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Default to agent mode and retain composer mode per channel #59
Description
New channels should be ready to ask the agent, and changing channels should not undo a deliberate composer-mode choice.
- Default a new channel's composer to agent mode, including channels without a selected model or initial draft.
- Keep the selected agent/message mode per channel across sends and navigating away and back; another channel's choice must not overwrite it.
- Preserve the shortcut that landed in
../ace-old: Esc leaves agent mode for message mode; double Esc within 350 ms enters agent mode from message mode. Keep draft text intact and preserve Escape's existing edit/menu dismissal behavior. - Verify the default, persistence, and keyboard transitions in the desktop composer, including sending after each transition.
Current behavior: apps/app/src/composer.tsx:49 derives mode from draft || channel.model; mode is component state, and apps/app/src/app.tsx:431 remounts the channel on navigation. Sending already preserves mode in the shared composer. The Escape handler already exists at packages/ui/src/components/composer/chat-composer.tsx:995; verify its integration rather than adding a Tab binding.
Legacy reference: ace-old commit 8d875cb43aa20a2353c4d5fe7914e21af0f0d109, clients/app/src/context/sessions/core.tsx:644 (per-channel in-memory mode) and packages/ace.ui/src/components/composer/chat-composer.tsx:1015 (Escape behavior). The agent-first default is the requested behavior; that legacy snapshot itself defaults to message mode.
Tracked by #5 (dogfooding core/QOL); also part of old-Ace restoration in #6.
Activity
iamnbutler commentedon Oct 6, 2026
Follow-up to consider, not a blocker. Found during the real headless-browser smoke for #165 (#77, dogfooding #5).
Just opening a channel in the default Ace mode inserts the
@acemode mention. That edit is saved as a draft for/channels/<id>, with the mention's avatar data URI, about 6 KB per channel visited. The old bundle already did this, writing the same@ace-only draft tosessionStorage. With #165 it now persists inlocalStorageacross restarts.No user text is lost. Reopening a channel just restores the
@acechip, and sends and discards still clear drafts. #165 intentionally leaves the editor document and mode behavior unchanged. This belongs with the composer mode and default-mention insertion work here. One option is to not save a mode-mention-only document as a draft, or to keep the avatar out of the stored mention.