Constellation: working state

Read the design and this file to resume. Keep this file short: replace superseded state rather than appending a chronological log.

Working agreement

Explore the philosophy through concrete use, discuss meaningful choices, then implement a small coherent change. Curiosity and alternative designs are welcome; an idea need not prove a defect before we explore it.
Write succinctly without losing important details. Distinguish accepted choices, proposals and observations. Ask when intent would change the design; resolve routine implementation details autonomously. Infer opportunities from the user's philosophy and actual use; contribute design ideas beyond literal backlog items. Continue to the next natural step when the user could only usefully say "continue"; pause for material choices or missing authority, not routine progress.
Minimize input stops: plan a coherent batch of autonomous work and gather the material inputs needed for the next batch together. Avoid serial question/action loops. When pausing, state exactly what input is needed and what it will decide; otherwise continue with the next logical step rather than ending with an offer.
The main agent owns alignment, design and integration and may do small work. Use subagents for bounded independent investigations or implementation with clear ownership. Begin with at most two workers; avoid overlapping writes, duplicate investigations and mandatory delegation of trivial tasks.
Give workers the question, relevant paths, constraints and expected result. Prefer a compact brief and fresh context when sufficient; retain relevant prior context for follow-ups. Return conclusions, uncertainty and evidence pointers, not raw logs. Astra/Sol orchestration is a candidate to learn from, not a fixed rule.
Read only what can affect the current decision. Use quiet commands and bounded output; keep large logs in /tmp and inspect relevant failures. Do not repeatedly check settled facts. Consult current documentation for consequential or unfamiliar interfaces when needed for the task.
No tests unless explicitly requested. Keep other verification proportional; report only what was actually checked. Avoid turning small changes into campaigns.
Keep durable decisions in the design and current questions/next steps here. Add an area-specific document only when an active topic outgrows this arrangement. No separate backlog, scratchpad, audit ledger or agent-role files for now.

Boundaries

Repository remotes are read-only. Only the user activates system generations. Agents must not have write access to live company systems; test writes require task-specific authority and care. Do not read secret values for layout discovery. Current exploration does not authorize relocating credentials, synchronizing company content or deleting existing material. Existing local changes are preserved.

Git baseline — 2026-09-09

The accumulated NixOS changes are recorded in focused local commits on chore/workflow-system: AI tooling/inputs, editor ergonomics, query persistence and target context, workspace navigation, Notes, SharePoint, Zellij and TeamViewer. The original long handoff and archived plans are preserved in commit 4e3a3ac; use Git history for chronology. nvim.log is retained locally and ignored. Workbench changes are committed on its local main: eb8da6a organizes HTTP/SQL material and 063157c archives helpers and documents native tools. The ordinary company-root files are outside either repository and remain user-owned. This cleanup preserves implementation behavior; a commit does not establish runtime acceptance. Keep subsequent implementation and its documentation in the same coherent commit before starting unrelated work.

Implemented state

Places: ~/yookr has ordinary .envrc and AGENTS.md files; its environment loads workbench tools only. Workbench is at ~/yookr/workbench, company projects at ~/yookr/projects, and personal groups at ~/projects/{own,ext,forks}. Direct moves retained archives/worktrees; all three linked dashboard worktrees were repaired. Nix owns tools/integration, not these workspace files.
Navigation: Walker enters Yookr or a repository; Git identity follows the company root; XDG projects points to ~/projects. Notes has a desktop entry opening ~/sync/notes without creating a daily note. Existing note commands, project search and Niri daily-note behavior remain.
Synchronization: Bruno collections were previously moved to Trash on Zenith and their shared Syncthing entry removed. Other devices' files were untouched. Syncthing was subsequently observed running. Notes and credentials remain in place.
API/database work: workbench http/ groups requests by service with shared authentication; databases/ groups reusable queries by database. Private HTTP environment files are ignored at any depth. Dadbod working queries persist under stdpath('data')/db_ui/working; write them there without promoting them into Git. Saved-query storage also contains connection state and must stay outside Git. Lualine uses native Kulala environment and Dadbod connection/timing components. These indicators are not access controls.
Editor ergonomics: word-boundary wrapping, count-aware displayed-line j/k in ordinary normal/visual buffers, and default Escape behavior to leave insert mode. The Neovim smoke tests were removed; earlier smoke-check evidence is in the archived plan.
Agents: Herdr is selected; agent-deck and tmux remain installed alongside it. Codex has agent-deck notifications and hooks enabled. Shared Context7/NixOS skills live under .agents/skills. Zellij is also declared on workstations. Further project workflow work is deferred.
SharePoint: Zenith declares an hourly service syncing company-sharepoint: into ~/.local/share/yookr-reference/sharepoint/Algemeen and company-sharepoint-projecten: into Projecten. Each invocation has --max-delete 100; new files use UMask=0077. The latest implementation only checks for rclone.conf; the old environment-file gate is gone. Archived setup instructions describe an earlier version. Consent, remote configuration and synchronization state were not inspected during this cleanup.
Remote support: Zenith enables TeamViewer. Temporary Xorg/Xfce settings are comments only. The purpose beyond remote support and runtime acceptance were not recorded; preserve the change without calling it a settled design.
Inputs: accumulated lock updates are retained, including an older Elephant revision (376ee71c replacing 23f37238). No rollback rationale was recorded.

Activation and verification

Earlier handoffs report user activation of the relocated XDG/Git/Walker paths and Dadbod working-query persistence. Notes and the newer target statusline were last recorded as pending activation. Only Zenith's filesystem was relocated; other hosts need their own migration before adopting the shared paths. Reopen shells or recreate path-dependent development environments as needed; no compatibility links or cache rewrites were introduced.

For this cleanup, nix flake check --no-build --quiet and diff whitespace checking passed in both NixOS and workbench. NixOS emitted the expected dirty-tree and unknown modules warnings; workbench emitted only the dirty-tree warning. No builds, tests, activation, credential reads or company-service calls were performed. Active-generation differences were not checked; earlier activation reports are not a fresh comparison with this baseline.

Open choices and next discussion

Current focus: look and feel/theming, informed by ~/sync/notes/setup-todo.md. The user accepted complete Nix theme modules with arbitrary plugin/configuration behavior, rather than Stylix or a palette-only abstraction. The single import in modules/capabilities/theme.nix selects ./_themes/kanagawa.nix. _themes is excluded from automatic module discovery, so unselected themes are not loaded. Kanagawa owns GTK/icons/cursor, Qt integration, Kitty, Niri colors, Noctalia palette/font/wallpaper, Herdr colors, the native Neovim plugin and its setup, and Limine/SDDM/Plymouth appearance. Only Kanagawa is implemented so far; switching means selecting another module and rebuilding, not a live theme picker. Walker shares a compact layout with theme-provided colors: reduced padding, 24px icons, clearer secondary text, and a smaller minimum window height. Limine's terminal background is fully transparent with no edge gradient so it does not obscure the wallpaper. Runtime appearance needs user verification. SDDM's purple-leaves theme and Plymouth's spinner are retained within Kanagawa; their visual redesign and the low-frame-rate boot animation remain open. Verification: flake evaluation and both workstation builds passed. A headless check of the built Neovim confirmed Kanagawa Wave, inactive-window dimming and the custom gutter setting. Rendered Herdr TOML, Walker XML and Limine settings also passed targeted checks. No system activation or live desktop changes performed.

Dictation: plain local transcription is selected; rambling cleanup is deferred. Handy preferences are application-owned again: the Nix settings generator and startup reset are removed. The existing settings file is left untouched. Nix installs Handy/wtype and runs Handy as a graphical-session user service. Super+D launches a short-lived Python/evdev listener: hold to record, release D or Super to finish. Both keys must be on the same keyboard. Niri owns the shortcut and disables repeat; no persistent keyboard logger or exclusive input grab runs. A udev uaccess rule grants the active local user access to keyboard event devices. Super+Shift+D toggles; Super+Ctrl+D cancels. Both stop any active hold listener before issuing their Handy command, preventing a later release from restarting recording. Begin push-to-talk from idle: Handy exposes toggles, not idempotent start/stop commands. Niri 26.04 itself has no key-release bindings. Noctalia suppresses microphone activity popups/indicators; camera and screen-sharing indications remain. Automatic paste and live capture need interactive checks.

Hang investigation, parked at the user's request: a debugger capture confirmed Handy's recorder waits for another audio chunk before processing its stop command. When capture stalls, stopping can therefore hang indefinitely; the transcription worker was idle. Bluetooth transport failures accompanied the hangs, and the user reported dictation working after disconnecting the Sony WH-1000XM6. The user wants its microphone when connected. Keeping the headset in a microphone-enabled HFP profile was proposed to avoid repeated profile transitions, but was not applied or verified; the reconnect attempt timed out. No source or Bluetooth configuration was changed. CPU and Vulkan batch inference both worked; changing inference backend is not an established fix. Resume this investigation only if requested. Synthetic listener checks cover release during startup, repeat, modifier-first release, device disconnect and cancellation, without live input/audio access. System activation and an interactive hold/release trial remain user-owned. Formatting, flake evaluation, both workstation builds, synthetic listener checks and whitespace checking passed. No live input listener or microphone was started.

The focus is the broader environment, not further API/database polish. Candidate areas remain places/ownership, navigation/interaction, human/agent collaboration, and system operation/maintenance; these are discussion areas, not a work queue.

Herdr's configured keys are accepted: the user reports liking them in practice. Niri workspace grouping stays informal while the user discovers what fits; Herdr provides enough structure for now. No workspace rules or fixed layout are needed. The user reopened Herdr configuration on 2026-09-10 for direct shortcuts and less interaction friction, using supported configuration only. Layout presets and launchers are explicitly unwanted; arrange panes manually. Agent evaluation is explicitly deferred. Do not resume replacement-tool comparisons or ask for an evaluation task/budget as a prerequisite for this work.

Read-only inspection found existing Niri overview, workspace movement and tabbed columns; Kitty has no declared project/session organization. Installed versions: Kitty 0.48.2, Niri 26.04, tmux 3.7c, Zellij 0.45.1 and Herdr 0.9.0. Herdr's installed default config confirms remappable navigation and agent jumps. Current Herdr keyboard docs describe direct chords; Kitty sessions supply native session creation/switching. Session layouts and window overviews do not themselves provide authoritative agent attention states. tmux detach keeps processes alive; Zellij resurrection recreates layouts/commands, not process memory. None of these capabilities was exercised interactively; no sessions were inspected or changed.

Deferred agent workflow proposal (not accepted or a Niri workspace requirement): one lead conversation owns each coherent change. Use bounded subagents when work is independent, with explicit ownership and evidence returned to the lead. Separate worktrees for independent writing efforts, one integration owner. Keep enduring repository rules in AGENTS.md, current goals/acceptance in task prompts, and durable decisions/current state in existing project docs. No fixed agent team is selected.

Herdr configuration is now declared in modules/capabilities/ai.nix, including the existing Kanagawa theme, workspace-sorted agent panel and disabled toasts. Home Manager owns ~/.config/herdr/config.toml after activation; maintain these preferences in Nix. Its configured .bak mechanism preserves the previous regular file. Direct Ctrl+Alt bindings supplement the existing Ctrl+B prefix shortcuts:

Ctrl+Alt +	Action
H / J / K / L	Focus pane left / down / up / right
U / I	Next / previous workspace
O / G	Workspace picker / goto picker
P / N	Previous / next agent
[ / ]	Previous / next tab
Enter	New tab
V / Minus	Split right / down
F	Zoom pane
Q	Detach, leaving the session running
Shift+H / J / K / L	Swap panes left / down / up / right (Shift on each)
Shift+arrows	Resize pane directly
R	Resize mode
Tab / Shift+Tab	Next / previous pane
Backspace	Return to last pane, including across tabs/spaces
X / Shift+X	Close pane / tab
Shift+P / Shift+A	Rename pane / tab
Shift+[ / Shift+]	Move tab earlier / later
Shift+Enter	New space
Shift+W / Shift+D	Rename / close space
W / Shift+B	Open / create worktree
Y / E	Copy mode / open scrollback in Neovim
Shift+G	Lazygit popup
B	Toggle sidebar
/	Keybinding help
S / Shift+R	Settings / reload configuration

Inside workspace navigation, U/I moves down/up and H/J/K/L retains pane navigation. Niri and Kitty bindings are unchanged. Direct number bindings are removed because the user finds them unergonomic; built-in prefix shortcuts remain available.

Use one space per project or worktree, tabs for different activities, and panes for tools needed together. Start Neovim in a shell, split right with Ctrl+Alt+V for an agent shell, and optionally split that pane down with Ctrl+Alt+Minus for tests or a server. Choose and launch the agent manually. No preset is installed. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+G opens lazygit at 90% width/height in the focused pane's working directory. Quit lazygit to return; the popup owns input until its command exits.

Tabs now open immediately with generated names; rename them only when useful. New spaces already skip naming, and new panes inherit the current directory by default. Workspace-close confirmation remains enabled to protect running work. Direct resizing, previous/next agent navigation, last-pane switching, copy mode, and Neovim scrollback access avoid extra navigation or mode-entry steps. No documented native setting or CLI action opens Goto directly in search mode; that limitation remains under the configuration-only constraint. No input macros, plugins, or package patches are added.

After activating Nix, reload Herdr with Ctrl+B then Shift+R; subsequent reloads can use Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R. The expanded shortcuts require interactive verification through Kitty, including popup working directory, pane swapping/resizing, and scrollback opening. The earlier bindings were reported working by the user. Verification (2026-09-10): formatting, flake evaluation, Polaris and Zenith no-link system builds, and whitespace checks passed. Both hosts generate identical Herdr TOML, accepted by installed Herdr 0.9.0's config check. No activation or live Herdr session changes were performed. The earlier activation installed the Herdr config and preserved config.toml.bak, but Home Manager later timed out (below).

Activation fix (2026-09-09): Home Manager's service switch stopped and restarted the running SharePoint oneshot, then waited until Home Manager's five-minute start timeout. Service-state inspection identified SharePoint as the sole pending user job; its oneshot start timeout is unlimited. This was not a Herdr file collision. Set Unit.X-SwitchMethod = "keep-old" in sharepoint-reference.nix so activation leaves an in-flight sync running; subsequent timer runs use the updated unit. Verified against pinned Home Manager/sd-switch source. Formatting, flake evaluation, Zenith build and whitespace checks passed; the focused sd-switch dry run reported Keep active sharepoint-reference-sync.service, with no restart planned. No live units were changed and no company content or credentials were read. The user must retry activation to verify the full switch; sync health/content completeness were not investigated.

Mail search remains unresolved. The workbench's custom mail reader, inventory pilot, justfile and old README are archived; native Garden/kubectl/K9s now own the documented operations. No replacement mail helper or semantic index is selected; raw mailbox grep is not assumed sufficient. No new ingestion is authorized.

Human credential delivery remains both test/live via environment variables with ordinary editor startup. Workbench .envrc supplies aggregate credentials; agents must not source it. Separate read-only agent credentials and access isolation are explicitly deferred, not prerequisites for unrelated work. Do not resume the rejected per-connection launchers or per-selection decryption proposal.

Notes placement and further company material organization remain open. Work is mostly project-based and notes mostly meetings; do not impose investigation folders, outer project containers or company-wide editor search without a need.

19 KiB Raw Blame History