# File Viewer edit mode (issue #212)
Plan only. No implementation yet.
Goal: close the loop "agent writes a file, you review it in the viewer, tweak two lines, save, tell the
agent to continue" without hopping into the terminal, with the phone as the primary target.
Scope from the issue: an Edit toggle on text previews, a write endpoint that inherits the read path's
confinement, text-only, edit-in-place (no create, no delete, no rename), no editing through the
Docker/remote overlays.
---
## 1. What exists today
**Read path (backend), all in `src/web/routes/file-routes.ts`:**
| Route | Line | Notes |
| ------------------------------------ | ------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `GET /api/sessions/:id/files` | `741` | Tree scan of `session.workingDir`, hidden files off by default |
| `GET /api/sessions/:id/file-content` | `865` | The text/preview classifier. `findSessionOrFail` + `validateSessionFilePath` |
| `GET /api/sessions/:id/file-raw` | `1018` | Bytes, 50MB cap |
| `GET /api/sessions/:id/file-preview` | `1254` | DOCX/PPTX to PDF, everything else redirects to `file-raw` |
| `GET /api/download` | `1384` | The only read route that also runs `isSensitivePath()` |
`file-content` classification order (`file-routes.ts:881-1011`): extension buckets (image / video / audio /
known-binary) return metadata only; otherwise the bytes are read, sniffed for a NUL in the first 8KB, and
either reported as `type:'binary'` or decoded as UTF-8 and **truncated to `lines` (default 500, hard cap
10000)**. Caps: `MAX_TEXT_FILE_SIZE` 10MB.
Confinement is `validateSessionFilePath()` (`src/web/route-helpers.ts:67`): `resolve()` then `realpathSync()`
then reject if the result is not under `workingDir`. Because it realpaths the *full* path, a symlink whose
target escapes the workspace is already rejected. Ownership is `findSessionOrFail()` which runs
`canAccessOwned()` (`route-helpers.ts:102`), a no-op outside multi-user mode.
**Read path (frontend), `src/web/public/panels-ui.js`:**
- `loadFileBrowser()` `2947`, `renderFileBrowserTree()` `2978`, click to `openFilePreview()` `3056`.
- `openFilePreview(filePath, sessionId, attachmentId)` `3193`: attachment-id branch, then docx/pptx, pdf,
svg branches, then the generic `file-content` fetch at `3274` with **`&lines=500` hardcoded**, rendering
text as `
${escapeHtml(...)}
` at `3298` and stashing `this.filePreviewContent`.
- `closeFilePreview()` `3308`, `copyFilePreviewContent()` `3751`.
- Markup: `src/web/public/index.html:420-432` (`filePreviewOverlay` / `-Title` / `-Body` / `-Footer`, two
header buttons: copy and close).
- CSS: `src/web/public/styles.css:9320-9430`. Overlay `z-index: 2000`, window `80vw/80vh`, capped
`900x700`. There are **no `.file-preview-*` rules in `mobile.css` at all**.
**Reachability on phones.** The header File Viewer button is hidden below 430px
(`mobile.css:482`, locked by `KNOWN_PHONE_HIDDEN` in `test/mobile-header-buttons-policy.test.ts`), so on a
phone the preview overlay is reached through:
1. an attachment card's **Preview** button (`panels-ui.js:3451`), which is exactly the "agent just wrote a
file" path the issue describes,
2. the attachment-history drawer (`panels-ui.js:3709`),
3. App Settings to Panels to **File Browser** (`showFileBrowser`, applied in `settings-ui.js:2202`; the
panel is mobile-styled at `mobile.css:1868`).
So edit mode is reachable on a phone today via (1) and (2) without touching the header policy. Improving
the entry point is listed as an open decision in section 10, not assumed.
---
## 2. Threat model, stated honestly
Anyone who can call this API can already reach `POST /api/sessions/:id/input` and type an arbitrary prompt
into an agent running with `--dangerously-skip-permissions`. A workspace-confined write endpoint therefore
does not create a new privilege tier for an authenticated caller.
What it *would* create if built carelessly is a **new host-write primitive reachable by path**, so the
things this plan actually defends against are:
1. **Path traversal / symlink escape** writing outside the workspace.
2. **TOCTOU**: a path component that becomes a symlink between validation and write.
3. **Cross-user writes** in multi-user mode (`canAccessOwned`).
4. **Silent data loss**, which is the highest-probability real-world failure here and gets its own section.
CSRF is already covered: `registerHostGuard()` (`src/web/middleware/auth.ts:555-578`) rejects any
non-safe-method request whose `Origin` is cross-site. The webview-capability exemption at that gate is
fenced to `GET`/`HEAD` for the Referer form (`auth.ts:161`) and to `/webview/:cap/*` paths for the path
form, so a proxied dashboard cannot reach a new `PUT /api/...`. Using `PUT` + `application/json` also
forces a preflight for any cross-origin attempt.
---
## 3. Backend design
### 3.1 New policy module: `src/config/file-editing.ts`
Pure, unit-testable, no IO (config lives in `src/config/`, no barrel, import the file directly).
```ts
export const MAX_EDITABLE_BYTES = 512 * 1024; // content cap, both directions
export const EDITABLE_EXTENSIONS: ReadonlySet; // ts,tsx,js,jsx,mjs,cjs,json,jsonc,md,mdx,txt,
// css,scss,less,html,htm,xml,svg?,yml,yaml,toml,
// ini,cfg,conf,env?,sh,bash,zsh,fish,py,rb,go,rs,
// java,kt,swift,c,h,cpp,hpp,cs,php,sql,graphql,
// proto,lua,pl,r,jl,tf,gradle,csv,tsv,log,diff,patch
export const EDITABLE_BASENAMES: ReadonlySet; // Dockerfile, Makefile, LICENSE, .gitignore,
// .prettierignore, .editorconfig, .nvmrc, ...
export function isEditableFileName(fileName: string): boolean;
export function isDeniedEditRelativePath(rel: string): boolean; // `.git/` subtree
export function detectEol(text: string): 'lf' | 'crlf';
export function applyEol(text: string, eol: 'lf' | 'crlf'): string;
```
Decisions baked in:
- **Allowlist, not blocklist**, per the issue and per the existing attachment-guard precedent.
- `svg` and `env` are deliberately marked with `?` above: `svg` is served as an untrusted octet-stream on
the read side (`file-routes.ts:118`) so allowing an edit is defensible, but I recommend **excluding
both** in v1. `.env` files are matched by `isSensitivePath()` anyway and would be rejected downstream;
excluding them at the allowlist keeps a single obvious refusal.
- `isDeniedEditRelativePath` blocks the `.git/` subtree: `.git/hooks/*` is code execution and a corrupt
index is unrecoverable-looking to a user who only wanted to fix a typo. Other dotfiles stay allowed but
are not reachable from the tree UI anyway (`showHidden=false`).
### 3.2 Read-for-edit: extend the existing GET
`GET /api/sessions/:id/file-content?path=&edit=1`
When `edit=1`:
- skip line truncation entirely (a truncated buffer must never become an edit buffer, see section 4.1),
- enforce `MAX_EDITABLE_BYTES` instead of `MAX_TEXT_FILE_SIZE` and answer 413 over it (as a structured
throw with `statusCode: 413`, the `throwFilesystemPickerError` pattern, since the central errorCode-to-
status map has no 413 entry; see the error-mechanics note in 3.3),
- run the editability gate (`isEditableFileName`, `isDeniedEditRelativePath`, `isSensitivePath`,
`isBlockedAttachmentPath`) and the content gate (NUL sniff plus UTF-8 round-trip, see 4.3),
- return `{ content, size, mtimeMs, totalLines, truncated: false, extension, editable: true, hash, eol }`.
`hash` is `sha256` hex of the exact on-disk bytes.
Non-`edit` responses gain **only** `editable: boolean` (additive, no shape change for existing consumers),
which is all the UI needs to decide whether to show the Edit button. No `hash` on plain reads: the Edit
action re-fetches with `edit=1` anyway (section 4.1), which is where the hash comes from, and hashing every
casual 10MB preview would be pure waste.
### 3.3 Write: `PUT /api/sessions/:id/file-content`
Body (new `FileWriteSchema` in `src/web/schemas.ts`, Zod v4):
```ts
{ path: string, content: string, baseHash: string, eol?: 'lf'|'crlf', force?: boolean }
```
Registered with an explicit route option `{ bodyLimit: 4 * 1024 * 1024 }`. **Fastify's default `bodyLimit`
is 1MB and this repo configures none**, and JSON escaping expands content: 2x for a file full of quotes or
backslashes, up to 6x for control characters (each serialized as a `\uXXXX` escape), so 512KB of content
can legitimately exceed 1MB on the wire; blowing the limit produces a raw `FST_ERR_CTP_BODY_TOO_LARGE`, not an `ApiResponse` envelope. Two
related sizing notes: `z.string().max()` counts **UTF-16 code units, not bytes**, so the schema's `.max()`
is only a coarse pre-filter and the real cap is an explicit `Buffer.byteLength(content, 'utf8')` check in
the handler (step 7a below); and 4MB comfortably bounds the worst-case expansion of a 512KB file without
inviting multi-MB bodies elsewhere.
**Error mechanics** (matters for both prod behavior and testability): a handler that *returns* a
`{success:false, errorCode}` envelope gets its HTTP status assigned centrally by the preSerialization hook
in `server.ts` (`httpStatusForErrorCode()`, `src/types/api.ts`), but the route-test harness
(`test/routes/_route-test-utils.ts`) installs only `installRouteErrorHandler`, **not** that hook, so
returned envelopes surface as HTTP 200 in tests. The PUT handler should therefore use the same
structured-**throw** pattern as the filesystem picker (`throwFilesystemPickerError`, `file-routes.ts:411`):
thrown `{statusCode, body}` errors are rendered identically in prod and in the harness, and they allow the
one status the code map cannot express (413). The error envelope itself is strictly
`{success:false, error, errorCode}`, **it has no data arm**, so no error response may carry extra payload.
Handler order (each step is a test case):
1. `findSessionOrFail(ctx, id, req)` (live sessions only, matching the read route, and it carries the
multi-user ownership check).
2. `parseBody(FileWriteSchema, req.body)`, then `Buffer.byteLength(content, 'utf8') <= MAX_EDITABLE_BYTES`
or 413 (the schema `.max()` alone cannot enforce a byte cap, see the sizing note above).
3. `validateSessionFilePath(session.workingDir, path)` or 404 (do not distinguish "outside workspace" from
"missing", matching the read route).
4. `isSensitivePath(resolvedPath) || isBlockedAttachmentPath(resolvedPath, guard.blockedTrees)` or 403.
5. `isDeniedEditRelativePath(relativePath)` or 403.
6. `isEditableFileName(basename(resolvedPath))` or 400.
7. `stat`: must be `isFile()`, size within `MAX_EDITABLE_BYTES`, else 400/413. **No `O_CREAT` anywhere in
this handler**, which is what enforces edit-in-place.
8. Read current bytes, compute `hash`, run the NUL sniff and the UTF-8 round-trip check, else 400.
9. `hash !== baseHash && !force` gives **409 CONFLICT** (`ApiErrorCode.CONFLICT`, plain envelope; the error
arm carries no data, see the error-mechanics note). The client's conflict dialog gets fresh state by
re-fetching `edit=1`, which it needs for its Reload action anyway.
10. Build the output buffer: `applyEol(content, eol ?? detected-from-original)`; re-check
`Buffer.byteLength` against the cap.
11. Write atomically in the resolved parent directory:
`fs.open(/..codeman-tmp-, 'wx', stat.mode & 0o777)`, then `fchmod(stat.mode & 0o777)`
(open's mode argument is masked by the process umask, so the chmod is what actually preserves an
unusual mode), write, `fsync`, close, `fs.rename(tmp, resolvedPath)`, unlink the temp on any failure.
12. Re-stat, return `{ success: true, data: { path, size, mtimeMs, hash, totalLines } }`.
Why `O_EXCL` temp plus rename rather than truncate-in-place:
- `wx` cannot follow a pre-existing symlink, which closes the TOCTOU window from step 3 to step 11 without
needing `O_NOFOLLOW` gymnastics.
- `rename()` does not follow a symlink in the final component, so even if `resolvedPath` were swapped for a
symlink after validation, the symlink itself is replaced and the swap target is untouched.
- A crash mid-write leaves the original intact.
Caveat to document in the code comment: rename replaces the inode, so hardlinks to the file keep the old
content. That is the same trade-off vim makes by default and is preferable to a truncate window here.
No SSE event in v1. Nothing else in the app needs to know: `image-watcher.ts` only reacts to
`.png/.jpg/.jpeg/.gif/.webp/.bmp/.svg/.pdf/.docx/.pptx` adds (`image-watcher.ts:23-25`), none of which are
editable text, and the temp filename does not match either.
---
## 4. The five traps
These are the parts that turn a "small write endpoint" into a bug report.
### 4.1 Truncation (the data-loss trap)
The frontend fetches `&lines=500` (`panels-ui.js:3274`). Saving that buffer back would **delete every line
past 500**. Worse, the content hash of the full file would still match, so an optimistic-concurrency check
cannot catch it.
Mitigations, all three:
- The Edit affordance is only offered when the loaded payload came from `edit=1` (which never truncates).
Tapping Edit on an already-rendered preview **re-fetches** with `edit=1` before swapping in the editor.
- The read-for-edit path 413s above `MAX_EDITABLE_BYTES` rather than truncating, so "too big to edit here"
is an explicit refusal with a message, never a silent partial buffer.
- A test asserts `edit=1` never returns `truncated: true`.
### 4.2 Line endings
A `