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clide/governance/decisions/design.md
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jpmschweitzerandClaude Opus 4.8 48974d2a29 close the D-88 anchored-popover sweep (T-286, T-288)
Record the closing amendment on D-88: base blockers fixed, every anchored
surface migrated except quick-open (deliberately left bespoke — a persistent
centred widget that shares neither ClideMenu nor anchoring). Mark T-286 and
T-288 done.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-06-09 08:19:52 +02:00

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# Design Decisions
User-facing surface — UX, UI conventions, and the public shape of clide-owned
widget primitives.
---
### D-88: clide-owned anchored popover + menu primitive
- **Date:** 2026-06-08
- **Decision:** Anchored, non-modal popovers (dropdowns, pickers, typeaheads, the command palette) build on two clide-owned primitives in `lib/widgets/`: `ClideAnchoredOverlay` (positioning + lifecycle — a `LayerLink`/`CompositedTransformFollower` or centred `Positioned`, a full-screen tap-away barrier, `OverlayEntry` bookkeeping, focus capture, Esc-to-close, and auto-flip on viewport bounds) and `ClideMenu` + `ClideMenuListController` (a dropdown-token row surface with arrow/enter/escape nav, skip-disabled/separator, active mark, and a reusable nav controller for surfaces that keep bespoke rows). No Material/Cupertino. Modal, centred dialogs (session / project / branch pickers) stay on the kernel `DialogRouter` — a separate concern.
- **Rationale:** Nine surfaces had hand-rolled the same anchored-overlay + row-list + barrier + keyboard-nav pattern (menu-bar dropdowns, theme picker, slash + @ typeaheads, quick-open, three modal pickers), each re-deriving positioning, dismissal, and nav — divergent a11y, inconsistent dismissal, and a `pumpAndSettle`-hostile spread of ad-hoc overlays. Owning one primitive (per "own the rendering stack", [D-5](architecture.md#d-5-dart-core-sidecar-dissolved-ptyc-as-pql-peer)) makes the behaviour uniform and testable once, and turns the tenth surface (the T-275 permission-mode picker) into a few lines instead of another hand-roll.
- **Cost:** A migration sweep across the existing surfaces (menu bar, theme picker, typeaheads, quick-open); the typeaheads keep their text-completion/key pipeline and only delegate anchoring + body, so the primitive must stay composable (a bare lifecycle wrapper + an optional turnkey menu), not a monolith. New UI authors must reach for the primitive rather than rolling another overlay.
- **Raised by:** 2026-06-08 — user, while building the T-275 permission-mode picker: "since we don't do Material doesn't mean we can't make components of our own." Realises the "own the rendering stack" guardrail at the component level. Tracked by epic T-286.
- **Amendment (2026-06-08):** The shared piece is `ClideAnchoredOverlay` (positioning + lifecycle) — that is what every anchored surface adopts. Content is **NOT** universally `ClideMenu`; it matches the surface's shape, to avoid bending divergent surfaces into a menu (the theme-picker migration was reverted for exactly this friction):
- **`ClideMenu`** — selectable-list menus only (menu bar, permission picker).
- **`ClideTypeahead`** (a second shared content component, to add) — the slash and @ typeaheads are near-duplicate caret-anchored completion surfaces; they share *this*, not `ClideMenu`.
- **Quick-open / command palette** — bespoke content (centred filter + fuzzy + two-column rows); uses only the `ClideAnchoredOverlay` base.
- **Theme picker** — toggle + live-apply list; its own small content (or `ClideMenu` if it ever fits cleanly), on the base.
Revised goal: *everything anchored shares `ClideAnchoredOverlay`; content components match the surface.* The blockers to clear first (focus capture racing content autofocus; follower content untappable in the `canSizeOverlay` test harness) live in the base, not in any content component. Tracked by T-288. Raised by the user: "should those then not just be a different shared component from the others?"
- **Amendment (2026-06-08) — sweep complete:** The base blockers were fixed (auto-flip reads the real `View` size, not the zeroable `MediaQuery`; the follower drops its `Align` wrapper so non-top-left anchors hit-test; tests use a sized `anchoredHarness`). Migrated: menu bar, permission picker (T-275), theme picker (onto `ClideMenu` — the HC toggle is a `keepOpenOnSelect` item; it fit cleanly), the @-mention and slash typeaheads (onto `ClideTypeahead`, which bridges its live suggestions through a `ValueNotifier` so the popover narrows as you type — the `OverlayEntry` is a separate subtree that would otherwise show the list it opened with). **Quick-open is deliberately NOT migrated:** it is a *persistent* widget that conditionally renders a centred `Positioned` (no `OverlayEntry` lifecycle, no barrier, no anchor) with bespoke two-column rows and intricate keymap-scope/focus/file-load logic — it shares neither `ClideMenu` nor any real anchoring, so wrapping it in `ClideAnchoredOverlay(centered)` would add insert/remove churn to a delicate widget for ~6 lines of trivial centring and no code reuse. The base primitive stands ready if quick-open's shape ever converges. T-286 / T-288 close here.