Layout reaches zero. The dock, header, user menu, theme switcher, spotlight,
shortcuts modal, screen-error fallback, rescan and bug report.
Three things worth knowing:
CORE_DOCK_ITEMS now carries labelKey instead of label, and one useDockItems() hook
resolves the composed list. DashboardLayout, Spotlight and DockSettings each spread
the same two sources before, so each would have had to resolve labels itself.
Plugin tiles keep the name from their own manifest — a plugin's strings are not ours.
Spotlight resolves labels INSIDE the hook, so rank() still matches what the reader
can see rather than a dot-path. Its to: '/settings/...' literals are untouched, which
is what docs:check parses — verified still 20 offered, 0 missing.
The rescan toast said 'N skill(s)'. That is English giving up on a plural, so it is
now a real plural entry per noun and reads correctly at 0, 1 and 2 in both locales.
ThemeSwitcher used t as its theme loop variable; renamed to entry.
Fourth chord for the launcher, and the last move is a return: ctrl-space → shift-space → alt-space →
ctrl-space. Every one was the owner naming a real collision, and this one is the interesting direction —
alt-space is the GNOME window menu, he rebound the desktop to keep it, disliked what he rebound it to, and
would rather move the app than the window manager.
ctrl-space was ruled out on 2026-08-20 as "focuses the address bar in Brave". That observation was made
before anything preventDefault'ed it, and the trade has changed: rebinding a browser is cheaper than
rebinding a desktop. Written down in the file, because if the address bar still wins the key never reaches
the handler and nothing in this repository can help — the fix would be in Brave.
`!ev.shiftKey && !ev.altKey` matters: ctrl+SHIFT+space is the theme browser, and one chord opening both is
the bug that needed a capture-phase listener to fix on the theme side. Verified in the built bundle that the
two conditions are disjoint.
CTRL+? renders every shortcut from a registry, ported in shape from vimazing's gameInfo.ts — controls
declared as data, help screen renders them. Its renderer was a recursive `any` walk, right for a game whose
help also carries rules and scoring; here the content is one shape, so the renderer is typed and boring and
the value is in state/shortcuts.ts.
The registry is deliberately NOT authoritative yet, and says so: the handlers still hold their own
conditions, so changing a chord here does not move it. Each entry names the file that implements it, so the
pair is one search apart. Making it the source of truth is the configurable-shortcuts work, and doing it now
would rewrite three handlers for nothing visible.
Also removed a line I put in the theme dropdown yesterday promising "alt+space to search every theme by
name". Themes are not Spotlight items — that was an instruction for a feature nobody built, sitting in the
UI as though it worked. It now points at ctrl+?, which exists. Two comments naming ctrl+alt+space for the
theme browser were corrected to ctrl+shift+space with the older chord noted as still accepted.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three reported faults and two additions, all from one keystroke's worth of use.
THE MENU OPENED BEHIND THE OVERLAY. The theme pill is a Radix DropdownMenuTrigger, and a focused trigger
opens on Space — so ctrl+shift+space opened the browser AND the dropdown behind it. preventDefault could
never have fixed it: React attaches its handlers at the root, which bubbles before window, so the trigger
saw the key first whatever this listener did with it. The listener now runs in the CAPTURE phase and stops
the event dead.
THE VIM KEYS DIED WHEN OPENED FROM AN INPUT. Same shape as the Spotlight bug earlier tonight: the guard
that refuses to steal keys from a text field was still true after the overlay opened, because focus had
never left the field. Opening now blurs, and the guard no longer applies once the list is open — there is no
input in it, so there is nothing left for it to protect. Only the GLOBAL bindings defer to a text field now,
which is the case it was written for.
f STARS WHAT IS FOCUSED, inside the list, so a browse and a shortlist are one pass rather than two.
ctrl+shift+f STARS THE CURRENT THEME FROM ANYWHERE, and deliberately without the typing guard the arrows
beside it need: word selection is what ctrl+shift+←/→ collides with in a text field, and ctrl+shift+f
collides with nothing — no character, no browser binding. Guarding it would only break it in the composer,
which is where you are when a theme starts annoying you.
The header pill now shows a star when what you are wearing is one of yours — only when true, because a
hollow star on every theme is chrome that says nothing two hundred times.
The row star in the overlay is a span with role="button", not a button: it sits inside the row's own
<button>, and nesting one is invalid HTML that browsers resolve by dropping one of them.
useThemeKeys takes the toggle as a callback rather than reaching for it. Favourites are per account and live
behind an API, which is app knowledge; this hook owns keys and selection and nothing else.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Four changes for 200+ themes, and one mistake worth recording.
ORDERING IS A ROTATION, not a sort. The registry order is the list's only structure — families sit together
in it — so lifting the selected theme to the top answers "which am I on" by destroying "what is next to it".
Rotating keeps every neighbour and moves the starting point. Both lists use the same `ordered` array, which
is the point: "the one below the one I have on" has to mean the same thing in the dropdown and in the
ctrl+shift+space browser, or one teaches an order the other contradicts.
FAVOURITES are a table, not a JSON column. theme_favorites is a row per star, so a toggle is an INSERT or a
DELETE and cannot race with itself; an array in user_settings would be read-modify-written and two tabs would
lose one. No foreign key to a theme, because themes are not rows — most are compiled in, the rest are
directories discovered at request time — so a star can outlive its theme and the reader intersects with the
live registry rather than trusting the table.
Favourites-first is a second rotation-preserving pass rather than a filter, so the list can still answer
"what else is there". Filtering to favourites only is a separate, explicit toggle.
THE INSTRUCTIONS NO LONGER SCROLL AWAY. DropdownMenuContent carried overflow-y-auto itself, so the one line
telling you the shortcuts exist was visible for half a second and then gone under two hundred entries —
which is the same as not having written it. Header and footer are now siblings of a scroll box instead of
passengers in it, and the header names alt+space too.
THE MISTAKE: the routes went on /themes first, and that prefix is deliberately UNAUTHENTICATED — the
sign-in screen paints in the chosen theme, before any account exists to ask. An anonymous GET answered 500,
which was the consequence arriving politely. They now live on /theme-favorites, claimed by the `account`
permission, which is core and already owns /user, /dock and /api-keys: a starred theme is the same shape as
a dock preference. I then mounted it one line off, in the unprotected block beside the thing I was moving it
away from, and caught that by reading rather than by testing.
Verified after: /api/theme-favorites is 401 unauthenticated on both verbs, and /api/themes still answers 200
so the login screen keeps its colours.
10 tests on the pure ordering — including the property that makes a rotation a rotation: every adjacency in
the original survives it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Breadcrumb links rested at duck-forest and hovered to duck-teal; they now sit at the
hover colour, so the hover and its transition go with it. One shared component, so the
full browser and the dashboard widget both pick it up. The current folder stays
duck-dark semibold, keeping clickable and current distinct.
Header: the theme control leads the right cluster and names the theme it is wearing
rather than showing a palette glyph — with 227 of them, which one is on is worth reading.
It takes JobsIndicator's pill styling so the cluster stays one shape, and keeps its
colour on --header-fg rather than hardcoding white.
The jobs indicators and the rescan button are Super Admin only now. Cosmetic, and the
comment says so: /jobs stays reachable by URL and rescan is gated server-side, so
nothing here is load-bearing. Uses the same user?.role check UserMenu already makes in
this folder rather than adding a second convention.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
`ctrl+shift+h`/`l` are gone. The arrows do that job, and two spellings for one action is
what invited the reasonable guess that `ctrl+shift+j` moved down — which opens the
browser console.
Worth recording that the reported conflict was not one we had: nothing bound
`ctrl+shift+j`. The global letters were `h` and `l` only, and the `j`/`k` keys live
inside the list with NO modifier. But an interface that makes someone guess a wrong key
is the interface's fault, not the guess's.
Inside the list the vim keys stay, unmodified: `j`/`k`/`l`/`h` beside `↓`/`↑`/`→`/`←`.
Nothing there can collide with a browser shortcut, and this is a vim person's
application.
Verified: `ctrl+shift+l` no longer cycles, `ctrl+shift+→` does, and `j` then `l` still
browses inside the list.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Standardised on `ctrl+shift` for all three global bindings, and added arrows everywhere
the vim keys work — `h`/`←`, `l`/`→`, `j`/`↓`, `k`/`↑` are now interchangeable.
ctrl+shift+→ or ctrl+shift+l next theme
ctrl+shift+← or ctrl+shift+h previous theme
ctrl+shift+space the list
── Why ctrl+shift and not the alternatives ──
Checked GNOME's actual defaults rather than reasoning from convention:
<Control><Alt>Left/Right switch workspace
<Control><Shift><Alt>Left/Right move window to workspace
<Super><Alt>Left/Right switch workspace
So ctrl+alt is unusable — those arrows change your workspace, and `ctrl+alt+l` locks the
screen, which is presumably why the original bindings put the letters on ctrl+shift in
the first place. `shift+alt` is free on Linux but is the keyboard-layout switcher on
Windows and `alt+space` opens the window menu.
`ctrl+shift` has no OS binding at all. Its one collision is select-by-word inside a text
field — which is now explicitly protected.
── The guard moved earlier ──
Typing was only checked once the list was OPEN. With arrows on the global cycle that was
no longer enough: `ctrl+shift+←/→` is select-by-word in every text field, and stealing it
mid-sentence to change a colour scheme would be indefensible. The check now runs before
the global cycle too.
Verified against a focused textarea: theme unchanged, and the word selection still
happened. The first run of that test reported a hijack, and the test was wrong — it
clicked a selector that matched nothing, swallowed the failure, and read body-focus as
a text field.
`ctrl+alt+space` still opens the list. It shipped an hour ago and fingers learn faster
than they unlearn.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Fourteen themes was too many to keep under an avatar next to "Sign out" — that is where
a preference goes when nobody has decided it matters. It now has its own button in the
header, between the controls and the avatar, grouped by family.
── The keys, ported from the owner's vimazing ──
ctrl+shift+l / ctrl+shift+h cycle forward / back, from anywhere, no UI
ctrl+alt+space open the list
j / k move the focus
l or space apply the focused theme to the app BEHIND the list
h back to where you started
enter keep what you are looking at
escape restore and close
The browse is the point, and it is why the overlay is a portal over a 55% backdrop
rather than a modal: you are not reading names, you are watching the application change.
The theme you started on is captured when the list opens, so `h` and `escape` undo a
whole browse however many previews happened inside it.
Typing is still typing: the list ignores j/k/l/h while focus is in an input, textarea,
select or anything contenteditable.
── Where it lives ──
The key handling is in the theme package — it is behaviour that belongs to themes, and
it needs no UI. The list and the button are Officer's, because a dialog would drag a
component library into a package that currently has none.
Verified by driving the real keyboard in a browser:
start duck-dark · ctrl+shift+l -> plain · ctrl+alt+space -> overlay
j, l -> tokyo-night (previewed) · escape -> plain, closed
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>