk, recorded as the smallest changed span, so views show the current text and history keeps the text before. Unsaved text or a pending save is never replaced. The editor labels such changes "File on disk" and highlights them with Agent edits under "Highlight changes".

Agent 0.4.12 (Rho-plugins/plugins/agent): agent.activity.capture observes only the named file: inside the project, reached without symlinks, a regular file of at most 8 MiB. expectedDigest became optional; with it the capture is of that exact version, without it of the current bytes. The output-list scan is unchanged. Annotations 0.4.4 only widens its optional Documents peer to include 0.4.3.

Runs

Run	What happened	Cause	Change
first	Sidebar counted 1 data, 1 code, 2 notes. Every canvas write was refused: "Remove axis".	A split with one child does not match the layout contract.	The canvas is a split only with both sides.
second	analysis.R opened and showed the Agent's rewrite with its lines highlighted. The CSV and PNG were refused; no tab showed the Agent's place.	A path prop the table/media views do not declare; presence needed the newest step to be a file step.	Snapshot views are named by a hash of their path; presence follows the last named file.
third	analysis.R, airquality.csv, ozone_by_month.csv (from cat in the command) and the PNG opened; Read, Writing and Ran showed on tabs. A view's header button covered the tab names.	Tabs shrank to make room for owner controls.	Tab names keep their width; controls wrap.
final (1)	The regenerated PNG appeared twice.	Following used the person's "open and hold" path, so the replaced view was kept.	Following only brings a view forward.
final (2)	The PNG never opened.	No step named it; the command only listed results/.	Outputs that appear on disk during the turn open.
final (3)	Six views, each file once, nothing duplicated, 0 page errors.	—	—

Checks

• npm run build and npm run check:contracts passed (97 operations, 96 typed).
• Rho unit tests: 202 tests; the full parallel run passed 201 and cancelled the known MCP v2 test at its 30 s limit, which passed alone (2/2, 16.4 s). See Status for the serial run.
• Rho-plugins: 90/90, including the new disk-following test (a changed line adopted as the span {from: 12, to: 13}, its before text readable, an unchanged file making no version, unsaved text kept with a save conflict, a non-UTF-8 file ignored) and single-file capture (a root-level CSV, a folder of more than 70 files, a missing file, internal state refused).
• npm run acceptance:agent-canvas (new) passed 8 checks with a controlled ACP peer and no model: sidebar counts; Start opens the following canvas with the topbar and sidebar showing the Agent working; a read CSV opens in its table view marked Reading; an edit made outside Rho shows its new text with highlighted lines; an SVG no step named opens after appearing on disk; the saved canvas holds each file once, code left and data right; choosing another tab stops following and leaves the next file unopened until Follow; no overflow at 1024/390 and no page errors. Evidence goes to work/agent-canvas-acceptance/.
• acceptance:frontend 11/11, acceptance:agent-ui 7/7, acceptance:pages, acceptance:shell, acceptance:person, acceptance:objects, acceptance:actions, acceptance:continuity and the plugin UI check passed.
• review.mjs at 1440, 1024, 768 and 390: no overflow and no page errors.

These checks show that the paths work and that the screens read as intended to me. They do not show that another person can follow a fast Agent on the canvas.

Limits and next questions

• Following reads the conversation record, so the canvas moves at most about four times a second and can lag a short step; a file the Agent touched only between two reads still opens.
• Command lines are matched for project file names with known extensions; a command that writes elsewhere, or by name patterns, is seen only through the folder walk. The walk sees sizes, not contents, so an output rewritten with the same size is not reopened.
• The walk runs every 5 s at most while records change: up to 48 listings a time. A project with more folders shows partial counts.
• Below 768 px the Agent panel is a full-screen sheet, so the canvas follows behind it; closing the panel shows where it went.
• A CSV over 8 MiB or a file Rho has no view for (PDF, Excel, RDS) is named in a note on the canvas instead of opening.
• The canvas shows files. It does not yet explain a change in the Agent's words next to it, show command output, or let the person answer on the view itself.

Browsing Sources from the sidebar

Question

The user opened Results & figures in their test project (six PNGs in ggplot2-demo/out) and found a page used as the directory awkward: moving from one figure to the next meant going back to the list. They asked for the sidebar to browse each kind's files directly.

Before this pass, choosing a file on a Sources page placed it as a new tab in the workspace layout and opened Studio. The next figure needed the list again, and every figure seen stayed behind as a tab.

Changed

Rho only (web/project.tsx, web/preview.tsx, web/sources.ts, web/canvas.ts, web/overview.tsx, web/main.tsx, web/theme.css):

• Sidebar. A Sources row unfolds into its files and folds again. With more than one folder, files sit under folder labels: the project's top level first, then by folder and name. Long names take two lines. The sidebar holds 40 files per kind; "All N files" opens the kind's page, which keeps its filter. Unfolded kinds are remembered per project for the tab, and the kind of the file on screen stays open.
• In place. Choosing a file shows it in the main area in its owner's view, without writing a layout. The view's own controls stay with it (Fit/100% for a figure, Save and Highlight changes for text). Above it: name, folder, size, "3 of 6" (to the kind's page), previous/next and Open in Studio.
• Moving. ← and → switch files unless focus is in a field, a menu or tab list, or inside the view, so a table cell or the editor keeps its keys. ↑ and ↓ in the sidebar list move and show. Until the next file resolves, the last one stays dimmed instead of blanking.
• Each showing reads the file as it is now. A CSV or image becomes a Files snapshot of its current bytes; snapshots are content-addressed, so unchanged bytes give the same one. Text opens the project's one buffer of that document.
• The kind's page lists the same files in the same order and shows the chosen one in place. A result with several versions is listed as the one its latest run made.

Runs

Script and evidence: work/sidebar-browse-20261027/ (ignored by Git): browse.mjs on a disposable copy of the user's ggplot2-demo, mixed.mjs on a project with data, scripts in two folders and figures in two output folders. Chrome 1440 × 900, 1024, 768 and 390 × 844.

Run	What happened	Cause	Change
first	All six listed; the first figure showed in 0.45 s, each next one with → in about 65 ms, one seen before in 38 ms. Open in Studio placed one tab. "02-explore-temperatur…" and "04-model-diagnostics.…" were cut where they differ; at 390 px the header took three rows.	One-line names in a 240 px sidebar; the Studio button's label.	Names wrap to two lines; below 768 px the Studio button shows its icon and keeps its name.
second	Full names; a two-row header at 390. The one 404 was composition.read of workspace before it existed, which opening expects. Files were cached by path and size.	A rewrite of the same size would show the older snapshot; the cache saved about 30 ms.	Each showing captures the current bytes.
third	Without the cache each next figure took about 65 ms and one seen before 57 ms.	—	—
mixed	The table and editor showed; → in a grid cell and in the editor stayed there. Code listed scripts/plot.R before the project's own analysis.R.	Folders sorted by display name, the top level under the project's name.	The top level comes first.

Checks

• npm run acceptance:sources (new) passed 7 checks without a model:
  • kinds unfold, top level first;
  • a file shows in place with its folder, size and place, and no layout is written;
  • ←/→, the buttons and ↑/↓ in the sidebar move, and the shown file is marked;
  • a CSV shows in its table and a script in the editor, and arrow keys inside them stay there;
  • Open in Studio places the file;
  • unfolded kinds survive a reload;
  • a file chosen from the 390 px drawer shows, with no overflow at 1024/390 and no page errors.
• acceptance:agent-canvas now finds the file in the unfolded Data list instead of on the Data page.

These show that the paths work and that the screens read as intended to me, not that another person finds browsing faster.

Limits

• The lists come from the bounded walk. A new or removed file shows after the next walk, which runs when the project's records change or on Refresh.
• Each figure or CSV shown is kept as a Files snapshot in the project's state, as opening from the list was before. Neighbours are not fetched ahead; each showing costs one capture, about 65 ms for these figures.
• There are no swipe gestures; on a touch screen the buttons move.
• The Tables toolbar touches the view's left edge here and in Studio; that spacing belongs to the Tables owner.

One Agent entry and the Agent page

Question

The user found two Agent entries confusing. The sidebar's Agent row and the topbar's Agent button opened the same panel, with different marks. They also found the Agent interface empty: Activity, where the panel's "View live activity" led, showed nothing useful. Yet the project held two conversations with real work.

Observed before

Evidence: a copy of the user's test project with its retained records, its root rewritten to the copy (work/agent-page-20261027/, ignored by Git; before/).

• Four ways in: the sidebar row, the topbar button, the Overview's Work with Agent, and the panel's View live activity.
• Activity showed:
  • Core's feed, "Observation disconnected";
  • an output-folder field with "No output files observed yet";
  • "No managed runs yet".
• The records: in "hi", the last message wrote ggplot2-demo/analysis.R, edited it nine times, ran eight commands (two refused at permission), read four of the six figures and answered. "这个项目在做什么" failed after 5 s on a model configuration error. Activity showed none of it. The panel showed one conversation at a time.

Changed

Rho only (web/agent-work.tsx, web/overview.tsx, web/project.tsx, web/main.tsx, web/conversation.tsx, web/theme.css):

• One entry. The sidebar's Agent row opens the Agent page. A button at its right edge shows or hides the Agent panel beside any page. The topbar's button, named the same ("Agent panel") and with the same mark, appears only while the sidebar is hidden. Activity is no longer a separate row, and the panel no longer carries View live activity or the outside-sessions list.

• The Agent page. Up to six conversations at a time, a running one first, then newest, each with its latest four messages:

  • the request;
  • Changed: files written or edited, with counts;
  • Looked at: files read;
  • Ran: commands, refused ones marked, and existing files they name;
  • the answer, folded past six lines, or the Agent's error;
  • how the message ended and how long it took.

  A file shows in place among its kind, or in the workspace if it has no kind. Continue (Follow while running) opens the panel at that conversation; New conversation opens its composer.

• Runs follow, only when there are any. Sessions started outside Rho (their access list and Core's feed) sit in a closed section that reads only while open.

Runs

Run	What happened	Cause	Change
before	As above.	Activity read Core streams, an output folder and managed runs; Rho's own conversation records reached only the panel.	The Agent page.
after	Both conversations: the model error; analysis.R "wrote, edited 9×"; four figures; "8 commands · 2 refused"; the folded answer. A figure showed in place as 5 of 6. A Solar.R chip appeared.	Commands are matched by file extension; Solar.R is an airquality column in an R call.	Files named only by a command are listed when the folder walk found them.
Updating the scripts	With the topbar button hidden, nothing opened the panel from Studio or a preview; the scripts had used that button.	The row's click now opens the page.	A panel button on the Agent row; the scripts use "Agent panel".
agent-canvas	After the new page check, choosing airquality.csv did not stop following.	Coming back from the page remounts the canvas with its first data view in front, so the click was no move.	The check chooses the data view not in front.

Checks

• acceptance:agent-canvas passed 9 checks. The new one, after the controlled turn, finds no topbar Agent button beside the sidebar. The turn's card lists Changed analysis.R (edited), Looked at airquality.csv, Ran 1 command and the answer, and the CSV chip shows the table in place.
• frontend 11/11, agent-ui 7/7, sources 7/7, pages, person, objects, actions, continuity and the plugin UI check passed after their scripts opened the panel by "Agent panel" and runs through the Agent page. shell passed once its focus check looked for "Agent panel".
• Rho unit tests 202/202, serially.

Limits

• The page lists what the Agent reported. Outputs a command wrote and the Agent did not read back (here two of the six figures) are not under the message; Results & figures has them.
• Earlier messages than the latest four are in the panel. A running conversation is read again at most once a second.
• The Overview's Work progress still lists the same conversations with observation details. Whether it should only point to the Agent page is open.
• When the Host is unavailable, the outside-sessions section shows the feed's own disconnected state, once opened.

Choosing the Agent and its model

Question

The user asked for settings in the Agent UI so that a person chooses the Agent and its model themselves.

Observed before

• The panel's new-conversation header had one select: Configured default, Claude Code or Codex. Model, effort and permission mode came only from each Agent's own configuration, and no screen said which model answered. The failed conversation above ended on a model the gateway said may not exist; nothing in Rho could choose another.

• ACP v1 sessions report the settings they accept. Opening a session without a message in an empty folder:

  • Claude Code (claude-agent-acp 0.97.0, 3.2 s) offered Mode (5 values), Model (101), Effort (6), Fast mode and Ultracode.
  • Codex (codex-acp 2.3.0, 0.5 s) offered Mode (4), Collaboration mode, Model (103) and Reasoning effort (6).

  Neither groups models through ACP. Names end in " · " and where the model comes from (a routing group, a provider). Descriptions carry account names; this record leaves them out and the screens show them only as tooltips.

Changed

Agent 0.4.13 (Rho-plugins/plugins/agent):

• The ACP connection keeps the settings a session reports when it opens or changes them (config_option_update). The session observation carries them, bounded to 12 settings of at most 256 values each, with the rest counted.
• The person's choices are applied once the session opens and before any message is sent. A setting or value the Agent does not offer fails that message; nothing is sent.
• configure() changes one setting on an open session between messages.
• inspect() opens a session, reads its settings, removes the session where the Agent supports that, and ends the process. It sends no message.

Rho (src/conversations.ts, src/protocol.ts, web/agent-settings.tsx, web/conversation.tsx, web/overview.tsx, web/agent-work.tsx, web/theme.css):

• Four operations for the person at this machine:

  • conversation.settings.read reads one file in the service's state directory and starts nothing. The file holds the Agent for new conversations, each Agent's choices, and what each Agent last offered, from a check or from a conversation's first session opened without choices.
  • conversation.settings.update refuses a stale expectedVersion and any value the Agent did not offer.
  • conversation.settings.check runs inspect() in the project, one check per Agent at a time, bounded by connectTimeoutMs.
  • conversation.configure changes an open conversation's session now. If no session is open, it records the choice for the next one. It is refused while the Agent is answering.

  conversation.start without an Agent or settings uses the saved ones and records them on the conversation. A request holds at most 12 settings of 512 characters.

• Agent page: a "New conversations use" card above the conversations, with:

  • Claude Code or Codex;
  • a model picker that is searchable, grouped by where each model comes from, and starts with the Agent's default named;
  • effort, mode and the other settings as compact selects, each with its default;
  • a line saying which adapter offered them and when, with Check again.

  Before any check, "Ask Claude Code" says that it starts the Agent for a few seconds and sends no message.

• Panel: one chip under the message box names the Agent, model and effort. It opens the same picker, with the Agent switch and effort above the list. In an open conversation, the chip shows that conversation's model and effort and changes them between messages.

• Each message's ending names the model that answered, in the panel and on the Agent page.

Runs

Evidence: work/agent-settings-20261027/ (ignored by Git). look.mjs drives a disposable service whose Claude Code and Codex are a test Agent offering 39 models from five sources. real.mjs uses the person's own Claude Code on a disposable project.

Run	What happened	Cause	Change
look 1	Check sent initialize, session/new, session/delete only; the chosen model and effort were set before the prompt; a switch mid-conversation was used by the next message. Effort, Mode and Fast mode chips stood as tall stacked boxes.	The global label rule stacks its children.	Chips lay out in a row.
look 2	Switched from one source's DeepSeek V4.1 Flash to another's: the chip and the endings read the same before and after.	Names were shown without their source.	Chips and endings show the whole name.
look 3	In the panel, the open picker cut off the conversation's header and text.	The picker was wider than the panel; focusing and scrolling to the chosen model scrolled the panel sideways.	The picker fits its panel or page; only its list scrolls; focus does not scroll.
look 4	Agent, model and effort took three rows of a 300 px message box.	Three chips.	One chip; the Agent and effort sit above the list.
look 5	With a short conversation, the picker opened above the message box and its search and Agent switch were cut off.	It always opened upward.	It opens on the side with room and fits that height.
look 6	After Ask Claude Code returned, typing did not search.	Focus moved only when the picker opened.	The search takes focus when the list arrives.
real	Check 3.9 s: 101 models; "westlake" found four. With Qwen3.8 27B · WestlakeHPC chosen, the first message failed: "API Error: 400 WestlakeHPC: System message must be at the beginning." The ending named the model. The panel switched the conversation to DeepSeek V4.1 Flash · routing group. The next message completed in 6 s with turn model auto/deepseek-v4.1-flash[1m].	That provider refuses the request Claude Code sends; Rho reported it as received.	None in Rho.

In the real run the answering model said it was Claude. A model's description of itself is not evidence. The record keeps the model the adapter accepted for the turn. Claude Code reported its own default as the group model that the earlier failed conversation named.

Checks

• test/agent-settings.test.mjs covers the operations:

  • a read starts nothing;
  • a check sends no prompt and removes its session;
  • stale and unknown values are refused;
  • saved choices are set before the first prompt;
  • an open session changes between messages, leaving the defaults unchanged;
  • after a restart, a choice is recorded and applied when the session next opens.

  Agent 0.4.13's two new owner tests cover applying, changing and refusing settings and inspect() removing its session.

• Rho unit tests 203/203 serially, Plugins 92/92, and the contract and type checks.

• agent-ui 7/7, agent-canvas 9/9, frontend 11/11 and sources 7/7 passed, as did shell, continuity, pages, person, objects, actions and the plugin UI check. acp-episode now chooses its Agent in the message box's settings; it was not run again here.

Limits

• What an Agent offers is known only from a check or a first session. It can go stale. A saved choice the Agent no longer offers fails the next message with that reason, and Check again refreshes the list.
• One service keeps one set of choices for every project. A check runs in the current project, and another project's own Agent configuration may offer other models.
• Whether a model works through an Agent is known only by sending a message, as the WestlakeHPC refusal showed. Rho does not test models.
• Mode lists the Agent's own permission modes, including those that skip its questions. Rho shows them as offered and adds no approval of its own.
• No person has used these controls yet; the runs show that the paths work.

Arranging views: the person drags, the Agent writes

Question

On 2026-10-27 the user asked whether the Agent arranges the page freely, and said both the Agent and the person should. The person had no way to arrange views by dragging.

Observed before

• Each workspace is one saved layout: a tree of groups and views, where a split group keeps its axis and weights. Both the person and the Agent change it through composition.apply against an expected version, and composition.undo reverses the last change.
• The person could drag the dividers between panes, and Arrange views offered Split right, Split down, Move to the next or previous group, Close view and Undo. Tabs could not be dragged. The Agent panel was fixed at 340 px.
• A Rho-started Agent's grant already holds composition.read, composition.apply, composition.undo and composition.put. Its MCP index was the only description it had of them.
• When a person's change put a group other than the canvas's own code and data groups under the canvas root, every later file the Agent touched joined the first tab group.

Changed

Rho only (src/shell-layout.ts, web/shell/regions.tsx, web/shell/workspace.tsx, web/shell/shell.css, web/canvas.ts, web/main.tsx, web/theme.css):

• Tabs drag. A tab can be dropped in three places:

  • on another group's tabs, where a line marks the place, to move or reorder it;
  • on the middle of a group, where the group is tinted, to join its tabs;
  • within a quarter of a group's side, where that half is tinted, to give the view a pane on that side.

  A pane beside one along the same axis joins that split and halves that pane's share. A pane left empty closes. Each drop is one conditional composition.apply of the saved layout, the same write the menu's commands and the Agent use. Undo reverses it. A drop where the tab already is writes nothing. Dragging stops following the Agent. Below 768 px the workspace is one tab list and nothing drags.

• The Agent panel's edge drags, or moves 24 px per arrow key, between 280 px and 760 px (at most 60% of the window). A double-click returns it to 340 px. Each browser keeps its own width.

• The canvas keeps its sides. The Agent's code files join the canvas's code group and its data and figures join the data group, wherever the person has moved them. A side whose group was emptied comes back at its edge of a left-to-right split.

Runs

Evidence: work/layout-drag-20261028/ (ignored by Git). look.mjs drags in a disposable project of four files. agent.mjs asks the person's own Claude Code to arrange the same workspace before the person drags in it.

Run	What happened	Cause	Change
look	Dropped notes.md near its group's right edge: a pane on the right. Then air.csv on that pane's tabs, model.R before analysis.R, and air.csv near the bottom of the right pane: three panes. A drop where the tab already was left the version unchanged, and Undo restored the previous arrangement. The panel widened from 340 to 525 px, narrowed 24 px on a key, and kept 501 px after reload. Keyboard focus on the edge drew a double outline.	The outline and the edge's line both drew.	Focus thickens the line only.
agent	Claude Sonnet 5.5 · routing group received "把 Studio 的 workspace 排成：左边是 analysis.R 和 model.R 两个标签，右边上半是 notes.md，右边下半是 air.csv。只改布局，不要改文件。" It took 83 s and 20 tool calls: four rho_index, five rho_resolve (one refused for an expired cursor), eight rho_read and two rho_call. One composition.apply took the layout from version 4 to 5 exactly as asked, and no file changed. The person then dragged notes.md into the left tabs: version 6, following stopped.	—	None.
frontend	The new drag check reloaded the page to see the split kept, and the page came back on the Overview.	Before this check, the tab's session store already held a link session from an earlier step, so the reload opened under another browser principal.	The check reads the saved layout. The menu check above it covers reload.

In its answer the Agent said it could not see how the browser drew the layout and asked the user to look.

Checks

• test/layout-commands.test.mjs covers moving a tab:

  • reordering, and joining another group;
  • a drop that changes nothing;
  • a pane emptied and closed;
  • a bare view turned into a tab group.

  It also covers docking on each side, beside a pane along the same axis, and across it.

• acceptance:frontend adds two checks: a dragged tab joins another group's tabs and closes its emptied pane, then opens a pane below as the saved layout; the panel widens from its edge and keeps the width after reload.

• acceptance:agent-canvas adds one check. The person drags notes.md below the code, and following stops. The Agent's next data file joins the data group, and the person's pane stays.

• With the old placement, the new acceptance:agent-canvas check fails: the data file joins canvas-code.

• Rho 205/205 (serial) and Plugins 92/92. acceptance:frontend 13/13, agent-canvas 10/10 and agent-ui 7/7 passed, as did shell, continuity, sources, pages, person, objects, actions and the plugin UI check. Build, web type check and contract checks passed.

Limits

• Tabs cannot be reordered within a group from the keyboard; the commands move a view between groups only.
• A drop is relative to one group. There is no full-height column at the workspace's edge, no drag between workspaces, and no drag from Sources into Studio.
• Most of the Agent's 83 s went to finding the operation and reading the layout. A shorter route has not been tried.
• The Agent cannot see the drawn result.
• A drop computed on a layout older than the Agent's latest write is refused with a message and not retried.

The person's own hands on the layout

Question

On 2026-10-31 the user said that in Studio the Agent opens and arranges views freely, but the person's operations were missing: adding a component, closing one, and moving the whole window of a tab group holding several. Moving one tab already worked. The pass is about what the person can do by hand.

Observed before

A disposable project of five files (two CSVs, two figures, an R script and a README) on a separate service and browser build, with five files added through Add view (tour2.mjs), at 1440 × 900:

• A tab had no close button. Closing meant Arrange views → Close view, which acted on whichever view had focus last; the menu did not name it.
• Add view put each file where Rho places it (code left, data and figures right). The person could not choose the group.
• A group could not move as a whole, and nothing made a full-height column at the page's edge, as the previous pass's limits said.
• In the right pane, the image view's controls took the tab row's space: mtcars.png showed as "m" and cars.png was out of sight, with nothing saying it was there.
• In the Add view menu the Notebook, Variables and Plots cards drew their second line across their own borders.

Changed

Rho only (src/shell-layout.ts, web/shell/menu.tsx, web/shell/regions.tsx, web/shell/workspace.tsx, web/shell/shell.css, web/canvas.ts, web/explore.ts, web/main.tsx, web/theme.css):

• Close. The shown tab has a close button. Any tab closes with a middle click, with Delete while it has focus, or from its menu. A close names what it closed, with Undo, for 10 s and only while the layout is as the close left it; Undo then is the owner's composition.undo. Close view in Arrange views and the palette now does the same.
• A tab's menu. A right click, the context-menu key or Shift+F10 opens: Close, Close the other tabs, Split right, Split down, Maximize this group.
• Add into a group. Each group's + opens the same choices as Add view (the Notebook, the sessions' views and the project's files) and puts the choice there as the last tab (addInto). A view already on the page comes forward where it is.
• Move a whole group. The empty strip beside a group's tabs drags the group, with its tabs as the drag image. It drops where a tab does: onto another group's tabs or its middle, where its tabs join that group in order, or within a quarter of a side, where it becomes a pane there (moveGroup). A drop where it already is writes nothing.
• The page's edges. While a tab or a group drags, a line marks each side of the stage. Over one, the column or row it would become is drawn, a third of the page (moveToEdge). A view leaves its tabs; a group keeps its own.
• Maximize. Double-clicking that strip, or the menu, shows the group alone in this browser tab, with Restore. The saved layout is unchanged; a view brought forward outside the group shows every group again.
• Tabs stay in view. Tabs narrow to their icons before they scroll, and the shown tab keeps its name. The tab row gives way to a view's controls only down to room for every tab (168 px for one, 44 px more for each other); below that the controls take a second row. The toolbars pass had let the row shrink to 160 px whatever its tabs, so that a control coming with a selection would not move the view; in a group of several tabs that now happens over a wider range of widths, the price of keeping each tab where the person can see, close and drag it.
• The add list keeps its entries' height, so the cards no longer overflow.

Each change is one conditional composition.apply of the saved layout, as before. In a conversation's Studio, close, the menu and dragging act while it shows the present, not during a replay; the + is on the person's own pages only.

Runs

Evidence: work/studio-human/ (ignored by Git): serve.mjs starts the checked-out service with a separate browser build, drive/tour*.mjs drive it and shots/ holds what each step drew. The person's own Rho running at the time was not touched.

Run	What happened	Cause	Change
tour4	Close buttons, the tab menu and the + menu worked. The right pane's tabs narrowed to "m…" and "c…" beside the table's controls, and the shown tab "mtcars_summary.c".	Tabs kept 84 px each and the tab row a fixed 160 px before the controls.	Tabs narrow to icons; the row keeps room for every tab.
tour5	All four tabs showed, the controls on a second row. × closed README.md and said so; Undo brought it back; a middle click closed cars.png; Delete closed mtcars.png; + put cars.png into the left group and Variables into the right.	—	None.
tour6, tour7	The right group dropped near the bottom of the left one went under it. Held over the stage's right edge, the column was drawn where the group already was, and that drop wrote nothing. Over the other group's middle, the group was tinted.	—	None.
tour8	The strip's double-click showed one group, Restore both. Shift+F10 opened README.md's menu with Close focused; Split right made a third pane; Escape returned focus to the tab; Undo layout change took the split back. At 700 px the one list of tabs had lost its tab styling.	That list still used the old markup.	It uses the same tabs.
object	Clicking the Results tab timed out: its hidden close button took the click.	A transparent close button still takes clicks.	The close button is on the shown tab only.

Checks

• test/layout-commands.test.mjs adds: a whole group under, left of, or into another group (last, or before one of its tabs, or into a bare view), and nothing written where it already is, onto itself, or for the page's only group; a view or a group to each side of the page; a view added into a chosen group or, when that group is gone, the last.
• acceptance:frontend adds one check: × closes Research notes and Undo restores it, the lower group's + adds data/README.md there, and its strip dragged to the upper group's right side gives a side-by-side layout in the saved composition.
• Run against the separate browser build: the layout tests 19/19 and shell boundary 2/2, the service and web type checks, and the frontend (14/14), agent-canvas, pages, objects and person-files acceptances passed. The shell acceptance failed at "focus kept in the editor at 390", as it does with the unchanged build, as Status records.

Limits

• A background tab has no close button of its own; it closes from its menu, a middle click or Delete.
• A group moves only by dragging: the keyboard and the palette have no group move, and tabs still cannot be reordered from the keyboard.
• Maximize lasts for the browser tab and is not saved.
• No drag between workspaces, and none from Sources into Studio.
• No person has used these yet; the runs show the paths work, not that they are easy.

Closing every view of a conversation's Studio

Question

On 2026-10-31 the user closed every view of a finished conversation's Studio and found no way back to how it was: the page said "No views in this layout", and choosing a moment on the timeline showed nothing either.

Observed before

drive/process-close.mjs (in work/studio-human/, ignored by Git) runs a disposable project with the agent-canvas acceptance's stand-in Agent: one turn reads a CSV, edits a script, runs it and writes a figure. Its Studio showed airquality.csv, analysis.R, Commands and ozone.svg. After all four were closed from their tabs, now and a moment early in the work both read "No views in this layout. The saved layout is empty. No view is created automatically." The only way back was Undo, once per close.

The cause was in web/studio-process.tsx: once arranged, the saved layout keeps every view the person has closed out of the page, and a replay applied the same rule, so a replayed moment showed only the views the person still had.

Changed

Rho only (web/studio-process.tsx, web/shell/process-views.tsx, web/shell/regions.tsx, web/shell/workspace.tsx, web/shell/shell.css, web/theme.css):

• A replay shows the work then. A moment replayed shows every view the work had at that moment, also those the person closed; with none of theirs left it shows the work laid out by role. Returning to now keeps their closes.
• Lay out the work again. A conversation's Studio with every view closed says so, that its files, commands and versions are kept, and offers Lay out the work again: one conditional write of the arrangement the roles call for, which Undo reverses.
• Reopen one. Each group's + in a conversation's Studio lists the work's closed views and opens the one chosen in that group. The one list of views a narrow stage shows has a + too, adding beside the view shown.
• The close message is hidden during a replay, where its Undo would act on the present.
• A file with no kept version in a replay. The user then pressed Play and the page went white. A text file the work touched without a kept version (its capture was refused) made its view read a first version that did not exist; it now says no version was kept, so it cannot be shown as it was then, with Show it now. Showing closed views in a replay made this far likelier to be met.

Runs

Run	What happened	Cause	Change
f	Closed: the message and the button. Replay: airquality.csv, analysis.R and Commands, the figure not yet made. The button laid out all four. One closed, then + was missing.	The notes and Agent panel left the stage under 640 px, and its one list had no +.	The list has a +.
g	+ listed ozone.svg and put it back. The entry sat centred, and the close message stayed on during the replay.	Add entries without a second label centred; the message ignored the replay.	Entries start at the left; no message in a replay.
replica	A copy of the user's project and state under work/studio-human/replica/, paths rewritten, served apart. Play went white at 21:23:56: "Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'at')". With the change it played to now, and at 21:23:59 settings.local.json said no version was kept.	Its capture had been refused (409), so it had no versions, and the replay note read the first one.	The note handles a file with none.

Checks

• acceptance:agent-canvas adds one check: all five views of the conversation's Studio closed from their tabs, the message shown, a moment replayed showing the data read then, and Lay out the work again bringing back all five. It fails on the previous build at the message and passed twice on this one (10/10), and again (10/10) after the replay fix. The stand-in Agent's files all keep versions, so that fix was seen on the replica only.
• Against the separate browser build: frontend 14/14 twice (a first run failed reading the editor at once after a reload, a step this pass does not touch), objects passed; layout, shell-layout and conversation Studio tests 25/25, shell boundary 2/2, both type checks.

Limits

• With some views closed and the rest moved about, there is no single command for the roles' arrangement; it is offered only once every view is closed.
• A view the person closes stays closed at now even when the work later writes a new version of its file.