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.

Simulated analysis projects

On 2026-10-29, Rho was started from source and two disposable projects built from rho-bio-eval capsules, bix-18 and bix-41, were run through it, giving the screens real content to review. Each project held only its capsule's data and a questions file. Notebooks and gold answers were left out. Question text stayed outside every repository, so this record names capsules and question ids only. The bix-41 q3 basis stated its ratio rule, and the strain identifier was to be read as text.

The run

The service ran from dist/cli.js with a disposable root and state under /tmp, the debug Core binary and the system Rscript. A headless Chrome on the same loopback page took the screenshots. Projects were registered with project.open. Clicking Open folder from the headless browser once opened the native folder dialog on the person's screen, and the folder the person chose there was left alone. Conversations were started from the Agent panel with Claude Code. The person answered every native permission request; the scripts only watched.

• bix-18: the first conversation failed because the default model was not available from the configured provider. The person chose another model, and a new conversation finished in 53 s.
• bix-41: the conversation finished in 12 min with 110 steps and no permission requests.

Both answered every question in agreement with the capsule's gold answers (compared outside the repository). The screenshots also stay outside the repository, because they show question text.

What the screens showed

1. Studio opened every file the Agent named. At nine views, the newest one, the answers file, showed "This layout has reached its view limit".
2. The answer, and the method it used, appeared only in the Agent panel. Overview showed counts, the timeline and figures.
3. With 110 steps, the Graph became a tall column of near-identical "analysis.py · Captured 3×" cards, and the question and results were off screen. In bix-18, repeated "captured observation" labels covered the cards.
4. Review refused row questions on the result CSV ("Rows have no key") even though one column was a unique identifier. Its page used native selects and different margins.
5. In the panel:
   • Wide tables were cut off.
   • An empty "no recorded action" block always showed.
   • A failure was shown twice, with the provider name masked in only one copy.
6. Labels and naming:
   • Legend labels were truncated.
   • Files titled kept results by their SHA-256.
   • Two projects shared the same rail initials.
   • The model chip read "Model".
   • inventory.json was listed under Data.
   • Each conversation was titled from its first words.
   • The address bar always read /.
7. After a service restart, a folder the person had chosen in the system dialog was gone from their project list.

Changes

• Studio (web/shell/workspace.tsx): the views on screen always render, then the most recently shown, then the rest in layout order, up to the eight-view budget. A hidden view past the budget unmounts and mounts again from its owner, which keeps its buffer and undo but not its scroll or selection. The U2 browser acceptance now opens nine views, expects no limit page and at most eight editors.
• Overview:
  • It leads with the latest answer: the newest finished conversation's question and last answer, its time, duration and model, and Open conversation.
  • The results list names a kept version by the project file it was taken from.
• Graph (foldVersions in src/work-graph.ts):
  • One message draws one card per file, holding every captured version.
  • When a message runs three or more commands that touched no project file, they fold into one "N other commands" card listing each command with its ending, duration and output.
  • Lane names that repeat carry their start time.
  • The legend wraps at narrow widths and reads "Versions kept".
• Agent panel:
  • A failure the Agent's last words already state is shown once (masked URLs included).
  • The empty Agent column is hidden.
  • Tables scroll sideways with edge shadows and keep numbers whole.
• Agent page: conversation details stack below 820 px.
• Review (Annotations 0.5.2):
  • The person's questions and the kept results are choices, newest version of each result first with a count of earlier ones.
  • Any other exact version stays selectable.
  • The page uses the project pages' width and margins.
• Rail: where initials collide, a project is marked by the part of its name that differs ("18", "41").
• Settings chip: it reads "Default model" until a model is chosen.
• Server: the local person's chosen folders survive a restart. Each carried grant still names one registered, natively selected project, and a paired tab does not see it. The new browser test fails on the earlier code.
• Local tab identity (web/main.tsx): rerunning the U2 browser acceptance for the Studio change stopped before its budget check, as a run from 2026-10-28 already had. The person's own edit was labeled "Another tab". Since local access replaced links on 2026-10-25, a tab on this machine had not named its principal. It now names browser:local, so the person's own changes read "You" and keep the own-undo hint.

Verification

The same projects were reopened after the changes:

• Studio showed the answers file.
• Overview showed the latest answer with its numbers and method, and the legend read whole.
• The bix-41 Graph read 1 question · 9 files · 18 runs, with one "13 other commands" card.
• The panel showed the failure once, and tables kept their numbers intact.
• Review showed its choices.
• Files showed original names, and the rail read 18 and 41.
• At 390 px no page scrolled horizontally.

Owner and application suites passed as recorded in the ledger. The U2 browser acceptance passed, including nine views with at most eight editors (work/u2-ui-closeout/browser-1793285040156/), and so did the review-evidence acceptance after its chooser step moved to the new choices.

Left open

• Row questions on an ordinary CSV need an identity choice: the person declares a key column (a capture with an explicit key), or a row is anchored by position within one exact version.
• Pages have no addresses of their own.
• inventory.json stays under Data, which is its kind by file name.
• The provider name is masked in errors but not in the Agent's own text.
• Conversation titles are still taken from their first words.
• A grant lost before the server change has to be reopened once.
• No independent researcher has used these screens.

Second pass

On 2026-10-30 the person looked at the changed screens and named what was still wrong. A separate Review page was not where a researcher or an Agent would go to question an answer. The Overview set things side by side without saying how they related. Commands the Agent ran had no place of their own, and a person had nowhere to run a step themselves. They suggested a Console plugin and asked whether the screens needed a layout grammar. The design agreed on was:

• The answer is the page. A board derived from the Graph shows one message's answer with its results, the method, the run, its inputs and its report, each in a role.
• Questions and decisions happen on the answer. A person asks about a result or a passage in place, which sends a message to the same conversation. The person's word is bound to the versions the message kept.
• A Console records every command, the Agent's and the person's. The person can run a step, stop it and run it again.
• Studio is the person's own arrangement. Following the Agent happens on the board.

A grammar for arbitrary layouts was not built. The board's roles are the one arrangement the runs so far called for.

Changes

• Console 0.1.0 (Rho-plugins plugins/console): console.run/list/output/stop keep each command's change identity, who ran it, folder, pid, ending and head-and-tail output under .rho/plugins/console/. Stop reaches the command's whole process group. After a restart, a live command is continuing and a vanished one unknown. Rho admits console.run and console.stop from the local browser only; Agent grants may read the record (Headless).
• Console page (web/console.tsx): newest first, each message's commands sit under it, with the person's own between them and managed runs last. A command shows its ending, duration, output and the files that changed while it ran. Run again puts an Agent's command into the prompt to check.
• Agent 0.4.19: a command's whole text is kept, up to 8 KiB. Before, an inline Python here-document was recorded as its first line and could not be read or run again. Older records still have only that line, and say so instead of offering Run again.
• Answer board (src/answer-board.ts, web/answer-board.tsx), which leads the Overview: the figure or table the answer names leads, and the other results sit beside or below it. The method, the run, a count of other commands (opening the Console), inputs and report follow. Ask on a result, or Ask about this on a selected passage, sends a question that names what it is about, including the exact kept version. Later questions that made no results stay with the answer under Asked since.
• Decisions (conversation.decide): Use this answer, or Needs changes with a note that is also sent to the Agent. Each decision is bound to the versions the message kept, names results it does not cover and files changed since, and supersedes without deleting. Review is listed only while a project has review records.
• Capture (src/conversations.ts): a file seen again with the same bytes, a key already tried, or a file with a capture still pending no longer spends the message's budget. The final collection at turn end does not count against the attempt limit.
• Graph: a question asked in place is titled by its question. A captured observation line is dropped where another line of the message already reaches the file; the redundant lines had made ← jump to the question.
• Studio: nothing opens there by itself. A message sent from Studio leaves the person there, and Follow goes to the board.

What the runs showed

Asking in place. On the earlier bix-41 project, Ask on figure.png sent a question about the kept version. Claude Code answered from analysis.py, citing its lines. The board then showed that answer in place of the original one, since the newest message had led it. Later questions that make no results now follow the answer they ask about.

Results with no kept version. The first bix-41 message had filled its 64-record capture budget and counted 2,024 omitted captures. Repeated reads of the same unchanged script and data had each spent an attempt, so several results kept no version. A decision on it therefore read "Not covered" for those results. The capture change and its test (test/answer-decisions.test.mjs) address the cause.

Commands. The Console listed the old run's commands under their message. An inline script showed only its first line, which led to the Agent 0.4.19 change. The person's own commands streamed output, ended with their exit code, stopped, and ran again. At 390 px nothing scrolled sideways.

Interface faults, both fixed: a board card turned green on hover, because its role class collided with the global .primary button style, and a hook placed after an early return caused React error #310.

A fresh run. A new disposable copy of bix-41 (data and questions file only) was given the same message from the Overview. Claude Code answered in 11 min with 39 steps and 19 commands, and asked for no permissions. Its capture record held 23 versions with no omissions. All six results were kept (the figure in four versions, answers.md in two, the others once), as was figure.pdf. The board led with the figure, then the three tables and answers.json. Below them came the script's outline, python3 -I analysis.py with the seven files it changed, 18 other commands, the data and questions it read, and answers.md.

Faults seen in the fresh run:

• The model's provider broke off once mid-response. The Agent's text then read as an API error, and the board showed it as the answer while the message ran.
• The model's next call had truncated input, and Claude Code refused it (tool_use_error). The Console and Graph had counted that refusal as a failed command titled "Terminal". A refusal Claude Code answers this way, with no exit code, is now a refused step: it is marked on the timeline and drawn as no run.
• While the message ran, the board's header read "Working · … · Working", and Work progress repeated the board above it. The header now names the step ("Running python3 analysis.py"). Work progress lists only sessions the board does not show, and choices waiting in it.
• The answer's four numbered items each rendered as "1.", because blank lines separated them. A list now continues across blank lines and keeps its first number.
• answers.json was an empty card; a text result now shows its first lines.
• The Graph still drew a captured-observation line beside each read line, since a read runs from the file to the question. A capture line now goes whenever another line of the message touches the file.

Deciding and asking on the fresh answer. Use this answer recorded "for the 10 file versions this message kept", with nothing reported as not covered. The answer ended by naming its own two judgment calls: what counted as "equivalent", and the distance used for "most similar". That sentence was selected and asked about in place. The header named the question being answered, but cut it off mid-phrase with no ellipsis, which was corrected. Claude Code answered in 2 min without running anything: with a prespecified margin, the count in the first answer would drop from six to none. The reply stayed under Asked since, below the answer it asks about, with the passage it quoted on its own line. The decision recorded before stayed as it was.

Verification

On the fresh project after these changes:

• The board showed the results with answers.json's first lines, and the follow-up under the answer.
• The Console listed the 18 commands that ran; the refused call was no longer among them.
• The Graph drew no captured-observation lines and read 2 questions · 10 files · 18 runs.
• At 390 px neither the Overview nor the Graph scrolled sideways, and no page errors were logged.

Suites and acceptances are recorded in Status and the ledger.

Left open

• Agent-declared choices were agreed (the Agent declares its choices, and the person answers Agree or No on the board) but not built. In the fresh run the Agent stated its two judgment calls in one sentence of its answer and in answers.md. It did not declare them through Rho: a Rho-started session can reach Rho, but nothing asked it to. Asking about that sentence in place showed that one of the calls decides an answer. Building it needs a public declaration (or a kind of task-map item), wording that asks the Agent to use it, and a per-choice record that holds, like conversation.decide, for the versions the message kept. That choice is the person's.
• A layout grammar: the board is one arrangement derived from roles. Whether other answers need the Agent to compose their own arrangement is not yet observed.
• Row questions on an ordinary CSV still need an identity choice, and pages still have no addresses.
• An Agent's interim text (such as a provider error mid-response) shows as the answer while the message runs.
• No independent researcher has used these screens.

Process Studio

After the second pass the person said Studio should not be cut back to the person's own arrangement. Studio is where a person sees, in one space, how the Agent got the work done; the Overview and the Console stay as focused views. The actions, outputs and commands need their own components and a layout that holds that much. The steps of the work belong in a small aid generated as the Agent works. Time belongs down the side, beside the conversation, so that a replay plays the two together. They framed it as a layout grammar and content question as much as a visual one, and chose one Studio per conversation started in Rho.

Changes

• One Studio per conversation (web/studio-process.tsx): a tab for each of the newest conversations, ahead of the person's own workspaces. The layout is derived from the conversation's record until the person arranges it. It is then saved as conversation-<id>: later files join their role's place and files the person closed stay closed (studioMerge, by the time the layout was last saved).
• Layout by role (src/studio-layout.ts): each file takes the role the answer board gives it, from the whole record. Inputs, the code and a Commands view stack on one side; figures sit above the tables and reports on the other. Each role has one place and a limit (studioLimits); further files stay in Files. A role first appears when the work first had such a file.
• Versions in place (web/shell/process-views.tsx): a file's view names the kept version it shows, with earlier and later. A view's properties hold only its declared title, so the file is found again from the view's id.
• Commands (CommandPane in web/console.tsx): the conversation's commands oldest first, as a terminal reads, with the files each changed and the person's own commands and prompt below.
• Parts of the work (src/studio-chapters.ts): a chip in the Studio bar names the part in progress, in the Agent's own words between steps or by what the steps did, with rounds of editing and running. Provider error notices open no part.
• Time beside the conversation: a timeline down the stage's right edge, long pauses folded. Choosing a moment there, a part or another version cuts the record at that second (src/replay.ts). The views, commands, part and the conversation in the Agent panel all show it; a text file shows the version kept then, read only. At phone width the timeline is a row with play, the moment and steps.
• Following: Follow and the topbar chip open the running conversation's Studio, which brings forward the file the Agent is on, or Commands while it runs one. Sending from the person's own workspace leaves them there.

What the runs showed

The recorded bix-41 run, replayed. The second pass's fresh project (two messages, 10 kept versions of the script, 4 of the figure) was opened in its Studio. The first screen had no script and no question file: text views arrive after the editor's document opens, and the live layout took a new arrangement only when its saved version changed. A derived layout is now taken as given each time. Stepping to the moment the script was written showed "no version kept" beside "Wrote analysis.py": the write and its kept version fell 76 ms apart in the same displayed second, so a moment now holds its whole second. In that second the Agent also announced its next command, which won the step and kept the script behind Commands; a file written in the same second now comes forward. In the canvas acceptance's controlled run, the steps chip named a part by what it went on to do ("Edited analysis.R") while the conversation beside it had only read the data; it now names the part from the steps taken by then.

Saying only what the record holds. During replay every command read "changed no project file". The record keeps each file's last change, so a run whose output was rewritten later has no change of its own. The fold now says "with no recorded file change", in the Console too. A command with no reported exit code had shown as a red "Finished"; only a failure or a non-zero exit is marked now.

Arranging. Closing a view failed: the catalog accepts only a title property, and the views carried their path and role. The file is now found from the view's id; closing a view saved conversation-<id>, and after a reload the closed view stayed closed and the rest kept their places.

A live run, watched from its Studio. A fresh copy of the bix-41 inputs was answered by Claude Code (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) in 13 min, with no permission requests. The message was started from Studio and Follow opened its Studio. The data and question file appeared as inputs, then the script, then the results beside them, and the Agent's marker moved between Read, Wrote, Edited and Running. The script was kept 26 times and the figure twice. The chip named 16 parts in the Agent's own words, and a failed run showed as a red mark on the timeline. No page errors were logged. Between two updates the results tabs swapped places while nothing about those files had changed: a role's files had followed the board's order of the moment. They now keep the order the work first had them, after the result an answer led with. The long command in the topbar chip clipped the breadcrumb on both sides; crumbs now shorten at their end before the page name. Replayed afterwards at 04:43:42, the conversation showed the Agent 1:50 in, running a SciPy check, and Commands showed that command still running. The Agent named one analysis choice in its answer rather than declaring it, as in the second pass.

Verification

• test/studio-process.test.mjs: the cut at a moment, the parts, roles and order from the whole record, the layout, and a saved arrangement merged with later files.
• acceptance:agent-canvas now checks that Follow opens the conversation's Studio with its data, script, commands, output, parts and timeline. It also checks that a moment chosen on the timeline shows the views and the conversation as they were then. The sources, graph, agent-page, agent-ui, review and ui:u2 acceptances passed unchanged.
• At 390 px the conversation's Studio shows one view at a time, with play, the moment and its steps in a row; nothing scrolled sideways.

Left open

• No independent person has watched a run or a replay in Studio.
• A command is credited only with files whose last change fell while it ran.
• Studio reads a conversation's newest 8 messages (processLimits.turns); earlier ones are not in its layout or timeline.
• A replayed text file is shown as plain read-only text, without the editor's highlighting. At 900 px the inputs' place leaves a table few rows.
• A saved conversation Studio counts toward the project's 32 layouts and cannot yet be removed.
• Agent-declared choices, row identity on an ordinary CSV and page addresses remain as recorded in the second pass.

Project notes

After the process Studio the person asked for the notes to be organized: a project has several sessions and several Studio layouts, so Studio should list the sessions under it with fitting titles, and the whole project should share one set of notes, a special component. Their sketch put a notes column with Question, Data & method, Key results (with a figure) and To do beside the code, commands, figure, table, timeline and Agent panel. They chose one section per session in a shared file, titled by the Agent's heading there, read formatted with tickable to-dos and a toolbar that writes the Markdown.

Changes

• Sessions under Studio (web/project.tsx): the sidebar lists each session started in Rho under Studio, newest first (eight, then All sessions), then the person's workspaces. The Studio bar names the one shown, with its steps, Follow, Notes and Arrange views; the tabs across the bar are gone.
• One set of notes (src/project-notes.ts, web/project-notes.tsx): project-notes.md at the project root, an ordinary file every session reads and edits with its own tools. Rho appends to a session's Agent instructions that it keep one section there: a level-2 heading naming its task, <!-- rho:session <id> --> on the next line, then Question, Data & method, Key results with a figure and To do as a task list, changing only its own section (Agent 0.4.20 passes them as ACP systemPrompt, append, on session/new and session/load). A session's title is its heading there, else the Agent's title, else its first message.
• The notes panel: one view of the file's shared buffer beside any Studio layout, opened at the shown session's section and hidden or shown from the bar (remembered in this browser; hidden at first below 768 px, where it replaces the stage). Markdown 0.2.0 ticks a to-do by editing its line through the buffer, hides comment-only lines and gives its editor bold, italic, two heading levels, lists and to-dos (Documents 0.4.8 hands it the editor). The person's edits are saved after a 1.5 s pause with the buffer's write conditions; the editor's own Save and highlight controls stay out of the column.

What the runs showed

The recorded bix-41 run with notes. A notes file was written by hand into the third copy, with a section for its conversation and one of the person's own with no marker. The session's row under Studio, the Studio bar and the breadcrumb took the section's heading in place of the conversation's first-message title, and the panel opened with that heading marked. Three defects showed and were fixed. The to-do boxes sat centred on lines of their own: Rho's form styles make a label a column. After a blank line the list turned loose (<li><p><label>), so the reader's fix now matches any label in a to-do. The steps chip overlapped the Notes button, because its slot had no width of its own; the date left the bar and the buttons drop their names when the Studio is narrow. In Edit the editor's Save and highlight controls covered the panel's title, and the Read button disappeared: the reader had stopped rendering its own modes in Edit, so a workspace pane could not return to Read either. A ticked box and a typed line each reached the file about 1.5 s later and the panel said Saved; hiding, showing and 760 px behaved. A project with no notes showed the hint and wrote no file.

A live session keeping its section. A fourth copy of the bix-41 inputs (the question file and the data only) was answered from Studio by Claude Code (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) in 5.6 min, with no permission requests and no page errors. Near the end the Agent created project-notes.md with its own tools, in the asked shape: a level-2 heading naming the task, its session marker on the next line, then Question, Data & method (the data file, the tests and the script), Key results with the figure embedded, and To do with every item ticked. About 6 s later, while the turn was still running, the sidebar row, the Studio bar and the breadcrumb took that heading, and the panel showed the section with its figure. The Agent's answer pointed to the notes. The same screen had the notes twice: as an output the Agent wrote, the file took a place among the results. The project notes now take no place in a conversation's Studio. A long title squeezed the steps chip to two letters; the chip now keeps its width and the title shortens. A wrapped to-do continued under its box; to-dos now hang under their text.

Opening a project. The U2 acceptance then failed on its 200-row table blocks. Two 3-row reads of the same table came from the Overview's result cards before the workspace opened. With this pass's views but the notes hook disabled it passed, as it did with the previous views. Opening project-notes.md as every project opened had added a round trip that kept the Overview on screen a little longer. The notes are now opened only when the project has sessions started in Rho or the panel is shown, and the unchanged acceptance passes. The same run showed that notes open on a wide window took the whole page when it narrowed, so the views disappeared without the person doing anything. A window that narrows now closes the notes without changing the wide window's choice; at phone width they open only when asked.

Verification

• test/project-notes.test.mjs: sections and markers outside code, a duplicate, late or fenced marker, the title and byte limits, and instructions that name the file and marker and carry nothing of the person's question.
• test/studio-process.test.mjs: a session's project notes take no place in its Studio (the test fails without the change).
• Plugins: Agent instructions appended on session/new and session/load; Markdown to-do source lines, comment-only lines, ticking and the formatting edits.
• acceptance:agent-canvas checks the conversation's row under Studio and the Studio title; acceptance:sources uses Edit and returns with Read.
• Browser checks on disposable copies: ticking and typing reached the file and said Saved; the toolbar wrote to-dos; hide, show, 760 px and a project with no notes.

Left open

• No independent person has used the notes or the session list.
• In a project without sessions, leaving Studio within the pause keeps the person's edit in the buffer, unsaved, until the notes are next shown.
• An Agent writing its section while the person has unsaved notes edits was not observed. Documents merges a file change into unsaved text when the lines differ; otherwise the save fails on its disk condition and the panel says Not saved.
• Sessions cannot be renamed from Rho; the title follows the heading in the file.
• The sketch's dark terminal, labelled figure versions, compare button and file cards in the Agent panel were not built.

Meaning layer

The person then asked for the semantics of the work: artifacts had almost no natural language description, and the Graph had only actions. They chose the project notes as the source, with provenance; a Graph that shows the meaning by default, can be followed into the process and can show either layer alone; descriptions written by the model while the work goes on; and the Agent's choices folded into choice nodes. A choice must not make the person choose: the results are prepared so the person sees what each option gives.

Changes

• The notes as statements (src/notes-meaning.ts): each session's section is read by subsection into its question, data and method, findings, figures, choices with the options not taken, file descriptions and to-dos, each with the project files it links (Markdown links, or a path in inline code). A file is described by its Files entry, else a figure's description, else the data and method statement that names it first.
• Provenance: the kept versions of project-notes.md in the Agent's record are read oldest first (meaningLimits); a statement was written by the message whose version first holds its lines, and each file it names is the version kept then. A newer kept version, or a later write on disk, is named as such; a statement in no kept version is said to be outside the record.
• Layers (src/meaning-graph.ts, web/graph.tsx): one row per section, from the question to findings and choices, the files they rest on, and how those came about (made by, reads), taken from the process record with its basis. Meaning + process draws the meaning rows above the message rows with "kept as" and "written in" edges between them; Meaning or Process shows one. A card says who wrote it and when. Following a statement or file into the process selects and centres the kept version or the message.
• Descriptions where files are shown: the answer board's results and method, and each file view in a conversation's Studio, carry what the notes say the file holds.
• Choices without a decision asked for (web/choices.tsx): the option in use beside the others, each with what it gives and the files that show it, on the answer board and in the Graph. Use this instead drafts a message to the same conversation for the person to edit and send. No badge, waiting state or decision record is added.
• The session instructions now ask for fixed English subsection headings, links on every file mentioned, a finding per bullet linking its results, a Files entry when a file is first written, and each choice with a reasonable alternative recorded with what both options give, computing the alternative when cheap, without asking the person or waiting.

What the runs showed

The fourth copy's notes, read as meaning. Its section predates the new instructions: its findings named no files, and its figure followed them after a blank line. The layer drew the question, four findings, the figure by its description and the script, the last taken from the process record. The first reading attached the figure to the last finding; a figure now shows a finding only on the line right after it. A paragraph naming the data and the script had described both; a statement now describes only the first file it names. In Meaning only, the inspector offered no way into the process, because it looked for the message among the nodes on screen; it now looks in the process record. Following the figure into the process selected the kept version and its lineage.

A fifth copy under the new instructions. Claude Code (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) answered in 5.7 min, with no permission requests and no page errors. Its section linked every file it mentioned, gave each finding its result file, listed eight files with what each holds and recorded four choices. For one it computed the alternative and linked that table. The person sees both options on the answer board, and Use this instead drafts a message they can send. The notes were written twice, at 258 s and 290 s, after every result existed: the format was followed, the timing was not. Two readings were corrected. Options and descriptions that wrap onto a second line had lost that line, with an option's link to its table; wrapped lines now belong to the bullet they continue. Every finding was marked as written before its file changed. The Agent had edited the script and run it again 22 s after writing the findings, and the record kept no version of that run's outputs. The mark is kept and now distinguishes a newer kept version from a later write on disk; a capture of the same bytes is the same version.

A sixth copy, told to write the section first. The instructions now ask for the heading, question and method before any analysis, and for each file's entry before the next command. The Agent answered in 10.0 min, with no permission requests and no page errors. Its section appeared at 79 s, before any result, with the question, the data and the script; that much followed. Everything else arrived together at 512 s, when seven result files already existed: nine file entries, five findings each linking its table, a figure, and three choices, each with an alternative and the table showing it. Two of those alternatives were computed for the purpose. During the run the person saw a question and a plan, not what each new file holds. Instructions alone did not make this Agent describe its files as it wrote them.

Its notes linked the results folder itself, which had become a file card named results; a link ending in / now names no file. Choice cards cut their fourth line in half and now stop at three lines with an ellipsis, the full text staying in the inspector. The inspector's file rows had shrunk a path to five letters beside its version note; the note now sits below the path. The inspector headed a statement Found or Chose; it now names the section the statement belongs to.

Verification

• test/notes-meaning.test.mjs covers the parsing of each subsection, wrapped lines, file descriptions, links to folders and outside the project, the trace to kept versions with a newer kept version, a later write and a capture of the same bytes, and the meaning layer and its three graphs on a small process record.
• Rho 253/253 and the agent-canvas, sources, graph, agent-page, agent-ui, review and ui:u2 browser acceptances passed on the final build; no Plugins source changed, so Plugins 120/120 stands from the project notes pass.
• The fourth, fifth and sixth copies were read in a real browser in each layer, with a statement and a file followed into the process, and on the answer board with the descriptions, the choices and a drafted Use this instead message, which was not sent. No page errors.

Left open

• Descriptions during the run. The person asked for the model to describe the work while it goes on. Two rounds of instructions moved the section to the start of the run but not the file entries, which came with the findings near the end. Facts read from each file as it appears, such as rows, columns or image size, or a separate model that describes each new file, had not been built; the person chose both, built in the next pass.
• Choices are what the Agent declares. A choice the Agent took without writing it down does not appear, and an alternative is shown only as far as the Agent computed and linked it. Rho does not check that an alternative's table shows what its sentence says.
• No independent person has used the layers or the choices; every reading here is mine.
• Meaning only has no timeline: the timeline replays process events, and a statement has no events of its own beyond when its version of the notes was kept.
• Meaning + process is busy: the meaning rows and the message rows share one canvas, with trace edges between them; on the sixth copy the default view showed a slice of each. Whether a person follows a trace there has not been observed.
• Free-form notes: text under other headings, or between a section's heading and its first subsection, is not read as meaning and is not drawn.

Descriptions while the work goes on

The meaning layer left the person following a run with a question and a plan: the Agent described its files only at the end. The person chose both remedies: facts read from each file as soon as it is written, then one sentence from a model.

Changes

• Facts from the bytes (src/file-describer.ts): a table's rows and columns with their names, an image's size, a PDF's pages, a JSON value's shape, a Markdown file's lines and first heading, a script's lines and functions. They are bound to the digest of the bytes read, the same digest Files gives a kept version.
• While a message runs (Conversations): the project is compared with the start every 5 s, and each changed file that has rested 2 s is read. The facts are recorded with the message as descriptions in conversation.read. The notes file and known private locations are left out.
• The sentence (Agent 0.4.21 describeFile): the person's own Claude Code with every tool off, no MCP servers and no kept session, in an empty folder of Rho's state, using the conversation's model. It is given the path, the facts, the first lines and the person's request. A file is asked about at most once a minute while the message runs. A later version with the same facts keeps its sentence. Figures and PDFs keep their facts; a Codex session records facts only.
• Where it shows: above each file in a conversation's Studio, on the answer board and on the Graph's meaning cards. The notes' words lead, then the model's sentence followed by the model's name, then the facts in a muted line. The inspector says which it is. Results and figures join their conversation's meaning row as they appear, in a row of their own when the notes have no section yet. The Graph opens on that row's question.
• The session instructions ask the Agent to leave a subsection empty rather than write a placeholder.

What the runs showed

A seventh copy. Claude Code (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) answered in 6.3 min with no permission requests. Its section appeared at 45 s with placeholder bullets under Key results and Choices, which the Graph drew as a finding and a choice; the instructions now ask for empty subsections instead. The script had its facts at 110 s and a sentence 3 s later. Nine results appeared between 140 and 150 s. Each had facts within 6 s of being written and a sentence 10 s later (median), 18 s at most; the figure kept its size and bytes. The full section arrived at 328 s, and from then the notes' words led. The sentences stayed with what the columns and first lines show. One called a circularity column "circumference": a model's misreading, shown with the model's name.

The live Graph opened on empty canvas, because it was fitted before the meaning row existed. It now fits again whenever its layout changes until the person moves, zooms or selects, and opens on the meaning row's question. The meaning layer had also drawn project-notes.md as a file card; the notes are where the layer comes from, and the card is gone. A model mark at 12 px read as a plus sign; the model's name follows the sentence instead. Paging one result table failed with "CSV headers do not match the declared columns": a later version with new columns had been declared with the earlier version's columns. A version whose header differs is now declared from its own header. The version kept before the fix cannot be paged; kept versions are immutable.

An eighth copy. The message failed after 11 min at Claude Code's 64-step limit (maxAgentTurns), after it had written every result and its notes; nothing there came from the descriptions. Of 15 files, 13 had a sentence and the two figures kept their facts. Facts came within 4 s of each write. When nine files arrived at once, their sentences followed one after another, the last 26 s after its facts. The model was called 17 times, against 23 in the seventh copy. In Studio at five minutes, each table showed its sentence and model above its rows, and the figure its size. With the notes panel open, the Agent first tried to write the notes through Rho's document operations; four calls were refused for a missing field before it wrote the file itself. A finding whose bold ran across a code span kept its asterisks; bold across code is now removed.

A project without notes. The graph acceptance's project keeps no notes, and its results now made a meaning row. Its question card read "Section" and "Not in the Agent's record". A row with no section is now headed by the person's message, "Asked 15:42 · no notes yet", and its inspector leads to that message. The acceptance first failed because it read the process cards from the default layer; it now checks the meaning row's facts, then chooses Process.

Verification

• test/file-describer.test.mjs covers the facts of each kind and a message that writes a table and a figure. The table gets facts and a sentence while the message runs; the figure keeps facts, and the notes are left out. A rewrite with the same facts keeps the sentence without asking again. A description still being written when Rho stops reads back as unknown. test/capture-columns.test.mjs pages two versions of a table whose columns changed; it fails without the fix. The meaning tests cover described files in a row, the order of notes, sentence and facts, and a past moment.
• The Agent component's test/agent-describe.test.mjs checks the arguments (no tools, no MCP, no session), the bounded input, and a failure, an empty answer, unreadable output or a timeout, each reported once. Plugins 122/122.
• Rho 257/257, check:contracts, and the agent-canvas, sources, graph, agent-page, agent-ui, review and ui:u2 browser acceptances passed on the final build. The graph acceptance now also checks a project without notes in the meaning layer.
• The seventh and eighth copies were followed live in a real browser, with Studio screenshots every 20–25 s and the Graph and answer board read after each run.

Left open

• Figures and PDFs are described by their facts only; no model that reads images has been chosen. Addressed in the next pass.
• Sentences are not checked. One misread a column name. The model's name and the version it read are shown; nothing compares the sentence with the file.
• Cost. Each sentence spends the person's model budget, up to 24 calls per message; a probe call reported $0.013. The cost is kept with each sentence but not shown, and there is no switch to turn descriptions off other than the limits. Addressed in the next pass.
• Many quick rewrites of one file are described again at most once a minute; the facts follow every check.
• Step limit and document calls: the eighth copy ran out of Claude Code steps, part of them spent on refused document calls for the notes.
• No independent person has followed a run with these descriptions.

Figures, cost and a switch

The descriptions pass left figures with their facts, kept each call's cost without showing it and had no way to turn describing off. The person asked for models.dev: a model that reads images is shown the figure, any other is given the context that made it; the cost is shown, and a switch turns describing off.

Changes

• models.dev (Agent 0.4.22 ./models): Rho keeps a compact copy of models.dev's catalog in its state folder and reads it again once a day. A session's model is matched by the provider it names, else its maker's own listing, else every listing. westlakehpc/deepseek-v4.1-flash[1m] is listed under neither its gateway nor its maker, so it matched 99 listings: most say it takes images, and their median price is used.
• Image or context (Conversations, figureContext): a PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP figure goes to Claude Code as an image block when the model is listed as taking images. Otherwise, and for a PDF, the model is given the command that wrote the file, the lines of the scripts that command ran around where the file is named, and the Agent's last words before it. It is told it has not seen the figure. A model that refuses an image is given that context once, and the message's later figures are not sent as images.
• Cost: for this model Claude Code reports its cost basis as unknown and guesses a price, so each call is priced from its reported tokens at models.dev's price and marked estimated. A model Claude Code knows keeps Claude Code's figure. Each sentence keeps its cost and how it was priced; each message keeps descriptionSpend.
• Where it shows: the strip under the Agent panel adds "descriptions ≈$0.0086" beside the session's context and cost. Its popover holds the person's "Describe new files" switch, which applies to every conversation, and the spend with how it was priced. The Graph's inspector and a file line's hover text say how the model was given the file, why an image was not sent, and the call's cost. A card described from code says "from code".

What the run showed

A ninth copy. Claude Code (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) answered every question in 5.1 min with no permission requests. Thirteen description calls cost about $0.0086 in all at models.dev's median price, $0.0003 to $0.0012 each. The figure PNG (2885 × 2115 px, 312 KB) was rewritten twice and sent as an image each time; its first sentence came 19 s after its facts. That sentence called the mean ± SD panels "bubble charts". The next two named the panels by letter, the log-scale area axis and "mean ± SD" as labelled. The PDF of the same figure was described from analysis.py as "planned as a multi-panel figure", as instructed for a figure not seen. Sentences on text files stayed with their facts. The notes later described every file except the PDF, so the Graph led with the notes' words and only the PDF's card read "Described by deepseek-v4.1-flash from code".

In the first popover, the switch sat between the context and cost and the note "As Claude Code reported them … Rho does not measure these", which then seemed to cover the descriptions too. The switch now follows that note in its own section. One call's cost read "≈<$0.001"; amounts under a cent now keep four decimals ("About $0.0006"). The PDF's reason read "A model is shown PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP images only"; new reasons say "Only PNG, JPEG, GIF and WebP figures are sent as images." Turning the switch off in the browser wrote describe.enabled: false to the agent settings and changed the text below it to "No model is asked; each file shows the facts read from it"; turning it on wrote true. The popover fits at 1440, 760 and 390 px.

Verification

• The Agent component's test/agent-describe.test.mjs checks the stream-json arguments and image block, the context instructions, matching by provider, maker and median, each cost basis, and the catalog cache with its retry delay. Plugins 125/125.
• test/file-describer.test.mjs runs a message that writes a table and a figure. A model listed as taking images gets the figure as an image at an estimated cost. A model listed as text-only gets the command, the script's lines and the Agent's words, from plot.py. A model that refuses the image gets the context once, and that call counts as not priced. With the switch off no model is called. Each spend total is checked.
• Rho 258/258, check:contracts, and the agent-canvas, sources, graph, agent-page, agent-ui, review and ui:u2 browser acceptances passed on the final build.
• The ninth copy was followed live with Studio screenshots every 20 s. The popover was read at three widths and the switch turned off and on, and the Graph's inspector was read for the PDF.

Left open

• Sentences are not checked. The first image sentence misnamed the plot type.
• Prices are estimates. The median of 99 listings may differ from what the gateway charges. The session's own cost is Claude Code's figure and is shown as reported, although for this model Claude Code may be guessing it too.
• Image input is what models.dev lists, not what the gateway was seen to accept. The fallback after a refused image is tested with a fake model only.
• PDFs are not rendered to an image.
• Many quick rewrites of one file are still described again at most once a minute.
• No independent person has followed a run with these descriptions.

Quick checks, choices and the Console

The person asked for the two quick checks prepared in the rho-bio-eval repository to be run in Rho: BixBench capsule bix-18 in Python and bix-51 in R. They then judged two screens from these runs hard to follow: the answer board's Choices and the Console.

The runs

rho-bio-eval's make_quickcheck.py wrote each project into the test service's folder with only the data and questions.md; the gold stayed in that repository's ignored runs/ and check_quickcheck.py checked answers.json against it. Both ran on Claude Code (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) with no permission requests.

• bix-18 finished in 49 s with 4 of 5 answers in range. bix-18-q5 was answered as a proportion, and its range is written as a percentage; the question does not say which. A second copy, run after the change below, took 70 s, gave the same 4 of 5 and named that reading among its choices. The checker was not changed.
• bix-51 finished in 149 s with 7 of 7 in range. It worked in R throughout, left out the 41 blank spreadsheet rows, took the single-predictor model for bix-51-q5 and recorded the multivariable one as its alternative.
• Descriptions cost about $0.0012 (3 calls) and $0.0048 (9 calls). bix-51's figure went to the model as an image, and its sentence matched the figure's labels; another sentence miscounted the question ids in answers.json.

What the screens showed

• Choices. bix-51 wrote each other option in the choice's own sentence ("… Alternative: …") rather than in a nested bullet, so all five choices read "The notes name no other option" under text that named one. summary.glm, a function written as code, was drawn as a file. Each choice was a tinted card marked In use. Beside an option, the shorter card left blank space, and the paths that ended a sentence repeated the file buttons under it.
• Console. The one command that changed files was lifted above the others, out of the order they ran, and the rest folded as "commands with no recorded file change", which is a fact about the record, not about the work. Rows were raw compound command lines with the project's absolute path, every one ended in a green "Exit 0", and Run again sat apart from the command it ran. Claude Code gives each command a short description, but the Agent component did not keep it.

Changes

• Notes reader (src/notes-meaning.ts): an option written as "Alternative:", "Instead:" or "Otherwise:" after the choice's own sentence counts like a nested one. Code counts as a file only when it names a folder or has a file extension of an analysis.
• Choices (web/choices.tsx): one row per choice, divided by rules. What the choice is about (the words before "topic:" or "topic =") stands on the left. On the right is what was taken, with its files; each other option sits in a well below it, with what it gives, its files and Use this instead… beside it. Paths that end a sentence become its files. A choice with no other option is its row alone.
• Agent 0.4.23 keeps a command's purpose, Claude Code's description of it.
• Console (web/console.tsx): a message's commands read in the order they ran. Each leads with its purpose over the command, with the project folder read as ".". A command without one is named by what each part runs, such as "grep → python3 analysis.py → grep". Commands in a row that changed nothing fold into one line named by their purposes. Only an ending other than a clean exit is said, in red. The whole command, its output and Run again open under the row. Studio's command pane uses the same rows.

Verification

• test/notes-meaning.test.mjs reads choices as the Agents wrote them, inline and nested, with function names in code. test/conversation-presentation.test.mjs names commands from these runs and reads them inside the project. The Agent's ACP test checks the purpose. Rho 260/260, Plugins 125/125, check:contracts, and the seven browser acceptances passed on the final build.
• Both screens were read at 1440, 760 and 390 px for the ninth copy, bix-51 and the second bix-18 copy, with rows opened, a draft from Use this instead… and a choice in the Graph's inspector. The design skill's inspector needs a page address, and these screens are reached by navigation only, so it was not run.

Left open

• bix-18-q5 depends on how its gold range is written; the checker is unchanged.
• Older records have no purpose and show the short form instead.
• What a choice is about is read from the Agent's "topic:" phrasing; a choice written otherwise shows its sentence across the row.
• Studio's columns stay narrow while the notes and the Agent panel are open, and the command pane is cramped there.
• No independent person has used the new screens.

The Notebook

The person asked for interactive computing, as in RStudio, marimo or Jupyter, to be shown in Rho. Of the forms offered they chose a live session the Agent and they share, with R and Python together: the Agent and the person run code in the same resident session, and Rho shows each cell, its output, its plots and the session's variables as they come.

What was built

• Notebook 0.1.0 (@rho-workspace/plugin-kernel) runs one R and one Python process per project. kernel.run, kernel.read, kernel.plot, kernel.interrupt and kernel.stop carry a cell's identity, order, output, plots and ending, and record a session's end honestly after a restart (limits).
• Rho wires the operations: Agent grants receive all but kernel.stop, which only the person at this machine may call. It adds a Notebook page and tells sessions it starts to run exploratory code there and keep the code results rest on in scripts.

The runs

Fresh copies of the two quick checks ran on Claude Code (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) with no permission requests; the watcher answered nothing.

• The first bix-51 run was refused before the Agent did anything: "Layered connection methods exceed the selected 64-method profile". The default business grant had exactly 64 methods, and the four the Agent may use made 68. The conversation episode had left this limit open with three ways out. The smallest was taken: the limit is now layeredGrantLimits.maxMethods, 96, and a grant over it is still refused.
• bix-51 (R) then took 3 min with 7 of 7 answers in range. The Agent read the spreadsheet once with python3 -c before it found the session, wrote analysis.R and ran 5 cells, each with a purpose ("Check R working directory and required packages", "Run the logistic regression analysis script", …); the last four ran source("analysis.R"), the later ones after edits to the script.
• The person's cell. From the Notebook, a cell plotting the data with the Agent's fit_age curve drew in the same session, from the Agent's values.
• bix-18 (Python) took 98 s with 4 of 5 in range, bix-18-q5 missing as before. Its first cell checked Python and its packages; the other three ran analysis.py with exec. The first of those failed because the script used Path(__file__), which a session has no value for, and the Agent set __file__ and ran it again.

What the screens showed

• Output did not stream in R. A loop printing once a second showed nothing for its first 3 s: the evaluate package passes on a top-level expression's output when the expression ends. The R runner now evaluates expression by expression itself and prints to standard output, with each message, warning, error and plot answer following a numbered mark there; the host places the answer after that mark. Python already wrote each print as it came.
• The four runs of one script repeated the same 40-odd lines; output longer than 16 lines now shows its first 12 with Show all. The hint in the person's cell read summary(d), a name the session did not have; it is now drawn from the session (summary(dat)). A data frame's summary repeated its size; it now lists its columns. Python listed Path and sem, imported names; imported classes and functions are left out.
• The Agent's Studio showed its script, Commands and results but not its cells. A Session view now sits beside Commands once the Agent runs a cell, scoped to the sessions it used and cut at the moment shown; with the notes and the Agent panel open it is too small to read more than the person's line.
• Restart and stop. A session alive when the test service restarted reads "R session ended · Rho closed". Stop asks first, and the list then says the session was stopped by you and that values from before are gone. Interrupt left "Interrupted by you" and the session's i.
• Found in review, not on screen. Every request naming a project waited in that project's one queue, so a run waiting for a long cell would have held the page's reads and the person's Interrupt until it ended; the cells here took 0.1 s. kernel.* requests now run beside the queue, and the plugin reads its record once and queues, interrupts and stops one request at a time, so a repeated request still names one cell.
• Two sessions read "its process ended (exit by a signal)": the runner processes were killed by a cleanup command run for the plugin test. Once, the service still held the previous host code while the new R runner was on disk, and the numbered marks showed as text in one cell.

Verification

• npm run test:notebook runs the plugin's 7 tests (both languages: values that stay, output in order while a cell runs, plots, variables, identity, order, requests that arrive together, interrupt, stop, restart, limits and a missing program) and Rho's wiring test (who may run and stop, the shared session, the Agent grant, an interrupt while a run waits). The final suites, check:contracts and browser acceptances are in the Status ledger.
• The Notebook was read at 1440, 760 and 390 px with the Agent's cells, a person's R plot and Python cell, a stop, a streaming cell and an interrupt; the Studio's Session view at 1440 px with and without the side panels.

Left open

• The Agent ran scripts, not cells. It used the session to run its script again rather than to look at data step by step, and read the spreadsheet with Bash first.
• Plots follow a cell's printed output rather than the line that drew them, and a later cell cannot draw over an earlier cell's plot.
• Python scripts that use __file__ need it set before they run in a session.
• Studio's Session view was cramped while the side panels were open; see Exploring a finished answer.
• A cell's own memory and time are not bounded.
• No independent person has used the Notebook.

Exploring a finished answer

The person asked for the Notebook to sit beside Studio's other views as a component of its own, for pages they make themselves, and for a way to look into the Agent's results in the Notebook once it has finished. The disposable nb-bix-51 project held the finished bix-51 answer: analysis.R, model_fit.csv (3 rows), model_results.csv (8 rows) and the Agent's R cells.

What was built

• The Notebook is a Studio view on any page. In a conversation's Studio it keeps that conversation's part of the sessions, now with the person's cells since the conversation began; on the person's own pages it shows the sessions whole. Its width, not the page, decides whether the sessions sit beside the cells (840 px or more).
• New workspace makes an empty page of the person's own. The empty page, and Add view on any of their pages, offer the Notebook and the project's files by kind.
• Explore in R or Python on table and script views, on the answer board's tables and on the file page. A table loads as a new value in a cell of the person's; a script waits in the Notebook's line (what each does).

What the screens showed

• The table had no Explore. A kept table's resource path is its copy under .rho/plugins/restored/…; the file it was kept from is in its provenance (originalPath). Explore now reads that project path, and says the file is read as it is on disk now.
• Exploring inside the conversation's Studio was unreadable. With the notes and the Agent panel open, the Notebook view there was about 170 px wide. Explore from a conversation's Studio now opens the person's workspace, as it does from the Overview; the conversation's Studio stays the record of the Agent's work.
• Three panes on a 490 px stage were each about 150 px wide. A stage narrower than 640 px now shows the views one at a time with all their tabs. The conversation's Studio then showed model_results.csv at full width with Explore in its header.
• The Notebook did not scroll. Its pane clipped 6979 px of cells and showed the oldest. The view scrolls itself now and opens at the newest cell. Shown again after another tab, it went back to the top, and at 390 px it stopped 285 px short of the end: the browser moving the content was taken for the reader leaving the end. Only the reader's own wheel, touch, keys or scroll bar decide that now, and growth, resizing and showing again keep the newest cell in view. Measured: at the end at 1440, 760 and 390 px; a cell from another tab while the reader was 3000 px up left them there.
• The narrow line to run squeezed source("analysis.R") beside R, Python and Run; below 420 px the code takes its own line.
• Results. From the board, Python loaded model_fit (3 × 6) beside the table on Workspace 2; from the conversation's Studio, R loaded model_results and, the second time, model_results_2, leaving the first. The script put source("analysis.R") in the line with a note that running it writes its outputs again. Workspace pages listed in the order they were made after they first showed 3, 2, 4.

Verification

• test/explore-code.test.mjs runs the written code in R and in Python with pandas: a path with quotes and spaces, a TSV and a script that reads __file__. test/layout-commands covers placing a view beside another.
• The flows above were run in a real browser at 1440, 760 and 390 px; the screenshots were read.

Left open

• Pages cannot be renamed or removed, and count toward the 32 layouts a project keeps.
• Exploring the same table again makes another value rather than showing the first.
• No independent person has used these flows.

Looking at values

The person asked for an object viewer: in interactive computing the things computed are values of many kinds, not only files, and the interface should have a component for them. The same disposable nb-bix-51 project ran source("analysis.R") in R (a data frame dat of 80 × 16, three glm fits, coefficient tables), a list holding two fits and a table, a one-way count table(dat$sex), and in Python a pandas frame, a scikit-learn LogisticRegression and a dict.

What was built

• kernel.inspect in Notebook (plugins/kernel): the R and Python sessions describe one value by kind, with facts, a page of it and the code that reaches each part. It never starts a session, answers busy while a cell runs and changes nothing (limits). Each cell names the values it made, changed and removed.
• The value view (rho.object) in Rho, opened from the Notebook's variables and from the names under each cell (what it shows).

What the screens showed

• A value beside the Notebook was unreadable. Workspace 2 already had three panes; splitting the Notebook's pane left it and dat about 180 px each at 1440 px. A value now opens in a pane of its own only when both keep 360 px, and otherwise as a tab of the pane next to the Notebook; dat then had 363 px. It opened as a tab without being shown, because the layout reached the view after the request to show it; it is now shown once the layout has it.
• The coefficients hid the p-values. Each column's type and range (numeric, -0.6132 – 1.531) widened fit_full's table, and R padded every value to the column's precision (1.53100). Result tables (coefficients, counts) now show their column names alone and R writes each coefficient at its own precision. The table still ran 11 px past a 363 px view: the view's narrower padding sat in a container query on the view itself, which never applies. With the padding and cell spacing reduced, all four columns fit at 363, 744 and 374 px wide.
• table(dat$sex) was printed text. A one-way table is now read as its named counts (Female 31, Male 49, Total 80); a two-way table keeps its rows and columns rather than becoming R's long form; three or more ways stay printed.
• Names from an ended session opened another value. After a restart the Notebook still listed the old cells, and their dat opened the new session's dat with "after cell 2" of that session. Names under a cell are links only while the cell's session is live.
• Use in Notebook put fit_full$data in the line, with R chosen and a note, and was offered for a value that had been removed; it is now offered only while the value is there.
• Results. Sorting dat by age (twice, descending) kept the original row numbers (62, 75, 20 …) and the next page showed rows 51–80. parts › models › age reached parts$models$age. While Sys.sleep(6) ran, dat stayed dimmed with "A cell is running. This is dat as it was after cell 2"; after rm(dat) the view said it is not in the session and kept the reading from after cell 3 (80 × 17). clf showed its non-default settings (C 0.5, max_iter 500), intercept and coefficients; the dict showed its keys as parts. From the Notebook page fit_age opened beside the Notebook on Workspace 3; from the conversation's Studio answers opened there too.
• Readings. Value views stay mounted behind other tabs, and each re-read its value after every cell: seven open values would make seven readings, and a cell waits for a reading in progress (seen in the code, not measured before the change). A view now reads only while it is shown: with seven values as hidden tabs a cell caused no reading, and showing clf read it once.

Verification

• test/kernel.test.mjs in Plugins reads R and Python values: no session, a sorted table, a model, nested parts and their code, a missing part, one- and two-way counts, a reading that is interrupted while the session goes on, a busy session, a removed value, a cell that waits for a reading, and pandas, NumPy and object attributes. test/notebook.test.mjs has the person and the Agent read the same value through Rho; test/layout-commands covers adding a view with room or as a tab.
• The flows above were run in a real browser at 1440, 760 and 390 px; the screenshots were read.

Left open

• Every value opened adds a tab; values are closed one by one.
• A value whose printing is slow stalls the reading until it is interrupted (10 s); in Python a slow repr also delays the end of each cell that lists it as a variable.
• Arrays of three or more dimensions and other kinds are shown as printed.
• No independent person has used the view.

Script, console, variables and plots

The person asked whether Rho's components already make the classic four panes of interactive exploration: a script, the console it runs in, the session's variables and its plots. A disposable quad project held R's airquality data as data/airquality.csv and a 19-line analysis.R (read, str and summary, complete cases, an lm fit, a scatter plot with a fitted line drawn by a second call, a monthly mean and a barplot). Rho ran from source on a disposable root with the debug Core and the system Rscript; a headless Chrome took the screenshots at 1440 × 900, 760 and 390 px.

What the first try showed

• The panes could be arranged. The script and the Notebook opened side by side on a new workspace; dragging the Notebook's tab to the script's lower edge put it under the script, and a value dragged right of the script made a third pane.
• The script could not run a line. ⌘+Enter in analysis.R did nothing. The only way from the script to the session was Explore in R, which put source("analysis.R") in the Notebook's line.
• Variables and plots had no views. They were part of the Notebook: beside its cells when the view was at least 840 px wide, otherwise the variables folded into a line above them and the plots were not shown. A pane on the right could only hold one value (aq).
• A sourced script kept one plot. source("analysis.R") is one top-level expression; the barplot replaced the scatter plot and its line before the cell's only recording. Each cell also drew on a new device, so abline run on its own after plot would fail with "plot.new has not been called yet".

What was built

• Notebook (Plugins kernel). R draws on one recording device that stays open for the session. A later cell draws over an earlier cell's plot and reports the plot it changed; each page is recorded before a new one starts (before.plot.new, before.grid.newpage), so a sourced script keeps every plot. Calls that only set graphics state (par, palette, layout) do not make a page new.
• A script's lines (Rho). ⌘/Ctrl+Enter or Run in an R or Python script's header runs the selection, or the statement the cursor is in (src/statements.ts), as the person's cell named analysis.R · lines 12–13, and moves to the next statement. A page without the Notebook gets one under the script.
• Variables and Plots (Rho) are views of their own, offered by Add view and the empty page. Either takes a column along the page's right side (addAtEdge, 40% of the width), the other above or below it. The Notebook leaves its own variables and plots out while they are on the page. Views of one page share one kernel.read.

What the screens showed

• The four panes. On a new workspace, analysis.R, then Variables and Plots from Add view, then ⌘+Enter on line 2: the script top left, Variables top right, the Notebook under the script and Plots under Variables. The first build put Variables beside the Notebook, the last pane, so the script spanned the page above a three-way bottom row; Variables now takes the page's whole right side.
• Line by line. Twelve presses from line 1 ran the eleven statements in order: the comment line moved the cursor on, plot(…) over lines 12–13 ran as one cell, and abline in the next cell drew its red line over that scatter. Plots came forward to each new plot and Variables listed aq, complete, fit and by_month as they were made. The value fit opened from Variables as a tab beside the script, with its coefficients.
• A plot from an ended session. After a restart, Plots first showed the barplot of the session that had ended as the current plot. It now shows the live sessions' plots only.
• A plot shown twice. barplot calls par() before it starts a page, which changed the previous page's record, so a barplot cell reported the earlier scatter again. Pages are now compared by what they draw.
• Selection. Lines 16–18 selected and run with Run made one cell with both values and the barplot; it was named "lines 16–19" because the selection ended at the start of line 19. A selection that ends where a line starts now ends on the line before: lines 6–7 selected with Shift+↓ ran as "lines 6–7".
• Python. In explore.py, a list written over two lines, a function and a for … else block each ran as one cell; the next statements failed with NameError because the run started below import statistics. Variables switched to Python, with R a click away; it first showed Python because it was listed last, and now follows the newest cell.
• Narrow windows. At 760 px the five views showed one at a time as tabs; at 390 px Plots fitted the newest plot to the width with the strip below.
• Found in review, not on screen. With the device kept for the session, reading a value that draws when printed (a ggplot g) drew on it, and the next cell, x <- 1, reported that plot as its own. A reading now draws on a device of its own and leaves the session's plot unchanged.

Verification

• Plugins test/kernel.test.mjs: a line drawn in a later cell over an earlier plot, a cell that draws nothing, a barplot after a plot, two pages from one expression, and a cell after reading a value that draws when printed. Against the previous runner the test failed at the later cell's line (error, not done).
• Rho test/statements.test.mjs (R calls over lines, pipes, functions, strings and comments; Python blocks, decorators, clauses and brackets) and test/layout-commands (the four panes, joining a row, an empty page).
• The flows above were run in a real browser; the screenshots were read.

Left open

• The Agent in this layout was not observed: no conversation ran cells here.
• A line drawn over an earlier plot is a second plot in Plots (the scatter, then the scatter with its line).
• Python figures still close after each cell, as in Jupyter; R's stay.
• One view at a time. Below 768 px, or on a stage under 640 px, running a line does not bring the Notebook forward.
• The script's header wraps onto a second row below about 650 px (Explore in, Run, Save, Review selected text, Highlight changes).
• Long output in the Notebook shows its first 12 lines; summary(fit) hides its last coefficients until Show all.
• Arrange views stayed open while other parts of the page were clicked.
• No independent person has used the layout.

Two forms of the Notebook

The person found the Notebook in the four panes not a good experience: a notebook and the RStudio console feel different, and the Notebook should take either form and switch between them. The same quad project and service were used, with the four panes of Workspace 4 and a new Workspace 5.

What was built

• Notebook | Console in the Notebook's header, and in the Notebook page's heading. A Studio view saves the form with its page (props.form, one conditional layout write, so Undo reverts it); the page keeps it in this browser. A Notebook placed under a script by running one of its lines starts as a console.
• The console shows the cells as one transcript (prompt, code, output) with the prompt under it, as described in Frontend. unfinished in src/statements.ts decides whether Enter runs the code or goes on to another line.

What the screens showed

• Workspace 4 as a console. The script's earlier lines read as > nrow(complete) with their output; plot(…) over two lines took > and +. Every plot line read "Plot 1", numbered within its cell; plots are now numbered as the Plots view counts them.
• Typing. for (i in 1:3) {, Enter, print(i * 10), Enter, }, Enter first ran rint(i * 10) and p}: the caret was placed a frame after the new text, and the next keys landed before it. The caret is now placed as the text changes; the same keys gave [1] 10, [1] 20, [1] 30. A second ↑ moved within the recalled code instead of going further back; a command brought back and unchanged now moves through the history from any line. A closing } on an empty line now steps back.
• Python, a long cell and Esc. The chip switched to Python; for v in [1, 2]: took ... and four spaces and ran after the empty line, printing 3 and 6, below a "Python session started" mark. A loop printing every half second streamed into the transcript with "Running 2.0 s"; Esc left "Interrupted by you" after tick 5. Running was shown in the bar, under the cell and at the prompt; the prompt's was removed.
• Saved and cleared. After a reload the view was still a console. Ctrl+L left "Earlier output is cleared from this view; the sessions keep their values", and Show it again brought back 59 cells.
• Someone else's cell. A cell sent through the operator's connection read # An Agent · Look at how ozone is distributed above its prompt, with the histogram under it on the Notebook page, which has no Plots view. Its second statement first took +; each statement now starts at the prompt.
• A new page. On Workspace 5, ⌘+Enter on fit <- … put the Notebook under the script as a console and kept the keyboard in the script. At 390 px, R's columns kept their places and scroll sideways.

Verification

• test/statements.test.mjs: Enter in finished and unfinished R and Python. The Rho suite, the contract check and the seven browser acceptances in Status passed; the graph acceptance first timed out waiting for a table preview and passed when run again alone.
• The flows above were run in a real browser at 1440 and 390 px; the screenshots were read.

Left open

• An Agent's cells were stood in for by the operator's connection; no conversation ran here.
• A cell's code and its output are not interleaved statement by statement as R's console echoes them: a selection of two statements shows both, then all they printed.
• Completion (Tab) is not there, and help (?lm) was not tried.
• Plot numbers count all plots of the live sessions; the Plots view counts its 24 newest.
• No independent person has used either form.

Toolbars

The person tried the four panes and the two forms and found the components' toolbars ugly. The same quad project and service were used: Workspace 4 (script, Notebook, Variables, Plots) and a new Workspace 6 with notes.md, explore.py, a figure (output/ozone-by-month.png, drawn for this) and airquality.csv.

What the screens showed first

• Five rows before the code. At 1440 × 900 the topbar, the Studio bar (Add view, Notes, Arrange views), a row holding only Activity at its right end, the tabs and a second row of the script's controls came before line 1 of the script, at y 253.
• Four kinds of control in one header. "Explore in" with a round R chip, a bordered Run, bordered Save and Review selected text that were disabled, and a native checkbox for Highlight changes. In the 661 px group they took a row of their own under the tabs.
• Three kinds of switch. Notebook | Console as one grey well; the Markdown view's Read | Edit bordered with a divider; the figure's Fit | 100% in a small bordered box. In the Studio bar Notes had a border and its neighbours none.

What was built

• One form for a view's header controls, whichever component puts them there, on a Studio group, a file's page and atop the notes, as described in Frontend. Rho sets it for buttons, groups of pressed buttons and a labelled checkbox; components keep their markup.
• Documents 0.4.9 shows Save while the buffer has unsaved edits, Review selected text with a selection (as Ask the Agent already did) and Highlight changes while Agent or disk edits remain.
• Explore in R is one button when a file has one language.
• The Studio bar takes what the Activity row held on the person's own page (the Agent's latest object, held updates, Activity); its controls are one kind, tinted while their panel is open.

What the screens showed after

• Workspace 4. Activity sits beside Add view; the script's header reads "Explore in R ▷ Run" on the tab row; line 1 is at y 181. Run first came out grey: the CSS minifier had turned the list button, label:has(…) into :is(…), whose specificity outranked Run's rule. The rules are now separate.
• Selecting text brought Review selected text and Ask the Agent about this, which pushed the controls to a second row and the editor down while the person was selecting. The tabs now give way down to 160 px; their scrollbar then added 10 px, so a scrolled tab list fades at its edge instead (the list already marked data-overflow). The header stays 42 px high.
• Typing brought Save; saving took it away.
• A slip in the check. Shift+End selected to the end of the document, not of the line, and the # typed next replaced lines 9–18 of analysis.R in the shared buffer. Nothing was saved. Two ⌘Z (own undo) gave text equal to the file; the owner keeps a buffer dirty after its text returns, so Save wrote the same bytes (SHA-256 unchanged) to make it clean again. Later selections used Shift+↓ and typed nothing.
• Workspace 6. Read | Edit, Fit | 100%, R | Python and Notebook | Console are one kind of switch; the table's header reads "Explore in R Python · Ask about selected rows".
• Highlight changes. A line appended to explore.py on disk did not reach the open clean buffer within seven seconds, so the switch was seen in the U2 acceptance instead: an Agent edit showed "▎Highlight changes", the bar in the Agent's colour like the edited line's mark; unticked, the marks went, and ticked, they came back. The file was put back as it was.
• The Agent's object in a narrow bar. At 1280 px with the notes open the bar read "Worksp…" and "Agent not… versi…". With an object there, its state now goes below 900 px of bar and the controls' names below 760 px: "Workspace · Agent notes.R" and icons. Activity names itself in a tooltip when only its icon shows.
• 390 px. The controls' own row drew its line only under the controls (pushed right in a column); it now spans the group. Nothing overflows sideways.

Verification

• Plugins 134/134. Rho 268/269: the MCP v2 test was cancelled at its 30 s limit in the full run and passed alone in 19.6 s. The contract check and the person-files (now waiting for Save to go once saved), ui:u2 (run twice), agent-canvas, sources, graph, agent-page, agent-ui and review acceptances passed.
• The shell acceptance (focus kept in the editor at 390) and the interaction acceptance (a sidebar row matching /^workspace/) failed, and failed the same way on a build of the commit before this change.
• The screens above were read at 1440, 760 and 390 px.

Left open

• Those two acceptances fail before and after this change and were not fixed here.
• Selection actions sit in the header, away from the selection; with less than 160 px for the tabs the controls still take a second row.
• Save stays after text returns to the file's, as long as the owner calls the buffer dirty. Whether a person's own edits keep a Save control at all is not settled.
• Bars inside views (the table's row count and Filter, the Plots navigation, the Variables line, the console's bar) were not changed.
• No independent person has looked at these screens.

Sources that follow the project

The person found the R | Python switch in the Notebook's input too large, and asked Sources to give the interactive sessions' variables a place and to add the categories a project needs on top of the existing ones. The same quad project and service were used.

What was built

• One language chip for the notebook form's input and the console's prompt: the small chip each cell carries, with a mark that it switches; pressing it changes the session and keeps the keyboard in the code.
• Variables in Sources, between Code and Results: the live sessions' values by session, each name with its type, from a one-cell kernel.read at most once a second as the project's records change. A name opens the value in Studio. It is listed where the tab may read sessions.
• Rows the project calls for. Workflows, Reports, References and Environment are listed while the project holds such files, as described in Frontend; every file is in one row. The sorting is for Sources only (rowOf in web/sources.ts); kindOf is unchanged for the Graph, the board and the meaning layer.

What the screens showed

• The chip. The input's switch had been a two-button well about 150 × 40 px beside the code. The chip reads "R ⇅" in R's colour; pressed, "Python ⇅", the example became dir() and the keyboard stayed in the code. The Notebook page and the console prompt show the same chip.
• Variables. "Variables 8" unfolded to R 4.5.2 (aq data.frame, by_month, complete, fit lm, i, k, sq function) and Python 3.13.1 (v int); the Variables view, showing R, said 7 values. Choosing fit brought its tab forward on Workspace 4.
• A project that grows. A Quarto report (report.qmd, rendered by Quarto 1.8.27 into report.html), refs/references.bib, requirements.txt and a Makefile that renders the report were added. After a reload Sources read Data 1, Code 2, Workflows 1, Variables 8, Results & figures 1, Reports 2, Notes 1, References 1, Environment 1. Rendering also wrote report_files/ (8 scripts, 4 style sheets, a font), which would have counted as Code; a report's _files folder is now left out of the rows. Add view lists the new kinds.
• 390 px. In the sidebar drawer the values read as at 1440 px; nothing overflows sideways.

Verification

• Rho 268/269: the MCP v2 test was cancelled at its 30 s limit and passed alone in 18.1 s. The contract check and the sources, agent-canvas, graph, agent-page, agent-ui, review and person-files acceptances passed.
• ui:u2 failed three times on its check that table reads come in 200-row blocks. The extra reads were the Overview's 3-row previews of results.csv and plain.csv, sent 233 ms after the project opened, before the test's first click at 338 ms; on the build without these changes it passed and made no 3-row reads. The check now counts the grid's reads from its Table tab on; ui:u2 then passed twice.
• The screens above were read at 1440 and 390 px.

Left open

• The rows come from file names. The Agent does not yet name a category for its project, for instance from what its notes say a file is.
• A value's summary is in its tooltip; a session with more than 40 values sends the rest to the Notebook.
• The shell and interaction acceptances were not run again; they failed before this pass.
• No independent person has used Sources this way.

Data flow, HTML pages and object-dependent cases

The person found the code and the variables of an interactive session unconnected, asked for a graph view to guide them through it, and asked that an HTML file show as its page instead of its source. They proposed BixBench capsules whose answers depend on objects built across cells and asked for several such cases. Each case ran in a disposable project under /tmp/rho-cases/root on a service of its own (port 53977), typed into the Notebook in headless Chrome as the person.

What was built

• What each cell read (Notebook 0.1.1). Besides defined and removed, a cell names the values it read (used) and the project files and folders its strings named (files, read or wrote), from its parsed code before it runs. Function arguments, comprehension and lambda variables and what a function assigns for itself are not the session's; a name the cell assigned in an earlier statement is its own, so a cell run again does not read the value it replaces; a field after $/@ and a string used as a key or index are not names or paths.
• Data flow (rho.flow), a tab beside Variables, as described in Frontend: one box per cell that made something still there, in run order, with lanes in the left margin from a value to each cell that read it, "Changes what R 6 made" where a cell changed a value it read, and an amber note where a cell read a value or file made again since.
• HTML pages (HTML 0.1.0, html.reader), with Page and Edit over the Documents buffer, in a sandboxed frame the service serves at /frame.html with its own policy; the project files a page names are read as file snapshots and put into it.

What the runs showed

• bix-46 (R, a DESeqResults object). readRDS("data/res_1vs97.rds"), the annotation CSV, as.data.frame, a merge on Locus.Tag, then a significance column, a volcano plot and a CSV of the significant genes. mexG read −4.964 (−4.96) and PA14_35160 −4.10, both as expected. The first try asked for Product.Description, which the annotation does not have; the error stopped that cell and the four after it, and names(ann)[10:21] showed Product.Name.
• Printing a value changed it. The first graph made cell 2, res97, the value's maker. The session's listing had said 6 (its length) after readRDS and 5828 × 6 after printing: the first dim() on an S4 class that readRDS has just loaded answers as if it had no method. The R runner now asks the class what it extends before listing it. A kernel test with a sparse Matrix read from a file failed before (6) and passes after (2 × 3); in a new R session in the browser, printing res97 no longer made it.
• Boxes that wrapped read as a chain. In a 300 px column the first layout put cells of one level under each other, and a line from res97 ran behind the annotation's box. Boxes now follow the run order, one to a line, with the lines in the margin; a file a cell read is named in its box. Pointing at R 9 kept R 1 → R 5 → R 9 → plot and CSV in view and faded R 3.
• Phylogenetics (Python, bix-58 and bix-60 files). Ten untrimmed alignments from bix-58, ten ClipKIT outputs and ten trees from bix-60. Treeness (internal over total branch length) is 0 for the eight 3-taxon trees, 0.0884 and 0.0079 for the two 4-taxon ones; the mean of all 10 is ×1000 = 10, and any five including both 4-taxon trees give 19, bix-60's answer for "all 5 trees". By columns removed the largest reduction is 1038775 (13.3%), not bix-58's 1014314 (7.6%). ClipKIT 2.14.0, installed in a disposable venv and run from the session, wrote alignments of exactly the lengths of bix-60's files; by residues removed it is also 1038775. bix-58's answer is not reproduced from these files.
• What the Python records got wrong, and the fixes. Cell 8 said it changed what cell 7 made through p, a comprehension variable that collided with cell 7's loop variable; in R the same happens with function(x) beside a global x. A rerun of raw = …; len(raw) read the old raw. Folders named in code (Path('alignments').glob, the clipkit folder ClipKIT wrote into) were not recorded, so the subprocess's output had no line to the cell that read it. Column names 'trimmed' and 'clipkit' matched folders of those names. After the fixes the Python run recorded alignments/, trimmed/ and trees/ read, clipkit/ written by cell 7 and read by cell 8, and nothing for the column names. Cell 8's box first kept raw and trimmed through lengths, which cell 10 had changed again; what a changed value came from now goes with the value, so cell 8 holds own from clipkit/ and cell 10 continues 3 and 8.
• A stale plot. The bar chart of cell 9 was drawn from lengths before cell 10 added a column; its box reads "Read before it was made again: lengths".
• Restarting a session. kernel.stop from a script was refused ("Only the person at this machine ends a live session"); the sessions were stopped from the Notebook page, which asks first. The first two R and Python reruns had gone on in the old sessions without the stop.
• HTML. From the R session, htmlwidgets::saveWidget(..., selfcontained = FALSE, libdir = "lib") wrote a plotly volcano with eight library folders, and rmarkdown::render knitted a report. The widget drew and answered the pointer with plotly.js, jQuery and the bindings read from out/lib; the report showed −4.96, −4.1 and its plot, and its link to the significant genes opened the CSV as a table. The report's script asked for MathJax from the web, which the frame's policy refused. The widget's libraries had counted as 8 Code files and a Note; a saved page's versioned libraries in lib, libs or site_libs are now left out of the rows.
• Knitting in the session changed m. rmarkdown::render evaluates in the global environment by default, so the report's own m <- merge(...) replaced the session's m. The cell said "Made or changed m" though its code names m only in strings, and the widget made from the earlier m is now marked as read before it changed. out/report.html itself is not recorded: render names it, not the cell.

Verification

• Rho 273/274 (node --test test/*.test.mjs after npm run build): the MCP v2 test was cancelled at its 30 s limit and passed alone in 19.8 s. Plugins 141/141, with the kernel's new tests (what a cell read and made, function and comprehension scope, folders, reruns, keys, S4 listing) and the HTML package's. check:contracts passed. The sources, ui:u2, agent-canvas, graph, agent-page, agent-ui, review and person-files acceptances passed; the shell (editor focus at 390 px) and interaction (/^workspace/ row) acceptances failed as before.
• test/lineage.test.mjs covers the boxes, links, continued values, stale reads, lanes and limits.
• The screens above were read at 1440 × 900 and with a 1300–1500 px tall column.

Left open

• Records come from the code as written. A name built at run time, a file named by a variable or written by a function (render, a subprocess's output named in an f-string) is not seen; a function's mentions count as reads when it is defined.
• Data flow is per session and holds only what is still there; earlier versions of a value are named, not drawn. Folders in a box cannot be opened.
• HTML pages: a script on the page can still navigate its own frame; nested frames, a stylesheet's @import contents and files a script loads at run time are not read. Each project file a page takes is kept as a file snapshot.
• bix-58 is not reproduced from these files; bix-26 and bix-32 (KEGG enrichment) and bix-33 (a 1.08 GB .h5ad) were not run.
• npm install in Rho-plugins fails: Markdown and Annotations still name Documents up to 0.4.7 as a peer while Documents is 0.4.9. The HTML package was linked by hand.
• No independent person has used Data flow or the page view.