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.

One workspace and the Graph

Updated 2026-10-28.

Question

After the drag pass the user said the Agent canvas and the workspace should be one page: the person and the Agent can share a context only if they work in the same place. They asked for a Graph page instead, as a way of showing what the Agent did, and gave four references: a project graph of questions, data, scripts, tables, figures and notes joined by labelled relations; a task panorama with stages, cards that carry tables and charts, an Agent flag on the card it works on and a timeline of small actions; a focus path through one result with a legend separating recorded relations from Agent suggestions; and a stage flow with a side panel. They left the treatment open ("你觉得要做出彩，应该怎么做就怎么做").

The references set the kind of page, not values to copy. The questions:

1. Do the person's views and the Agent's files land in one workspace either can arrange?
2. Can a person tell from one page what the Agent read, changed and ran for each question, and what came of it, without opening the conversation?
3. Can a person trace one result back to its data and question, and watch the work happen, live or replayed?

Observed before

• Following opened the Agent's files in a separate agent-canvas workspace. The person's own workspace (workspace, where Open in Studio and Files placed views) never received them, so the two had different views of the same files.
• The Agent page listed each message's files and commands as text. Nothing joined a file one message wrote to the message that read it later.
• The conversation record gives each tool step one time, its latest report: when it started while it runs and when it returned once it has. A finished command's record does not say when it started.
• A folder walk listed names and sizes, not when a file changed, so nothing could say which files changed while a command ran.

Changed

Rho only:

• One workspace (web/canvas.ts, web/main.tsx, web/project.tsx, web/preview.tsx, web/overview.tsx). Following, Open in Studio, opening a file from Files and a file named on the Agent page all use the workspace on screen, else the one last open in this tab, else the first, else a new workspace. A file the Agent opens joins the group the Agent's work made for its side, else a group already holding that side's views (editor for code; table and media for data and figures), else an empty workspace's one group; otherwise its side gets a group at that edge. Only groups the Agent's work made close their oldest views past six. The workspace's own Follow Agent and Step away buttons are hidden there; Studio's Follow is the one control. A file the person opens is held while following goes on; one following brings is only shown. An existing agent-canvas stays an ordinary workspace.

• When files changed (src/server.ts, src/protocol.ts): project.entries returns modifiedAt for each entry.

• What changed during a message (src/conversations.ts, src/protocol.ts): the service walks the project's files (time and size, without .rho and .git) when a message starts and again when it ends, and keeps the added, modified and removed ones on the message as files. At most 20000 files are compared and 200 changes kept, the rest counted; a walk stopped at its limit marks the record partial and calls nothing removed. It says what changed meanwhile, not what made the change.

• The work as a graph (src/work-graph.ts, DOM-free). Nodes are each question, each project file a message read, edited or wrote, each command, and each file that changed on disk during a message. Edges carry their basis:

  • the Agent reported it: read, edited, wrote, ran;
  • named in a command: the script a command runs, or another file it names;
  • seen changing on disk: changed while a command ran (between the step before it and its return), or during the message when no command was running. A finished message uses its recorded changes; a running one, or a record from before them, uses each file's last change time, up to when the next message was sent.

  Messages are named by conversation and message, so two conversations' first messages stay apart.

  A file a message changed is its output, not its input; reading it only after it changed is looking at the output. Refused steps and paths outside the project are left out. At most 6 conversations × 8 messages and 160 nodes are drawn; past that the newest messages are kept whole and the page says how many it left out.

• The Graph page (web/graph.tsx, web/graph.css; the sidebar row after Studio):

  • each message is one row read left to right, from what it took in to what changed while its command ran; a file an earlier row touched appears in a later row as a small reference that goes there; questions stand in one column;
  • cards show a table's first rows and size and a figure's pixels (at most 16 previews a page, two read at a time, figures up to 2 MB), and a question's card the start of the Agent's answer;
  • choosing a node shows the path it came by and what it fed, and the inspector shows the file in its own view, its history and its relations, with Open in workspace; arrow keys walk along the edges and within a column;
  • the timeline marks each message as a band and each action as a tick; dragging, the arrow keys or Play show the graph as it stood then, with a caption naming the action; long pauses between messages are cut;
  • while the Agent works, its card carries the Agent's flag, new cards arrive with a short mark and the line into the live card moves; Follow keeps it in view and the files still open in the shared workspace, without leaving the Graph;
  • a step that waits for the person's choice turns its flag amber, the header shows Needs your choice, and the inspector answers it with the Agent's own options;
  • pan by dragging or scrolling, zoom with pinch, ⌘/Ctrl-scroll, the buttons or +/−/0; far out a card is its name, drawn to be read; a map shows the rest when the graph does not fit.

Runs

Evidence: work/graph-20261027/ (ignored by Git). look.mjs drives a controlled peer that runs the real Rscript in a disposable project; agent.mjs asks the person's own Claude Code.

Run	What was looked at	Observed	Change
look.mjs 1	Two messages, whole graph	Inputs were drawn right of the question that read them	Layers keep each edge's direction; sources sit just before their reader
look.mjs 2	Edge labels	Every output said "changed meanwhile": a finished step's time is its return	A command spans the step before it to its return; its card sits at the start
look.mjs 3–4	Fit, 1440 px	One long chain; at fit no title could be read	One row per message with references; large names far out; a map; opening at 78%
look.mjs 5	Labels, replay	Labels overlapped; the caption lower-cased the command	Wider gaps, two-line labels, the question→run line hidden when a file joins them
Claude Code 1	Real run from the Graph	Claude asked to run a command and waited 8 minutes; the card said Running	A waiting step turns amber, the header says so and the inspector answers it
Claude Code 2	Two messages (English, Chinese), Sonnet 5.5	5 and 3 choices answered on the Graph; 61 s and 37 s; 9 views in one workspace, no page errors. Message 2 reran analysis.R, so the figure message 1 made was drawn only as message 2's output	Each message keeps what changed on disk while it ran
acceptance	Back-to-back messages	plot.R, written in message 2, was drawn as changed in message 1: its 2.5 s grace ran past the next send	Changes belong to a message until the next one is sent
acceptance	Open in workspace while following	The workspace opened on airquality.csv, not the table asked for	A file the person opens is held
Claude Code 3	The same two messages again	5 and 3 choices answered on the Graph; 76 s and 40 s; no page errors. The figure reads Changed 2× and its path reaches both commands that rewrote it. The inspector's history squeezed each message's name into a sliver beside a long command	The name goes on its own line under what happened (inspect.mjs)

Checks

• test/work-graph.test.mjs (6): edges and the window of a finished command; later messages, refused steps, paths outside the project, the live step and a waiting choice; a change after the next message was sent, and two conversations' messages kept apart; recorded changes that survive a later rewrite; a layout that is deterministic, without overlaps and with sources before readers; rows, references and aligned questions.
• test/acp-conversations.test.mjs: a message records the files added and removed on disk while it ran; a comparison stopped at its limit says it is partial and calls nothing removed. test/web-style.test.mjs caught a stylesheet token (--k) read but not declared.
• Ledger: Rho 212/212 (serial) and Plugins 92/92 (ledger).
• npm run acceptance:graph 8/8 (above); acceptance:agent-canvas 10/10, now checking one workspace with the Agent's data group beside the person's script and Graph in the sidebar; frontend 13/13, agent-ui 7/7, continuity 7/7, sources 7/7, objects 5/5, actions 6/6, shell, pages, person and plugin UI (9 checks).
• build:service, build:web, the web type check and check:contracts passed.
• Documents: links and anchors of this page, Status, Frontend, the index and the canvas episode were checked and their rendered pages read.

Limits

• Edges come from the Agent's reports, command lines and file times. A change seen while a command ran says when, not that the command made it; a file changed by something else at that moment would be drawn the same way.
• A file a message is still writing, or one in a record from before the change record, is placed by its last change: a later message that rewrites it moves it there. Earlier versions are not drawn, only that each message changed the file.
• Commands the Agent runs outside the project, such as reading its own Skill files, are drawn like the project's; their titles show paths outside the project.
• At the opening zoom the map can cover the lower-left card until the view moves.
• Only files the folder walk reaches (48 folders, 5 levels, 4000 files) can be seen changing.
• The Agent's own account of its work (task.map.declare, items with from) is not drawn yet; the Graph shows only what the records show.
• Previews capture a snapshot of the file through Files, as showing it in place does.
• No person other than the builder has used the page.

The timeline, the Overview and Host activity

Updated 2026-10-28. The user called the Host activity section on Outside Rho "still like shit", asked for the Overview too, and for the bar under the Graph to be richer, with two references: a panoramic timeline with a legend of kinds, coloured blocks, a time axis and a labelled current-time marker; and one swimlane per Agent with thinking, tool, waiting and failed blocks, play and 1×/2× speed.

Observed before, on a copy of the person's own project (two real conversations, five messages, six figures in ggplot2-demo/out), at 1440 and 390 px:

• The Graph's bar was one flat strip of equal dots. It could not say which conversation a step belonged to, what kind of step it was, or how long a pause was.
• The Overview listed workspaces and results as text and carried the observation's diagnostics as paragraphs. None of the six figures was shown as a picture.
• Host activity (the Agent plugin's ActivityFeed) was paragraphs under a heading: the lost Host, the counts, each action and the output folder all in the same text.

Changed:

• Timeline. One lane per conversation, named by its title and Agent mark. Each step is a block in its kind's colour, read from the same GraphEvent actions the Graph draws (asked, read, edited, ran, changed on disk, answered); a refused or unknown step is marked as failed. The legend counts each kind and filters to it. Messages less than 30 s apart form one stretch, sized by the square root of its length; between stretches the pause folds to a 44 px gap labelled with its length. The axis picks a tick step that keeps labels 72 px apart. Hovering a block names it and its time; replay labels the head with its time and plays at 1×, 2× or 4×.
• Overview. The same timeline in small (no controls) heads the page under "What the Agent did" and one line: questions, conversations, commands, files changed and the last time. Results follow as cards newest first, a figure as its pixels and a table as its first rows (web/previews.ts, shared with the Graph's cards), eight in all. Workspaces are cards naming their views. Shared notes is one row with its unsaved state; what the observation left out folds under Observation notes.
• Host activity (Rho-plugins, Agent 0.4.14). ActivityFeed draws itself with a prefixed stylesheet on the embedding's colour tokens: a lost Host is one card with Reconnect, counts are tiles, each action a card with its state, and Outputs a folder field and file rows. Its reads, limits and wording of facts are unchanged.

Runs (work/timeline-20261028/look.mjs, evidence in before/, after*/):

Run	Observed	Change
1440, Graph	Both lanes were titled "hi", the first message	Lanes use the Agent's title for the conversation
1440, Graph	The pause label sat on the next stretch's first tick	The gap became 44 px and the label a small pill
390, Host	Rho's label style stacked "Project folder" over its field	The plugin's form row sets its own direction and margin
390, Host	"Refresh outputs" broke onto two lines	Buttons keep one line; the form wraps instead
acceptance:frontend, four widths	The Overview card selector had changed. Registered run results showed only their kind under a hashed .rho/plugins/runs/… folder; on phones shared notes stood centred in a column	The check opens the workspace card; a result previews its exact version and reads Run output; the notes keep icon and text side by side
1440 and 390, all three	23 actions in two lanes with a 2.8 h fold; six figure thumbnails; the lost-Host card; no page errors, no horizontal overflow	—

Checks: ledger Rho 218/218 and Plugins 92/92 (ledger); graph 8/8, frontend 13/13, continuity 7/7, agent-page 7/7, agent-canvas 10/10, agent-ui 7/7, sources 7/7, objects 5/5, actions 6/6, plugin-dx 3/3, shell, pages at four widths, person and plugin UI; build, the web type check and check:contracts passed.

Limits:

• Block colours say what the record says a step was, not whether its result is right. Changed on disk keeps the Graph's limit: it says when, not who.
• The Overview shows eight results. A file's preview captures a snapshot through Files and a registered result is read at its version; at most 16 per page, two at once, figures up to 2 MiB and tables to 3 rows by 4 columns. A file that cannot be previewed shows its kind.
• The activity feed was then run with real Claude Code and dsh through the collector (runs 7–8): paths now read relative to the project and opening the section brings it into view.
• No person other than the builder has used these pages.