Codeman/docs/architecture-invariants.md

# Architecture invariants

Implementation detail extracted from `CLAUDE.md` so that file stays small enough to load into every session cheaply. Most sections are the original paragraphs, verbatim, including the version history and PR references that explain *why* each rule exists; newer ones are written here first and summarized back into `CLAUDE.md` as a short rule plus a pointer.

`CLAUDE.md` keeps the short form of each rule plus a pointer to the section here. Read the pointer first; come here when you need the mechanism, the file names, or the history behind a constraint.

---

## Network binding and instance isolation

### Default bind, and the non-loopback warning path

**Default bind is loopback-only; non-loopback without a password starts but warns** — since COD-29 (PR #107) the web server defaults to `--host 127.0.0.1` (was `0.0.0.0`). As of **0.9.0** binding a non-loopback host (`--host`/`-H`/`CODEMAN_HOST`) without `CODEMAN_PASSWORD` **no longer refuses to start — it starts and prints a loud warning** listing the fixes (set `CODEMAN_PASSWORD`, bind loopback + tunnel/`tailscale serve`, or `--allow-unauthenticated-network` / `CODEMAN_ALLOW_UNAUTHENTICATED_NETWORK=1` to acknowledge → terser note). Host classification is `isLoopbackBindHost()` in `network-auth-policy.ts`; the warn-vs-start logic is in `server.ts` `start()`; flags wired in `cli.ts`. ⚠️ Operational note: the production systemd unit runs `node dist/index.js web --https` with no `--host`, so it binds **localhost only** — reach it remotely via `tailscale serve`/tunnel to `127.0.0.1`, or add `Environment=CODEMAN_HOST=0.0.0.0` + `Environment=CODEMAN_PASSWORD=…` to `~/.config/systemd/user/codeman-web.service`. A loopback bind is reachable through a same-host tunnel (cloudflared/tailscale → `127.0.0.1`) but NOT by a browser hitting the box's LAN IP. Auth user defaults to `admin`. **Installer note** (1.8.x, `install.sh`): interactive installs now PROMPT for the binding, defaulting to LAN (`0.0.0.0`) with a required password prompt (skipping the password needs an explicit confirm and prints a loud warning); non-interactive installs keep loopback unless `CODEMAN_HOST` is preset, and re-runs/updates preserve the EXISTING binding (`read_existing_binding()` parses the current systemd unit / launchd plist). The server binary's own default is unchanged. **Full model: `docs/security-architecture.md`.**

### Instance isolation and the multi-instance attach danger

**Instance isolation / multi-instance attach danger** — data dir (`~/.codeman`) and tmux socket (`tmux -L codeman`) are PROCESS-WIDE and shared by every Codeman on the machine, derived from `CODEMAN_INSTANCE` via `src/config/instance.ts` (`getDataDir()`/`dataPath()`/`DEFAULT_TMUX_SOCKET`). ⚠️ A 2nd instance on the SAME socket **discovers and attaches PTYs to the first instance's live sessions** (`tmux -L codeman attach-session …`), resizing/mutating them — `$HOME` isolation is NOT enough (tmux is system-global). To run two instances, give each a distinct `CODEMAN_INSTANCE` (scopes BOTH dir+socket: `~/.codeman-<name>` + `-L codeman-<name>`), or set `CODEMAN_TMUX_SOCKET` + `CODEMAN_DATA_DIR` individually. **`CODEMAN_INSTANCE` defaults to empty = the production layout (`~/.codeman`, `-L codeman`, port 3000)**, so this branch is safe to ship to master without disturbing existing installs. To run THIS beta alongside prod, launch with `scripts/run-beta.sh` (`CODEMAN_INSTANCE=beta` + `CODEMAN_PORT=5000`) — it never collides with prod's data dir/socket/port. Any new `~/.codeman/...` path MUST go through `dataPath()`, never `join(homedir(), '.codeman', …)`, and any new `tmux -L` caller through `resolveTmuxSocketName()` (same module): it applies the `CODEMAN_TMUX_SOCKET` override only when the name is safe and falls back to `DEFAULT_TMUX_SOCKET` otherwise. `TmuxManager` was the only such caller until `codeman tui` shelled out to tmux from a SECOND process for its degraded-mode listing and its attach handoff; a hardcoded `codeman` there would have pointed a beta instance straight at prod's panes.

## Session launch modes

### External CLI modes (OpenCode, Codex, Gemini, Antigravity, Pi, Grok, DeepSeek, OMP)

**External CLI modes (OpenCode, Codex, Gemini, Antigravity, Pi, Grok, DeepSeek, OMP)**: `isExternalCliMode()` in `session.ts` (`mode === 'opencode' || 'codex' || 'gemini' || 'antigravity' || 'pi' || 'grok' || 'deepseek'`) gates Claude-specific behavior — Ralph tracker, BashToolParser, token/CLI-info parsing, and ❯-prompt readiness detection are all skipped (these CLIs render their own TUIs; readiness = output stabilization instead). ⚠️ **Work detection left this gate in #385** and is now per-CLI `capabilities.workDetect` data (`promptGlyph` + `workingLine`), because gating it on the mode left every Codex session reporting `idle` for its entire life; a CLI declaring neither falls back to Claude's pair, which is logic-identical to the pre-registry behaviour. All seven modes **require tmux — no direct PTY fallback** — because secrets are injected via `tmux setenv` (socket-scoped `${this.tmux()} setenv`, never on the spawn command line): OpenCode gets `OPENCODE_CONFIG_CONTENT` etc., Codex gets `OPENAI_API_KEY`/`CODEX_API_KEY`/`CODEX_HOME` (`setCodexEnvVars`), Gemini gets `GEMINI_API_KEY`/`GOOGLE_API_KEY`/`GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT`/`GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS`/`GOOGLE_GENAI_USE_VERTEXAI` etc. (`setGeminiEnvVars`, all in `tmux-manager.ts`). Codex specifics: command built by `buildCodexCommand()` (`--model`, `resume <id>`, `--dangerously-bypass-approvals-and-sandbox` from the `codexConfig` payload / `codexDangerouslyBypassApprovals` app setting; `renderMode` is schema-coerced to `'hybrid'`, the only supported mode). Gemini specifics: command built by `buildGeminiCommand()` (`--skip-trust` always, `--approval-mode <default|auto_edit|yolo|plan>` defaulting to `yolo` for parity with Claude's `--dangerously-skip-permissions`, `--model`, `--resume` from the `geminiConfig` payload); availability via `GET /api/gemini/status` — session/quick-start routes fail with `OPERATION_FAILED` + install hint (`npm install -g @google/gemini-cli`) when missing. Codex AND Gemini export `COLORTERM=truecolor` + unset `NO_COLOR` (other modes unset `COLORTERM`); Gemini joins `isAltScreenStripMode()` (Codex/Claude/Gemini are Ink TUIs that repaint inline → strip alt-screen/`3J` so scrollback survives). Codex availability via `GET /api/codex/status`. Antigravity specifics: command built by `buildAntigravityCommand()` (`--model`, `--conversation <id>` resume, `--dangerously-skip-permissions` from the `antigravityConfig` payload); availability via `GET /api/antigravity/status` — routes fail with `OPERATION_FAILED` + install hint (`curl -fsSL https://antigravity.google/cli/install.sh | bash`) when missing. Unlike the other three it is NOT an npm package (standalone binary, `~/.local/bin/agy`), which is why `docker/agent.Dockerfile` installs it with its own `--dir /usr/local/bin` step rather than in the `npm install -g` line, and why it does NOT join `isAltScreenStripMode()`. Frontend: run-mode dropdown → `runCodex()`/`runGemini()` in `session-ui.js` ("Run CX"/"Run GM" labels), App Settings → Agents & CLIs → Codex; Respawn/Ralph options are Claude-only, so session options open on the Session tab for external CLI sessions. ⚠️ `run*()` MUST unwrap the `{success,data}` envelope (`(await res.json()).data.available` / `data.data.sessionId`) — reading the raw shape silently breaks the run. Tests: `test/run-mode-ui.test.ts` + `test/gemini-mode.test.ts` (vm-sandbox harness, no real DOM). Grok specifics: command built by `buildGrokCommand()` (`--always-approve` from `grokConfig.alwaysApprove` — grok's `bypassPermissions` permission mode, deny rules still apply; `--model`; `--resume <id>` / `--continue`, id-regexed so grok's resume-by-TITLE feature can never put an arbitrary string on the spawn line); availability via `GET /api/grok/status`, which carries `version` because the resolver version-probes candidates (`grok` has npm squatters, e.g. @vibe-kit/grok-cli — `GROK_VERSION_REGEX` is shared with the dependency registry so doctor and run mode agree). Like antigravity it is a standalone binary (xAI installer → `~/.grok/bin`, symlinked into `~/.local/bin`), so `docker/agent.Dockerfile` installs it in its own step (copy to `/usr/local/bin`, drop root's `~/.grok` in the same layer) and it stays OUT of `isAltScreenStripMode()` (fullscreen alt-screen TUI with mouse support — the opencode case, not the Ink case). Env allowlist: `GROK_*` plus the vendor namespace `XAI_*` (`XAI_API_KEY` is grok's documented headless auth var — the same narrow-vendor-namespace reasoning as `GOOGLE_*` for gemini). Docker cred seeding is per-file (`auth.json`, `config.toml`, `pager.toml` from `~/.grok` — the dir also holds `sessions/`, `memory/`, and the ~160MB binary under `downloads/`). Grok tests: `test/grok-mode.test.ts`, `test/grok-cli-resolver.test.ts`.

**DeepSeek Harness (`dsh`) specifics** — the mode that breaks three of the assumptions the six above share, so read this before changing anything about it.

⚠️ **The agent is a PROFILE, not the binary.** `dsh` is a launcher over `$DSH_HOME/profiles/<name>` (an ordered stack of plugin-bundle patch layers), and DeepSeek ships only `web` (browser UI), `headless` (one-shot) and `base` (no app). The interactive terminal front door is ALWAYS third-party. So availability is TWO questions, not one, and `isDeepSeekRunnable()` (binary AND a pane-capable profile) is what the Run button gates on while `isDeepSeekAvailable()` (binary only) gates the "add a profile" affordance and the web-UI shortcut. Reporting only the binary would let Run spawn a pane that dies on arrival, which is this mode's single most confusing failure. `buildDeepSeekCommand()` emits `dsh --profile <name> [--resume [id]]`; an absent profile resolves through `resolveDefaultDeepSeekProfile()`, which prefers a recognized TUI, then an UNRECOGNIZED profile (third-party by construction — a classifier that has not heard of a bundle must not hide it), and refuses `web`/`headless`, which cannot drive a pane.

⚠️ **The permission switch is an ENV VAR, not a flag.** The harness has no `--dangerously-skip-permissions` equivalent; its sandbox/approval rows read `DSH_PERMISSION_MODE` with three presets (`read-only` / `workspace-write` / `danger-full-access`; measured from `dsh --dump-default-config`). It is exported via `tmux setenv` in `_configureCliEnv()`, never on the command line, and `test/deepseek-mode.test.ts` pins that nothing permission-shaped ever reaches the spawn line. This is the ONE place a Codeman env export is the right mechanism rather than the forbidden one: unlike `CLAUDE_CODE_EFFORT_LEVEL` (which hard-locks in-session `/effort`), the harness reads it with `??` as a boot-time DEFAULT, so it stays soft. Absent = `workspace-write`, which still asks, so the multi-user clamp is the only-if-sent branch (codex/antigravity/grok shape, not pi's materialize) — and it clamps down to `workspace-write`, NOT `read-only`, because the clamp removes privilege without breaking a session's ability to edit its own workspace. ⚠️ **Clamping the config is only HALF the gate here, and this is the only CLI where that is true.** Every sibling's bypass is a command-line flag, reachable only through the per-CLI config `clampExternalCliBypassForOwner()` already owns. DeepSeek's is an env var, `DSH_*` is an allowlisted `envOverrides` prefix (it must be — that is also how the harness's ordinary knobs are set), and `applyEnvOverrides()` runs AFTER `_configureCliEnv()` in tmux-manager, so `envOverrides: {DSH_PERMISSION_MODE: 'danger-full-access'}` sent on the SAME request as a clamped config lands last and wins. `clampEnvOverridesForOwner()` (session-routes.ts, exported as `_clampEnvOverridesForOwner` for tests) DROPS `DSH_PERMISSION_MODE`, `DSH_HOME` and `DEEPSEEK_BASE_URL` for a non-granted owner (the last because `_configureCliEnv()` forwards the SERVER's own `DEEPSEEK_API_KEY` into the pane, so a redirected base URL would send it to a foreign host) rather than rewriting them, since dropping falls through to what `_configureCliEnv()` exports, which is already the clamped value. `DSH_HOME` is on that list because it aims the launcher at a profile tree and a profile's plugin code executes at BOOT, before any approval row can apply — the wider of the two holes. No-op in single-user mode and for a granted owner, like every other clamp.

⚠️ **It is the only non-claude mode that passes `hooksAvailableForMode()`, and it earned that.** The community terminal front door reports its own lifecycle to a supervising process through a generic env-var-gated contract inherited from Herdr: with `HERDR_ENV=1` + `HERDR_BIN_PATH` + `HERDR_PANE_ID` set it shells out `<bin> pane report-agent <paneId> --state idle|working|blocked …` on every state change and treats exit 0 as delivered. `deepseek-status-shim.ts` GENERATES a small script into the data dir (like `self-update-runner.sh`, so npm installs and git clones behave alike) and points `HERDR_BIN_PATH` at it; it forwards to `POST /api/hook-event` as `idle→stop`, `blocked→permission_prompt`, `working→agent_working`. So a dsh session gets real respawn triggers, real `wait` stop/blocked signals and real Approvals Inbox items instead of output-stabilization guesswork. This is an interface implementation, not an impersonation — no real `herdr` binary is ever executed. A TUI that does not implement the contract simply never calls the shim and falls back to stabilization, so the feature is inert rather than harmful there. ⚠️ **For deepseek alone, `hooksAvailableForMode()` is a per-SESSION question**, which is why it takes a `HookCapabilityOptions` second argument and every call site passes `sessionHookOptions(session)`: `deepSeekConfig.statusReporting: false` skips the `HERDR_*` export, and that triple is the only reason a dsh session posts anything, so answering from the mode alone would accept `until=stop` on a session where nothing can ever send one — the infinite-wait-dressed-as-a-timeout the predicate exists to prevent. The option defaults permissive (`!== false`), so a call site that forgets it degrades to the old behaviour instead of 400ing a working session. ⚠️ Profile conformance is the LIMIT of what is knowable at request time: `resolveDefaultDeepSeekProfile()` deliberately treats an unrecognized profile as launchable, so a non-conforming TUI still answers true and still times out on an explicit `stop` — which is why the DEFAULT signal set keeps `idle`/`exit`. ⚠️ **The predicate is not a stand-in for "is this a claude session"**, though it read like one while `claude` was the only true answer: Read My Mind (`POST /api/sessions/:id/readmymind`) and intent capture (`captureIntentPrompt`) read Claude's own transcript and were silently widened to deepseek by this change, so both compare `mode === 'claude'` directly and a static check in `test/deepseek-mode.test.ts` keeps them there.

⚠️ **`agent_working` is a hook event with no Claude Code hook behind it** (157th SSE constant). It exists because a harness turn cannot run while one of its own modal approvals is on screen, so "the agent started working" proves a dialog was answered in the terminal. It joins `APPROVAL_RESOLVING_EVENTS`; without it a dsh session's red alert would survive until the next `stop`, the exact stuck-alert bug the claude path already had to fix once — and the pane-capture staleness sweep that fixed it there is Claude-dialog-shaped and cannot help here.

⚠️ **Answers are READ FROM DISK for this mode, not scraped off the pane** (`src/deepseek-transcript.ts`, behind `GET /api/sessions/:id/last-response`). dsh writes a structured JSONL transcript at `$DSH_HOME/sessions/<mangled-cwd>/<dsh-session-id>/session.jsonl.zstd`, so it belongs with claude and codex rather than with the pane-segmented modes — and for dsh specifically the segmenter was not merely coarse but WRONG: dsh-TUI paints a full-screen splash, so a `last-response` call on a fresh dsh session returned its ASCII-art logo, which anything polling for a worker's first answer reads as an answer. Four mechanisms in that file are load-bearing. **(1)** dsh appends **one zstd FRAME per write**, and Node's `zlib` zstd decoder — one-shot AND streaming — stops at the first frame end: a real 56-line transcript decoded as 1 line / 158 bytes, i.e. the session header alone, so every call would have reported "nothing said yet" forever. `zstdFrameRanges()` walks frame and block headers (no decompression) to find exact boundaries and decompresses each frame; splitting on the 4-byte magic instead would corrupt everything after a magic sequence that happens to occur inside compressed data. zstd itself is resolved at RUNTIME (`zstdSupported()`), because it landed in Node 22.15 while the project floor is 22.0 and `@types/node` still does not declare it; without it the mode falls back to the pane exactly as before, which is why `readDeepSeekLastResponse()` distinguishes `null` ("this reader cannot run here") from an empty result ("read fine, nothing said yet"). **(2)** Every turn also records a plugin-sourced `user/message` (dsh's runtime-context snapshot: sandbox policy, approval policy, cwd), so only `source.kind === 'user'` is a real prompt. **(3)** A turn that ends in `reason.kind: 'error'` is surfaced as `Turn error: …` (and a non-error early stop such as `max-tokens` as `Turn ended: …`) rather than as an empty string, which an agent reads as "still thinking" through fifteen polls. **(4)** Reply text is assembled per (turn, step): a finalized `assistant/message` wins, and the streamed `assistant/chunk` / `text-chunks` deltas are consulted ONLY for a step that never finalized (so a partial answer is readable mid-turn without ever being appended twice) — ⚠️ and "finalized" is tracked as a SET of steps, not as non-empty text, because a step whose whole reply was reasoning strips to `''` at the `</think>` boundary and would otherwise resurrect the raw, unstripped deltas in its place (measured on a real conversation). ⚠️ Session→transcript pairing is by the transcript's own header `cwd` plus a ±60 s boot window against the Codeman session's `createdAt`, never by reproducing dsh's directory mangling (which already has two forms on disk, `<uuid>` and `session-<uuid>`) and never by newest-mtime alone: mtime alone handed a freshly spawned worker its PREDECESSOR's answer in the same case directory, which is worse than saying nothing because an agent cannot tell a stale answer from a fresh one. The `DSH_HOME` override reaches the reader through the narrow `Session.deepSeekHomeOverride` getter rather than an `envOverrides` accessor, since that map can hold provider credentials; it is ephemeral by design (never persisted), so a session that overrode it and outlived a server restart resolves the default tree and reads as "nothing said yet". Tests: `test/deepseek-transcript.test.ts`.

⚠️ **This is also what makes dsh the one non-claude mode the `codeman` agent skill drives like claude** (`skills/codeman/preamble.sh`, preamble 1.20.0): with a real end-of-turn signal AND a real transcript, `spawn_workers alpha beta:deepseek` is a mixed fleet in one call and `sendwait`/`last_text` need no per-mode variant. Two traps are handled in the preamble rather than left to the agent. **Readiness is not the stop signal**: the harness reports `idle` at BOOT roughly 300 ms before its composer paints (measured 2.26 s vs 2.56 s after spawn, twice), so a send-and-wait fired straight after `quick-start` resolves on the boot edge, reports a turn that never ran, and strands the prompt in a pane that was not yet accepting input — `spawn_worker`'s dsh branch gates on the composer glyph (`❯`, overridable via `DSH_READY_MARK`) instead, after which the boot edge is spent and unobservable. And `sendwait` asks for `wait:"stop,exit"` rather than the `wait:true` default set, because that set also carries `idle`, which for any external CLI is inferred from output stabilization: on a dsh worker whose TUI repaints rarely, a re-wait resolved in 0 ms with `signal:"idle"` on a turn that had three minutes left to run. The skill also sends `deepSeekConfig.permissionMode: 'danger-full-access'` for its own workers, matching what the Run button sends, because the harness default still asks and a worker parked on an approval row cannot finish a fan-out (the multi-user clamp still applies).

⚠️ **The resolver needs the strictest identity probe of any CLI**, because `dsh` is not merely a squattable npm name: Debian ships an unrelated `dsh` (dancer's shell, `apt install dsh`) that would answer a version probe convincingly. `probeDeepSeekVersion()` therefore checks `dsh --help` against `DEEPSEEK_IDENTITY_REGEX` (`DeepSeek Harness`) FIRST and only then reads a version, and `test/deepseek-cli-resolver.test.ts` pins both the rejection and the VITEST hermeticity gate with a real executable fixture. `DEEPSEEK_VERSION_REGEX` keeps the prerelease tail (`0.1.1-rc.2`), since truncating it would report an rc as a release; it is shared with the `dsh` dependency-registry entry so doctor and run mode agree about the version even though the resolver is stricter about identity.

Model is NOT a session field: it is a composition entry in the profile's config tree (`agent-default-model`), configured in `~/.dsh/settings.yaml` + `cordis.patch.yml`, so both create paths deliberately resolve no model for this mode. Env allowlist: `DSH_*` + `DEEPSEEK_*`; provider keys named by a settings-file `apiKeyEnv` stay OUT, which is pi's 34-provider-key problem in a new shape and gets the same answer. Docker seeds `~/.dsh` per-file (`.env`, `settings.yaml`, `cordis.patch.yml`) and the image installs its OWN profile, because `profiles/` is a per-profile `node_modules` tree — host-arch-specific and far too large to copy per container start. Stays OUT of `isAltScreenStripMode()` (third-party fullscreen TUI — the opencode case). ⚠️ `classifyProfile()` reads the profile's BUNDLES, and "unknown means launchable" is deliberate (anyone can publish an app bundle), but it has one knowably-wrong case: `readProfile()` returns an empty bundle list for a `package.json` with no `dsh.profile.bundles`, which made the SHIPPED `web`/`headless` profiles look third-party and launchable. The directory name is therefore consulted as a LAST resort (`STOCK_NON_INTERACTIVE_PROFILES`), after the bundle patterns, so real bundle evidence always wins over a name the user chose. The loose `tui` arm carries word boundaries for the same reason: it decides which profile boots by default, and matching the middle of `intuition` is not a rule anyone could predict. ⚠️ The generated shim is written **temp + rename**, not in place: the TUI can be exec'ing that exact path while an upgraded Codeman refreshes it, and a half-written file is a syntax error the caller then retries four times per state change forever. Bump `SHIM_VERSION` whenever `SHIM_SOURCE` changes, or an existing shim keeps matching the embedded marker and is never refreshed. Availability via `GET /api/deepseek/status`, the widest per-CLI status shape (`available`/`runnable`/`path`/`version`/`dshHome`/`defaultProfile`/`profiles`); `POST /api/deepseek/install-profile` bootstraps a profile and is the only endpoint in Codeman that installs third-party code — regex-confined specifier, argv-array spawn, privileged grant required in multi-user mode, and the held-open request is bounded by a HAND-ROLLED timeout over a `detached: true` process group (negative-pid SIGTERM→SIGKILL, as `runGit()` does in git-clone.ts). ⚠️ Node's own `spawn` `timeout` is NOT enough: a plugin install fans out into package-manager children, the built-in timeout signals only the direct child, and the survivors hold the inherited stdio pipes open so `close` never fires and the request leaks forever. User guide: `docs/deepseek-integration.md`. Tests: `test/deepseek-mode.test.ts`, `test/deepseek-cli-resolver.test.ts`.

**Pi specifics** (#206, `docs/pi-integration.md`): command built by `buildPiCommand()` (`--model` — the only builder whose model regex admits `:` and `/`, for `sonnet:high` and `openai/gpt-4o` — plus `--provider`, `--thinking`, `--session <id>` / `-c`, and the TRI-STATE `--approve`/`--no-approve`). ⚠️ **Pi has no permission prompts and no sandbox**, so there is no `--dangerously-skip-permissions` analog and Codeman must not invent one; the privilege-shaped knob is `approveProjectTrust`, which makes pi LOAD AND EXECUTE repo-local `.pi/extensions` TypeScript and npm-install missing project packages. It therefore joins `clampExternalCliBypassForOwner()`'s **materialize** branch (gemini's, not codex/antigravity's only-if-sent one): an absent config still yields `--no-approve` for a non-granted owner, because pi's own default is an interactive prompt the session user could answer themselves. ⚠️ `--api-key` is NEVER wired — it would put a provider secret on the spawn command line. ⚠️ Pi stays **out** of `isAltScreenStripMode()`: its default TUI renders into the main screen with terminal-owned scrollback (nothing to strip), and since 0.84.0 the user can flip to a fullscreen TUI at runtime via `/settings`, where the alt screen is load-bearing — being out of the list is exactly what makes that switch safe. ⚠️ Only the `PI_*` env prefix was added; pi's ~34 provider keys share no prefix and `ALLOWED_ENV_PREFIXES` is a single GLOBAL list with no mode context, so admitting them would widen the allowlist for every mode at once (a mode-aware allowlist is the tracked follow-up). ⚠️ `pi` is a short, GENERIC binary name, so unlike the sibling resolvers `pi-cli-resolver.ts` sanity-probes `pi --version` (cached, vitest-skipped) and requires semver-shaped output; `GET /api/pi/status` carries `version` on top of the sibling `{available, path}` shape so a misresolution is diagnosable. Local echo: pi lands on the `'buffer'` overlay via the fallthrough in `_updateLocalEchoState` (pinned in `test/local-echo-codex-gating.test.ts`); if pi's live composer turns out to fight it the way codex's did, the fallback is one `'off'` branch. Tests: `test/pi-mode.test.ts`, `test/routes/external-cli-bypass-clamp.test.ts` (first-ever coverage of the clamp).

**OMP (`omp`, Oh My Pi) specifics** (`docs/omp-integration.md`): architecturally the simplest of the family — omp owns its own auth, provider routing, and trust decisions entirely in `~/.omp` config files (default `tools.approvalMode: yolo`), so `buildOmpCommand()` only ever emits `--model`/`--resume <id>`/`--continue`, and there is no bypass-permissions flag for Codeman to wire or clamp. ⚠️ **That does NOT make the multi-user clamp a no-op**: `OMP_*` is an allowlisted `envOverrides` prefix and admits `OMP_AUTH_BROKER_URL`/`OMP_AUTH_BROKER_TOKEN` (where omp resolves credentials from), both dropped for a non-granted owner in `clampEnvOverridesForOwner()` — the same shape as `DEEPSEEK_BASE_URL` — even though, unlike DeepSeek, Codeman forwards no operator-held key into an omp pane today (found in Ark0N/Codeman#353 review). `--continue` alone is ambiguous the moment any other omp conversation has touched the same working directory more recently, since it just picks the newest session file on disk — `resolveAndClaimOmpSessionId()` (`src/utils/omp-session-resolver.ts`) resolves and PINS the real id instead, verifying each candidate's own file header (`{"type":"session","id",cwd"}`, not just the mangled-directory match) and tracking already-claimed ids in a process-wide registry so two omp tabs in the same case dir can't alias onto each other's conversation. ⚠️ Resolution/pinning happens ONLY at the point a respawn is actually confirmed (`_pinOmpRespawnId()`, called from `_setupOrAttachMuxSession()`'s dead-pane branch and `reattachRemote()`) — earlier code resolved eagerly while merely building respawn options, which could mis-pin a still-ALIVE session's id purely from boot-recovery timing. `src/omp-transcript.ts` independently scans `~/.omp/agent/sessions/**/*.jsonl` for Past Sessions history, the omp analog of Claude's own transcript scan, so a conversation survives even a full "Kill Tmux". ⚠️ omp's own env knobs are mostly `PI_*`, not `OMP_*` (`PI_CONFIG_DIR`, `PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR`, `PI_CODING_AGENT_SESSION_DIR`, `PI_SUBPROCESS_CMD`, `PI_SHELL_PREFIX`), and `PI_*` is already allowlisted globally for pi — so a redirected `PI_CONFIG_DIR` silently moves the `~/.omp` tree the resolver and transcript scanner hardcode, degrading pinning/history with no error; a known gap shared with pi, not fixed here. ⚠️ Docker: `appendResumeFlag()`'s `case 'omp'` keys off the top-level `resumeSessionId`, which Docker panes never receive for omp (built from `defaultDockerCommandForMode`, with no `ompConfig` threaded through) — host-side history recovery and pinning work through the shared `sessions/` mount, but `--resume` does not currently reach an in-container omp process on respawn (flagged in review, not yet fixed). Stays out of `isAltScreenStripMode()` (narrow scrollback strip, alt-screen toggles only) and lands on the `'buffer'` local-echo policy via the `_updateLocalEchoState` fallthrough, same as grok and pi. Resolver: `omp-cli-resolver.ts` version-probes like pi/grok (`omp` is a short, generic name) and requires `omp/<semver>`-shaped output; `OMP_SEARCH_DIRS` leads with `~/.local/bin` (omp.sh's installer targets `$HOME/.local/bin` with no `--dir` override — verified against a real `--no-cache` Docker build, `~/.omp/bin` was the wrong first guess). Tests: `test/omp-mode.test.ts`, `test/omp-cli-resolver.test.ts`, `test/omp-session-resolver.test.ts`, `test/omp-fresh-run-no-resume.test.ts`.

**Codex input path (issues #218/#219/#220/#222)**: codex-mode sessions use **predictive write-through echo, never the buffer overlay**. The buffer overlay stays disabled exactly as 1.12.2 left it (`_updateLocalEchoState` in terminal-ui.js, same branch as shell; `_localEchoEnabled` remains false for codex), and the additive `_localEchoPolicy` field selects `'predict'` for codex when `localEchoEnabled` is on. Codex's composer is interactive per keystroke: typing "/" pops a live-filtering command picker (#222 was "picker never appears" because the "/" sat in the overlay until Enter), the composer grows/rewraps as it fills (#220: a long typed prompt existed ONLY in the overlay DOM, so codex never grew the composer), arrows and Ctrl+Backspace edit server-side state (#218: arrows were forwarded to an EMPTY composer while the typed text sat pending; the `\x08` control-char flush then left the overlay stateless so `\x7f` was swallowed as "nothing to remove"), and pastes arrive bracketed (#219: `terminal.paste()` wraps in `\x1b[200~..201~`, which the multi-byte-ESC branch forwarded WITHOUT flushing pending text, so the paste landed before it). The shared overlay branch (claude/gemini/opencode still buffer) gained three fixes: bracketed pastes flush pending text first, composer nav keys (`isComposerNavKey` allowlist in `CodemanTerminalInput` — arrows/Home/End/Delete/PgUp/PgDn incl. modifiers, deliberately excluding DA/CPR/DSR query responses) flush and hand the session to **pass-through** (plain PTY echo until Enter/Ctrl+C, because after cursor movement the append-only overlay cannot track edits), and a backspace that finds no overlay state is FORWARDED instead of swallowed. ⚠️ **Codex drops keystrokes that arrive in the same PTY read as a bracketed paste** (upstream `bottom_pane/paste_burst.rs` holds rapid chars for paste classification; verified against codex 0.147.0 by writing `hello\x1b[200~PASTED\x1b[201~` into the tmux client PTY in one write → composer shows only `PASTED`, while a 100ms gap yields `helloPASTED`), so the flush sends the typed text immediately and delays the paste sequence by 80ms — the same two-phase shape as the Enter branch's delayed `\r`. Related protocol fact: xterm.js sends `0x08` for Ctrl+Backspace, which codex's keymap binds to delete-ONE-char (`ctrl(Char('h'))`); real word-delete needs the kitty CSI-u encoding (`\x1b[127;5u`), which xterm.js 6.0.0 cannot emit (kitty support lands in 6.1.0-beta) — an upstream limitation, not a Codeman bug. E2E technique: codex 0.147 reaches its composer with any dummy key in `$CODEX_HOME/auth.json` (`{"OPENAI_API_KEY":"sk-test-..."}`), so a real TUI can be driven headlessly (envOverrides `CODEX_HOME` rides the `CODEX_*` allowlist) without real credentials. **Predictive write-through echo invariants** (the codex echo mode, `PredictiveEchoAddon` in `packages/xterm-zerolag-input`): (1) the onData hook `_predictHookOnData` is a PLAIN STATEMENT between the buffer block and Normal Mode — no `return`, try/catch-wrapped, never touches `_pendingInput` — so the wire path is byte-identical with the predictor active, absent or throwing (pinned at vm level and by an end-to-end trace-equality E2E); (2) it ships as a SEPARATE bundle `vendor/xterm-predictive-echo.js` so the zerolag bundle stays byte-identical, and a missing/broken bundle degrades codex to plain 1.12.2 echo (`typeof PredictiveEchoOverlay !== 'undefined'` guard); (3) predictions paint only while the cursor sits on the measured composer row (`isCodexComposerRow`, `CODEX_COMPOSER_ROW_RE = /^› /` — matches the empty-composer placeholder, typing, and the slash picker; rejects modal rows and 2-space wrapped continuation rows, the #220 ghost zone, which deliberately fall back to real echo); (4) reconciliation reads the PARSED buffer with `baseY + row` (xterm's `cursorY` is baseY-relative; `viewportY` only coincides while scrolled to bottom), confirms prefix-only on cell match PLUS cursor advance, cascades only on TWO consecutive foreign NON-BLANK passes (blanks are neutral: codex clears its placeholder on first echo), and TTL-bounds the rest; (5) after an UNPREDICTED wire edit (backspace into echoed text, any 'clear'-classified input, an IME/plain-paste 'text' commit, or every bypass send incl. `_handleCjkInput`) the addon holds new predictions until the next PARSED write: the displayed cursor is stale for one RTT and anchoring on it paints ghosts one cell off; (6) the per-device `localEchoEnabled` toggle is the kill switch returning exact 1.12.2 behavior. Measured constants + fixtures: `docs/predictive-echo-plan.md`, recorded via `scripts/dev/record-codex-frames.mjs` through the production tmux+strip pipeline. Tests: `test/local-echo-codex-gating.test.ts` (vm harness: nav-key + predict classifier truth tables, policy matrix, wire-neutrality pins), `packages/xterm-zerolag-input/test/` (addon laws, real-fixture replay, seeded fuzz), `test/codex-predictive-echo.test.ts` (E2E vs real codex incl. byte-identity + 300ms-RTT).

### Remote sessions over SSH

**Remote sessions (SSH)**: Sessions can run the agent inside a durable `tmux -L codeman-remote new-session -A` **on a remote host** so it survives the SSH drop (COD-104), and can also **discover + attach** to `codeman-*` sessions another Codeman launched there — attached (`owned:false`) sessions **detach, never kill** on tab close (COD-105). **Shared/collaborative** (COD-106): remote set-options are scoped per-session (never `-g`) and `window-size latest` lets multiple clients attach the same session at different viewports without clamping to the smallest; a client count surfaces a "shared · N" badge. **Auto-reconnect** (COD-108): a bounded-backoff watcher re-establishes a dropped remote session's local ssh pane and reattaches the still-running durable remote tmux (kill-switch `remoteAutoReconnect`, default ON); the pure pieces (backoff schedule, per-session reconnect state, `decideReconnect` eligibility) live in `src/remote-reconnect.ts` (tests: `test/remote-auto-reconnect.test.ts`), while `tmux-manager.ts` owns the live pane probe + timers. Owned sessions propagate `kill-session` to the remote on close; non-owned never do. ⚠️ Command-injection surface (COD-107): all ssh command lines flow through the single shell-safe `buildSshConnectionArgs()` — every user field (`-J jumpHost`, `-i identity`, `-o`) is `shellescape`d; never hand-build an ssh line elsewhere. Full design: `docs/remote-sessions.md`.

### Remote SSH cases

**Remote SSH cases** (COD-94/#145): cases can point at a **remote host** (`~/.codeman/remote-hosts.json` + `remote-cases.json` via `src/remote-hosts.ts`; CRUD under `/api/cases` — cases route file). A remote session launches a LOCAL tmux pane running `ssh <host>` that creates a durable REMOTE tmux session on a **dedicated socket** `-L codeman-remote` with name `codeman-ssh-<id>` — deliberately failing the remote Codeman's `SAFE_MUX_NAME_PATTERN` so a Codeman instance on the target host never adopts it; no `-g` global tmux options are set remotely. `remotePath`/`identityFile` are schema-guarded against shell injection (backticks/`$` rejected — same approach as `extraSshOptions`); remote tmux availability is probed via `checkRemoteTmuxAvailable()` in quick-start (ssh args carry `-o ConnectTimeout=10`). Remote claude defaults to an idempotent `claude --session-id <id> || claude --resume <id>` pair under a login shell, so a respawn or reattach continues the SAME conversation rather than starting a fresh one (remote omp gets the same treatment via `--continue`; ⚠️ because the claude arm is an `a || b` pair under `-c`, that pane's PID is the login shell, not the agent); per-host `commands.*` override. Session kill best-effort kills the remote tmux too. `SessionState.remote`/`MuxSession.remote` round-trip through recovery (`restoreMuxSessions` passes `remote` back into the Session constructor). ⚠️ Run flows must route remote cases through `POST /api/quick-start` (which resolves the remote case and skips LOCAL CLI availability gates) — `POST /api/sessions` stat-validates `workingDir` locally and has no `caseName`. `envOverrides`/`effort`/`modelOverride`/`codexConfig`/`geminiConfig` are rejected for remote quick-starts (not silently dropped). UI: Create Case modal → Remote tab. Tests: `test/remote-hosts.test.ts`, `test/remote-ssh-options.test.ts`. ⚠️ **Reading a file in a remote case goes over ssh too** (#415): `src/remote-files.ts` is the single remote-READ layer (`buildRemoteFileCommand` = `buildSshConnectionArgs` + one shellescaped remote command; `remoteProbePaths` returns remote realpath + stat; `remoteCreateReadStream` streams a `Range` via `tail -c +N | head -c L` and its `close()` must be wired to the response's `close` or the ssh child outlives an aborted download). The guard order matches the local path exactly (`validateSessionFilePathLexical` → remote realpath of BOTH file and workspace root → containment → sensitive-path → size cap on the REMOTE size), a request path arrives from the browser and is only ever interpolated as a `shellescape`d token, and an unreachable host answers **502**, never a 404. This covers the ATTACHMENT routes too, which is the half a clicked path needs when the file is OUTSIDE the case directory (`_isExternalPreviewPath` sends it to `POST …/attachments`): registration, by-id `raw`, metadata and the history list all resolve over ssh (`registerExternalAttachment({remote})`, `resolveServableRemoteAttachment`), and what decides the host is the SESSION, never the path string — the same absolute path means a different file on each host. Deliberately NOT supported over ssh: writes (`edit=1`/`PUT` answer 400, `editable` is always false), office previews/thumbnails, the file tree/picker, `tail-file`. Tests: `test/remote-files.test.ts`, `test/routes/file-routes-remote.test.ts`.

### Docker cases

**Docker cases** (shipped 1.4.0; user guide `docs/docker-cases.md`, design `docs/docker-cases-plan.md`): a case can point at a **container** instead of a local/remote path, and any of the CLI run modes runs INSIDE it. Like remote-SSH, it is a **LOCATION OVERLAY on cases, never a `SessionMode` of its own** (`SessionMode` is unchanged). Storage `~/.codeman/docker-hosts.json` + `docker-cases.json` via `src/docker-hosts.ts` (direct mirror of `remote-hosts.ts`: `readDockerHosts`/`readDockerCases`, `toSessionDocker`, `dockerDisplayPath`, and the PURE builders `buildDockerBaseArgs`/`buildDockerCreateArgs`/`containerApiUrl`/`hostGatewayAlias`/`dockerConfigHash`). CRUD `/api/docker-hosts` + `/api/cases/docker-link`, plus **one-click** `/api/cases/docker-quickcreate` (Create New "Run in Docker" checkbox → case folder in `CASES_DIR` + auto-provisioned shared `default` host + auto-start a session inside; an expandable Template picker Small/Medium/Large/GPU or any override creates a per-case `q-<name>` host), and export/import (`/api/docker-cases/:name/export`, `/api/docker-cases/import`, `GET/DELETE /api/docker-exports`) — all in `case-routes.ts`. Run flows route through `POST /api/quick-start` like remote (session-routes.ts docker branch, skips LOCAL CLI-availability gates). **Launch model**: exactly one long-lived container **per case** (`codeman-case-<slug>`, PID1 `sleep infinity` under `--init`); a LOCAL tmux pane runs `docker exec -it` into a **durable in-container tmux** on dedicated socket `-L codeman-docker`, session `codeman-dkr-<id8>` (deliberately fails `SAFE_MUX_NAME_PATTERN` so a Codeman running INSIDE the container never adopts it, exactly like remote's `codeman-ssh-<id8>`). Builders `buildDockerLaunchCommand`/`buildDockerKillCommand` in `tmux-manager.ts` (image-check → `docker inspect||create` → start → exec, all idempotent). The container is **shared by all sessions of the case**: `buildDockerKillCommand` kills ONLY that session's in-container tmux session, NEVER `docker stop` while siblings remain; `docker rm -f` happens only on case-delete (plus an instance-scoped boot reaper keyed on the `codeman.instance` label). **Two-layer durability/resume** (the central design point): (1) Codeman-PROCESS restart with the container still up → `tmux new-session -A` reattaches the SAME live agent (paneCommand ignored); (2) container stop/reboot/OOM → inner tmux is gone, so the re-run pane command resumes the conversation from the bind-mounted transcript: claude mode pins a DETERMINISTIC conversation id via `claudeDockerPaneCommand()` (`tmux-manager.ts`) — fresh launch `claude --session-id <sessionId> || claude --resume <sessionId>` (a duplicate `--session-id` exits 1 "already in use", so the fallback RESUMES after a container stop; verified CLI behavior), explicit resume `--resume <rid> || --session-id <sid>` so a stale id never dead-panes (leading `exec ` is stripped — an exec'd first branch could never fall back); codex `resume <id>` / gemini `--resume` keep `appendResumeFlag`. The resume id rides `resumeSessionId` through create/respawn options and persists on `DockerCase.lastClaudeSessionId` via `persistDockerCaseClaudeSessionId()` (written at quick-start launch, and again on hook/last-response conversation-id adoption so post-`/clear` switches track; seeded back when `resumeOnStart`, default true); `-A` makes the pane command self-selecting (inert on reattach, active only when tmux was re-created). **Config drift** (`dockerConfigHash` → `codeman.confighash` label): quick-start compares via `checkDockerConfigDrift()` and REFUSES a drifted launch with `CONFLICT`; the UI confirm calls `POST /api/docker-cases/:name/recreate` (refused while case sessions are live) which `docker rm -f`s so the next launch recreates with the new config — host config edits actually take effect. **Workspace** is a REAL host dir bind-mounted at the SAME absolute path (mirror, `dst==src`), so `Session.workingDir = hostWorkspacePath` keeps file-routes/attachments/watchers on real host bytes AND the in-container transcript projHash matches the host so subagent/workflow correlation (and thus resume-id capture) works; `resolveMuxAttachCwd` returns `/tmp` for docker (the local pane only runs `docker exec`). **Creds** arrive commit-safe and ISOLATED (1.4.1; replaced the whole-dir RW mounts that let in-container CLIs write refreshed tokens/state back to the host): shared RW across the boundary is ONLY what host-side reads/resume need (`~/.claude/projects` transcripts; codex `sessions/` + `history.jsonl` for response-viewer/`codex resume`); everything else is SEEDED (RO mount, copied into container HOME once at launch via `[ -e ] || cp`; the container refreshes its own copy and never writes back): `~/.claude.json` is merged through `buildSeamlessClaudeConfig()` (forces `hasCompletedOnboarding` + theme + workspace trust, so no login wizard/theme picker/trust prompt inside the container), plus `.claude/{.credentials.json,settings.json,stats-cache.json}`, plus whole-dir seeds for `~/.gemini`/`~/.config/{gcloud,opencode}` (`resolveDockerClaudeArtifacts`/`resolveDockerCredentialArtifacts` in `docker-hosts.ts`). Bind mounts are physically excluded from `docker commit`, so exports stay secret-free; API-key CLIs get exec-time NAME-ONLY `--env OPENAI_API_KEY` (no `=value`); the SEALED profile is `mountCredentials:false` + `network:none`. NEVER a create-time `-e` for secrets, NEVER `--privileged`, NEVER the docker socket. **Hardening** on every create: `--cap-drop ALL`, `--security-opt no-new-privileges`, `--pids-limit`, `--memory`==`--memory-swap`, non-root via `--user <hostUid>:0` (Linux, GID 0 for writable HOME) / `--userns=keep-id` (podman rootless) / baked uid (Docker Desktop), `--pull=never`, `--init`. Base image `codeman/agent:base` is BUILT LOCALLY from `docker/agent.Dockerfile` (node22 + tmux + claude/codex/gemini/opencode, OpenShift arbitrary-uid HOME, `C.UTF-8` locale so tmux/Ink render real box-drawing glyphs; Codeman also sets `LANG`/`LC_ALL` at run time for containers built before that line) via `scripts/build-agent-image.mjs` OR **auto-built on first use** (1.4.1: `ensureAgentBaseImage()` in `docker-hosts.ts`; idempotent + concurrency-safe, only the DEFAULT image ref is ever auto-built, `--pull=never` stays absolute; build output streams over SSE `docker:imageBuildStarted`/`imageBuildProgress`/`imageBuildComplete`/`imageBuildFailed`, and quick-create returns `imageBuilding:true` while the first launch awaits the gate); tmux-in-image is a HARD gated prerequisite (`checkDockerTmuxAvailable`), never a silent bare-exec fallback. **Hooks + model**: the workspace-scaffolding block DOES run for docker (writes `.claude/settings.local.json` + the CLAUDE.md scaffold into the real host dir), so `modelOverride` works via `settings.local.json` — it is a `QuickStartSchema` field applied for local AND docker quick-starts (`updateCaseModel`), sent by the frontend docker run path (the one deliberate difference from remote, which rejects it); `effort`/`envOverrides`/`codexConfig`/`geminiConfig`/`openCodeConfig` stay rejected. In-container hook curls hit `containerApiUrl(process.env.CODEMAN_API_URL, engine)` (swaps ONLY the hostname to the gateway alias, preserving scheme+port so prod HTTPS still works); the host guard allowlists both `host.docker.internal`/`host.containers.internal` (`DOCKER_HOST_GATEWAY_ALIASES` in `network-auth-policy.ts`). ⚠️ On a **loopback-only** bind (the prod default) a container cannot reach 127.0.0.1, so in-container hooks fire ONLY when `CODEMAN_DOCKER_BRIDGE_HOOKS=1` — an opt-in SECOND listener on the docker bridge gateway (`_startDockerBridgeHooksListener` in `server.ts`; gateway auto-detected via `detectDockerBridgeGateway`, or set `CODEMAN_DOCKER_BRIDGE_HOST`) that serves ONLY the hook endpoints (403 for any other path) into the same secret-gated pipeline; otherwise idle detection falls back to output-based through the docker-exec PTY. Container-set `CLAUDE_CODE_TMPDIR` keeps claude launching regardless of workspace path. `SessionState.docker`/`MuxSession.docker` round-trip through recovery. Every docker IO path is `IS_TEST_MODE` (VITEST) no-op'd; the pure builders are unit-tested. **Export/import** (`src/docker-export.ts`): full-image (`docker commit` + `save | gzip` + workspace tar + manifest) or workspace-only → one portable `~/.codeman/docker-exports/<case>-<ts>.codeman-container.tgz`; import validates per-member sha256, traversal-guards the workspace tar, `docker load`s + quarantine-retags the image (`codeman/imported-<case>:<ts>`, never overwriting a local tag); a `saveImageToTar` stream `pipeline` avoids truncation. **GPU** passthrough (`gpus` → `--gpus`, needs the NVIDIA container toolkit) and **elastic disk** (no `--storage-opt` cap, so container storage grows with data). SSE `docker:exportComplete`/`exportFailed`/`importComplete` (both registries). **UI** in `session-ui.js`: Create Case **Docker** tab (collapsed/compact form since 1.4.1), the one-click checkbox + Template picker, short `(docker)` case-menu tags, and a Manage-tab Export button; docker AND remote sessions name their tabs `w<n>-<case>` via the shared `_nextCaseSessionStartNumber()` so all tabs follow one naming convention. **Adopting an already-running container** (`DockerCase.owned === false`, `POST /api/cases/docker-adopt` + the read-only `POST /api/docker-cases/adopt-preflight`, `GET /api/docker-hosts/:hostId/containers`, `POST /api/docker-cases/browse`): the mirror of remote-SSH's `owned:false` attach. For an adopted container the launch chain only LOOKS and then execs — no image gate (the image is theirs), no create, and above all no `start`, since starting a container we do not own is precisely the mutation adoption promises never to perform; a missing or stopped container fails closed with an actionable message. Credential seeding is skipped too (those copies read from create-time read-only mounts that do not exist here, and writing host credentials into someone's container is not ours to do), so its CLIs must already be authenticated inside it. Absent `owned` = owned, so every pre-existing case is byte-identical. ⚠️ The guarantee is NEGATIVE, so it cannot be observed by using the feature — only by asserting the mutating verbs are absent — and it is therefore enforced at four deliberately independent layers: `buildDockerStopCommand`/`buildDockerRemoveCommand` throw during pure STRING CONSTRUCTION (no shape of caller bug can produce a `docker stop`/`rm` for a container we do not own), `removeDockerContainer` refuses again at the lowest layer, `checkDockerConfigDrift` reports "none" (an adopted container carries no `codeman.confighash` label, so a real comparison would always report drift and the launch gate would 409 forever, offering a recreate we may not perform), and the orphan reaper skips it through a check independent of the two conditions that already cover it. ⚠️ **The export path is the one place that still touched the container** and both halves had to be closed: a full export `docker commit`s it (refused for an adopted case — it packages someone else's container, with their logins, into a bundle Codeman hands out) and even a workspace-only export `docker pause`d it first for snapshot consistency (skipped: the freeze stops the owner's processes for as long as the tar takes). ⚠️ `owned` is applied AFTER the config hash; `dockerConfigHash` takes an explicit field list, so ownership can never shift an existing case's hash and mass-trip the drift gate, whose only remedy is "recreate the container". ⚠️ The container workdir is verified INSIDE the container: it defaults to `hostWorkspacePath` for an OWNED case only because the create-time bind mount puts the host directory at that exact path, and adoption mounts nothing, so the two are independent facts — without the check `docker exec --workdir <missing>` fails with an OCI chdir error the pane surfaces as a bare `execvp failed`. ⚠️ Run-mode availability comes from the CONTAINER (`availableModes`), live-probed rather than trusted from attach time: gating the dropdown on host CLI availability (#201) is right for local sessions and wrong here. The probe modes and the BINARY each mode looks for both come from the CLI registry (`enabledCliIds()` / `discovery.binaries[0]`), never a local table — a hand-written list silently froze once already, missing `omp` and hiding that mode on every docker case; `antigravity` ships as `agy` and `deepseek` as `dsh`, so a mode-name probe reports both missing on a container that has them, and a mode with no binary (`shell`) is reported available without a lookup. ⚠️ **A FAILED probe means opposite things per ownership.** For an adopted case it is a real fault (only the user can start that container). For an owned case it is the NORMAL state before the first session — the launch chain creates the container on demand — so recording it as an error hid every agent mode on every freshly linked Docker case behind "start it yourself first", for a container Codeman was about to create itself; `CaseInfo.docker.owned` exists on the wire so the frontend can tell the two apart. ⚠️ Claude launches WITHOUT `--dangerously-skip-permissions` when the container's exec user is root: Claude Code refuses the flag as root ("cannot be used with root/sudo privileges", still true in 2.1.261) and the refusal is visible only inside the container, so the pane just dies. Our base image runs a non-root user and never hits it; an adopted container's user belongs to its owner and is frequently root. Which flag to drop is a per-CLI fact, so it is `overlays.docker.rootCommand` in the registry rather than an id branch. ⚠️ **Admin-only in multi-user mode**, unlike `docker-link` right next to it: linking creates OUR container, whose sole bind mount `isWorkingDirAllowed` has already confined to the caller's space, while an adopted container's mounts are whatever its owner gave it — one mounting `/` hands the adopter a shell over the whole host, defeating exactly the workspace scoping that mode exists to enforce. The container listing and the in-container directory browser are gated with it (both are machine-level reads over containers belonging to anyone); the preflight is NOT, because the run menu probes it for every docker case, so it admits a non-admin only for a container already linked to a case they can access. Tests: `test/docker-adopted-container.test.ts`.

Tests: `test/docker-hosts.test.ts`, `test/docker-exec-options.test.ts`, `test/docker-export.test.ts`, `test/network-host-guard.test.ts`.

## Session data and lifecycle

### Input delivery and WS resilience

**Input**: `session.writeViaMux()` for programmatic/curl input — tmux `send-keys -l` (literal) + `send-keys Enter`. Single-line only (fire-and-once). Interactive **browser** input goes through a durable **exactly-once** layer: each frame carries a stable `clientId` + monotonic per-session `seq`, persisted to localStorage until the server ACKs (`{t:'ia',seq}` over WS, or HTTP 2xx), so a dropped link/reconnect can't lose or double-deliver a prompt. **WS resilience** (#149): the upgrade URL carries `cid = clientId + ':' + perTabNonce`, and `ws-connection-registry.ts` supersedes only same-TAB reconnects (two tabs on one session coexist; input frames keep the bare `clientId` for seq dedup); reconnects back off exponentially (attempts preserved across `_connectWs`), and the header connection chip renders from a real `_wsState` lifecycle (`connecting`/`connected`/`fallback`/`reconnecting`/`disconnected`).

### Per-session env overrides: exact-key allowlist and CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR

**The env allowlist has two tiers, and exceptions go in the exact-key tier, never a widened prefix** (#255): `ALLOWED_ENV_PREFIXES` in `src/web/schemas.ts` carries the CLI-namespace prefixes, and `ALLOWED_ENV_KEYS` carries exact keys (currently only `CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR`). `CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR` relocates the Claude CLI's user config (credentials, settings, stats), which is how one machine runs sessions on separate Claude subscriptions: point a case's sessions at e.g. `~/.claude-clients/acme` via `envOverrides` and run `/login` there once against the client's account. The exact match matters: `CLAUDE_` as a prefix would open every future Claude CLI variable unreviewed, and near-misses (`CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR_EXTRA`) stay rejected (`test/env-overrides-schema.test.ts`). No new security boundary is crossed: sessions already run as the server's OS account, and `applyEnvOverrides()` shellescapes values into socket-scoped `tmux setenv`. Two carry rules: **(1)** the key must survive `getEnvOverridesForPersist()` in `session.ts` (it is a path, not a secret; dropping it from state.json would silently move a rebuilt-after-reboot session back to the default account); **(2)** ⚠️ a relocated config dir writes transcripts outside `homedir()/.claude/projects`, which `subagent-watcher.ts`, `workflow-run-watcher.ts`, the response-viewer routes and Read My Mind capture all hardcode — those surfaces go blind for such a session. Documented workaround: symlink the transcripts back into the shared tree (`ln -s ~/.claude/projects <configDir>/projects`), keeping credentials separate while the watchers keep working.

### Agent wait primitives

**Agent wait primitives** (`GET /api/sessions/:id/wait`, `GET /api/sessions/:id/wait-output`, and the `wait`/`waitTimeout` fields on `POST /api/sessions/:id/input`): bounded long-polls that let an agent driving Codeman from a shell tool block until something happens. They exist because SSE was the only "tell me when" channel Codeman had, and a curl-driven caller cannot practically hold a stream and parse events inline. The blocking core is `src/web/session-wait-registry.ts` (no IO, no `Session` reference, so it unit-tests in isolation), bounds live in `src/config/agent-wait.ts`, and the wiring is three `notifySignal()` calls next to existing broadcasts (`session-listener-wiring.ts` for `working`/`idle`/`exit`, `hook-event-routes.ts` for `stop`/`blocked`) plus `notifyOutput()` riding the already-attached `terminal` listener. Design: `docs/agent-control-plan.md` §3; wire contract: `docs/api-reference.md`.

**Ordering rules, both load-bearing and both invisible to a reader of either side alone.** ⚠️ **exit-before-cancel**: `_doCleanupSession` in `server.ts` must call `sessionWaits.notifySignal(id, 'exit')` BEFORE `sessionWaits.cancelAll(id)`, because that method detaches the session's listeners before `session.stop()`, so on a delete the PTY's own exit event never reaches the registry and an `until=exit` caller would get a bare `ended: true` instead of the signal it asked for. Found by live-testing the delete path, not by the unit tests. ⚠️ **registered-before-write**: the send-and-wait path on `POST .../input` registers the waiter BEFORE writing to the PTY, and that ordering is the entire reason the combined endpoint exists rather than documenting "POST, then GET .../wait": between the write and the session flipping to `working` there is a window in which a separate wait sees the session still idle and instantly reports the PREVIOUS turn as this turn's answer. Two consequences hang off it: `useMux` delivery is awaited on that path (the response is staying open anyway, so a `writeViaMux` failure becomes observable for the first time) while the non-wait path keeps its fire-and-forget shape byte for byte, and because `shouldApplyInput()` MUTATES (it records the seq) before registration, a registration that fails on a full pool must `forgetInputSeq()` before returning, or the caller's retry is rejected as a duplicate and the input is lost by the very mechanism reliable delivery exists for.

**A timeout is a 200, deliberately.** `{"timedOut": true, "signal": null}` with HTTP 200 is the long-poll succeeding at answering "did this happen within N ms?" with "no". The documented client pattern is a loop over short waits (`DEFAULT_WAIT_MS` is 60s precisely because prod is reached through `tailscale serve` and users run cloudflared, both of which cut idle connections), and turning every poll boundary into a 4xx would make that loop indistinguishable from a real failure. The alternatives are all worse: `408` is auto-retried by several clients and proxies, silently doubling the polling load; `504` is what a genuine tunnel failure looks like, so reusing it destroys the caller's ability to tell the two apart; `204` cannot carry `waitedMs`/`status`/`limitPaused` and breaks the uniform envelope the versioning policy makes a stable promise. Errors are reserved for `INVALID_INPUT` (400), `NOT_FOUND` (404, also the multi-user ownership answer via `findSessionOrFail`), `SESSION_BUSY` (409, this session's cap) and `RATE_LIMITED` (429, the per-owner or process-wide cap: a global cap reported as `SESSION_BUSY` tells the caller to switch sessions, which cannot help). ⚠️ The clamp is silent, so the EFFECTIVE timeout is echoed back as `wait.timeoutMs`: a caller that asked for 30 minutes, got the 600s ceiling, and could not see it would read the timeout as "the worker is wedged" and kill a session that was working fine. All three endpoints nest the result under `data.wait` for the same reason, so one client helper works against any of them instead of an agent's `is_done()` reading `undefined` off the shape it did not expect.

**Matching is literal, and that is a language constraint, not a missing feature.** `search-service.ts` already avoids regex so there is no ReDoS surface, and this endpoint is more exposed still: the pattern is caller-supplied and the input is a live stream. herdr can offer `--regex` on its equivalent because Rust's regex crate is linear-time with no backtracking; JavaScript's `RegExp` backtracks, so the same feature here is a denial-of-service primitive. A `regex` parameter is therefore REJECTED with a 400 rather than ignored, since an agent that assumed otherwise would silently wait on the wrong thing. `match` is capped at 200 chars (`MAX_MATCH_LENGTH`), which is also what keeps the per-waiter carry buffer small: a match can straddle two PTY chunks, so each waiter carries `match.length - 1` characters of the previous chunk and tests `carry + chunk`. ⚠️ **`from=now` does not mean "printed after you asked"**: tmux repaints the visible screen on attach, on resize, and on any TUI redraw, and a repaint arrives as ordinary `terminal` data, so text already on screen can satisfy a fresh wait (observed live: a marker echoed a minute earlier matched instantly). This is inherent to running the agent under a multiplexer and is not fixable in the registry, so the contract is a marker unique per call (`echo DONE_$RANDOM`), never a generic one like `BUILD OK`, and every recipe must show that. ⚠️ **There is exactly ONE definition of the matched stream, `normalizeForMatch()`**: `stripAnsi()` (CSI, OSC, `ESC =`/`ESC >`) plus `ANSI_ESCAPE_RESIDUE` for what that helper leaves behind — above all the `ESC ( B` charset switch a stock bash prompt emits on every line, which in the first build survived into the matched text and made `match=tnode:` silently fail against a prompt that plainly renders `tnode:`. The haystack, the carry and the snippet window all derive from that one function, so matching and the snippet cannot drift apart again. ⚠️ **`splitTrailingEscape()` holds back a partial escape at a chunk boundary** until its tail arrives; its `INCOMPLETE_ANSI_TAIL` pattern must stay in lockstep with `ANSI_ESCAPE_RESIDUE` (a chunk cut between the `(` and the `B` is otherwise a fresh way to smuggle an escape into the haystack), and it is deliberately non-global (the repo-wide `lastIndex` hazard). With the carry, a match may straddle PTY chunks: `printf STRAD; sleep 1; printf DLEQQ` is matchable as `STRADDLEQQ` (measured live, both `from` modes). ⚠️ **The matcher still sees the byte stream, not the rendered pane** (`GET .../terminal` is a tmux capture, `source:'mux-visible'`): linear output agrees once escapes are stripped, but Claude Code positions words with cursor moves instead of spaces, so TUI text can arrive space-less (`Quicksafetycheck:Isthis...` — measured; some phrases keep their spaces depending on how the TUI drew them), which is why the documented advice remains ONE short space-free token the caller printed itself. The returned `snippet` is a RENDERING of the matched window, not a quotation: `SNIPPET_CONTROL_BYTES` drops bare control bytes that carry no ESC (BEL, NUL, backspace — `normalizeForMatch` removes escape SEQUENCES only) and blank runs are collapsed, because the consumer is an agent piping it through `jq` into its OWN pane, where a worker's raw bytes could otherwise reset or garble the orchestrator's display.

**Lifetime discipline, per the 24-hour-session rules.** Every waiter owns exactly one timer, cleared on resolve; per-session waiter sets are deleted when they empty; `cancelAll()` runs on session teardown and `cancelEverything()` in `stop()`. ⚠️ **Waiter timers are deliberately NOT unref'd**, the opposite of the usual advice: an unref'd timer would let the process exit mid-wait and strand the HTTP response, so shutdown resolves waiters explicitly instead. All three routes also release the waiter when the client disconnects (`abortOnClientHangUp()` in `session-routes.ts`), which the caps make load-bearing rather than tidy: the documented loop-over-short-waits pattern is naturally written as `curl --max-time 30 ".../wait?timeout=60000"`, and without it every iteration abandons a waiter that lives out its full timeout, so the seventeenth call gets a 409 for a session nobody else is waiting on. ⚠️ **That listener goes on `reply.raw`, guarded by `writableFinished`, NOT on `req.raw`** (the obvious choice, and the one the SSE route in `server.ts` can afford because it only ever serves a GET). `req.raw` emits `close` as soon as the REQUEST BODY has finished streaming, which on a POST happens before the handler blocks: measured at +1ms with `aborted: false`, indistinguishable from a real hang-up, so wiring it there cancels every send-and-wait instantly and silently kills the feature, while GET keeps working because a GET has no body to finish. `reply.raw` emits `close` both on a completed response and on a dead socket, and `writableFinished` is the only thing that separates them, so the guard is load-bearing rather than defensive. ⚠️ `app.inject()` never emits `close` at all, so none of this is observable in a route test: the regression test has to bind a real port. `MAX_WAITERS_PER_SESSION` (16) is a COMBINED signal-plus-output budget (`waiterCount()` sums both maps), not 16 of each; `MAX_WAITERS_PER_OWNER` (48) applies only when an owner is passed, so single-user mode behaves exactly as before; `MAX_WAITERS_TOTAL` (128) mirrors `MAX_SSE_CLIENTS` in `map-limits.ts`, since each pending waiter costs an open HTTP response plus a timer. Capacity is asserted BEFORE the expensive work on both sides: `waitForOutput()` checks before the `initialText` scan, and the `wait-output` route checks before reading `session.terminalBuffer`, whose getter joins the whole 32MB accumulator, so a request that is going to be rejected never pays for a buffer materialization. `from=buffer` scans only the tail (`MAX_BUFFER_SCAN_BYTES`, 256KB) because the question it answers is "did this appear recently", not "ever", and the tail is continuous with the live stream (`append()` and `emit('terminal')` receive the same bytes).

**Signal availability is decided by MODE, not by `isExternalCliMode()`.** `stop` and `blocked` come from Claude Code hooks, so `hooksAvailableForMode()` is true only for `claude`: `shell` is not an external-CLI mode but installs no hooks either, so `until=stop` on a shell session is a guaranteed unresolvable wait dressed up as a timeout. The behavior split is deliberate and must survive refactors: an EXPLICIT request for an unavailable signal is a 400 naming the mode, while the DEFAULT set (`stop,idle,exit`) silently drops them and echoes the narrowed set back as `wait.until`, because omitting the parameter must never 400. Signal quality is not uniform either: `stop` is definitive (Claude Code says the turn is over), `idle` is inferred from output stabilization plus prompt detection and can flap mid-turn when a spinner pauses, which is why `stop` is the documented default to orchestrate on and `idle` is the fallback for sessions that emit no hooks. ⚠️ **`idle` being ACCEPTED for a mode does not mean it ever FIRES there.** `startShell()` emits exactly one `idle` on a 500ms readiness timer and nothing afterwards, so a shell session sits at `status:'idle'` no matter what its pane is doing; since send-and-wait and `fresh=1` both require a TRANSITION, both can only time out on a shell worker (measured: a default `wait` on `sleep 4` burned its full 25s). The ❯-prompt and spinner detection that drives the real `working`/`idle` cycle is Claude's output format, so hook-less modes synchronize with `wait-output` markers or `exit`, and the docs must say so rather than listing `idle` as "available" and letting the reader infer it is usable. ⚠️ **Signals are edge-triggered with no history**, and that is a real orchestration limit: a signal that fires while no waiter is registered is gone, unobservable by any later wait variant (`until=stop` after the turn ended just times out, `fresh` or not — measured, R2-A). Documented client patterns must therefore register the waiter before the event can fire (send-and-wait) or gather on latched `wait-output` markers with `from=buffer`; the skill's fan-out flow was rewritten accordingly, and "fire-and-forget N prompts, then gather signal-waits sequentially" must never be documented again. The durable fix, a server-side latched last-signal-per-turn, is deferred with Part 3 of `docs/agent-control-plan.md`. ⚠️ Relatedly, the route corrects liveness that `SessionStatus` cannot express: `currentSignalFor()` answers `exit` whenever `pid === null` (exited, detached, or created-and-never-started) **or the mux pane is dead**, because `Session` parks a DEAD PTY at `_status = 'idle'` and trusting the status would answer the default wait `{signal:'idle', immediate:true}` for a crashed worker while `until=exit` blocked forever on an event that already happened. ⚠️ **`pid` alone cannot carry liveness for a tmux-backed session**: that pid is the local `tmux attach` CLIENT, so a worker exiting inside its pane leaves `pane_dead=1` with the client alive and `pid` never goes null — the `pid === null` branch is unreachable in the normal configuration (unit tests exercise it because `MockSession` sets `pid` by hand; only a live instance showed the gap). Liveness is therefore probed at the mux layer: `workerIsDead()` consults `mux.isPaneDead(muxName)` with a ~750 ms per-pane cache, ONLY on blocking waits (measured: 0 tmux execs across 100 non-wait input POSTs — the browser hot path pays nothing), plus a refcounted 3 s `watchForDeadWorker` interval so a worker dying while a wait is parked resolves it in ~3 s instead of burning the timeout. The probe fails SAFE by construction ("cannot tell" is never "dead": non-mux sessions, a missing or throwing `isPaneDead`, all return false). On send-and-wait, a "successful" `send-keys` into a dead pane additionally overrides `delivered` to `false` and rolls the dedup seq back (`undoOnFailure`), because the bytes went nowhere and a retry against a restarted worker must not be refused as a duplicate. The cost is that a just-created session reads as `exit`, which the wire docs must spell out as "not started yet"; the fix lives at the route rather than in `signalForStatus()` because the registry deliberately holds no `Session` reference. ⚠️ Two `claude`-mode cases still lose hooks for reasons outside the registry: a Docker case cannot reach a loopback-bound Codeman without `CODEMAN_DOCKER_BRIDGE_HOOKS=1`, and a remote-SSH case runs the agent on another host whose hooks may never reach this server. Bounds are env-overridable (`CODEMAN_WAIT_MAX_MS`, `CODEMAN_WAIT_DEFAULT_MS`, `CODEMAN_WAIT_MAX_PER_SESSION`, `CODEMAN_WAIT_MAX_PER_OWNER`, `CODEMAN_WAIT_MAX_TOTAL`, `CODEMAN_WAIT_BUFFER_SCAN_BYTES`) and each is clamped to a hard bound so a typo degrades to the default instead of disabling the protection; they are internal tuning knobs like the rest of `src/config/`, NOT part of the SemVer-covered env-var surface in `versioning-policy.md`. Tests: `test/session-wait-registry.test.ts`, `test/routes/session-wait-routes.test.ts`, `test/routes/session-wait-output-routes.test.ts`, `test/routes/session-input-wait.test.ts`.

### Auto-resume on usage limit

**Auto-resume on usage limit** ("token pause" control, opt-in per session, top of the Respawn tab): when Claude halts on a subscription limit ("5-hour limit reached ∙ resets 8pm" and all 1.0.x–2.1.x variants), `usage-limit-patterns.ts` (pure, unit-tested) parses the reset time from cleaned output; `SessionAutoOps` arms a timer for reset+2min, then sends Esc (dismisses the rate-limit dialog) + `continue`. Still-limited responses re-arm the loop (5-min retry on stale times); a `working` transition cancels it. Claude-mode only (detection rides `_processExpensiveParsers`). Persists/recovers via `SessionState.autoResumeEnabled`/`autoResumeAt`; respawn cycles are blocked while paused (`isLimitPaused` guard in `onIdleDetected` — prevents `/clear` from wiping the paused conversation). Endpoint: `POST /api/sessions/:id/auto-resume`; SSE: `session:limitPauseScheduled`/`limitResume`/`limitResumeCancelled`. Tests: `test/usage-limit-patterns.test.ts`, `test/session-auto-resume.test.ts`.

### Plan-usage chip (statusLine telemetry)

**Plan-usage chip** (`showPlanUsageLimits`, per-device: desktop default **ON** since 1.9.3, handhelds OFF) renders compact Claude and Codex provider rows. Claude Code (v2.1.80+) pipes a JSON blob to a configured `statusLine.command` on each render; on Pro/Max it carries a `rate_limits` object (`five_hour`/`seven_day` windows only — no Opus weekly field — each `{used_percentage 0-100, resets_at epoch-SECONDS}`). Codeman injects its OWN statusLine exporter (`generateStatusLineCommand()` in `hooks-config.ts`, identified by the `/api/status-telemetry` marker — it only ever adds/updates/removes a statusLine that is _ours_, never a user's hand-authored one) that POSTs the blob to `POST /api/status-telemetry`. That route (auth-exempt like `/api/hook-event` — localhost-only, hook-secret-gated whenever auth is active, COD-91) parses via `usage-telemetry.ts` (pure, unit-tested), broadcasts SSE `session:statusTelemetry` (de-duped per session by `telemetrySignature` since the statusline fires on every assistant message), and returns a compact plain-text footer for the exporter to **print-through**. Main Codex subscription usage comes from the signed-in host CLI's read-only app-server `account/rateLimits/read` request at startup and every 5 minutes; `usage-telemetry.ts` selects only the main `codex` bucket (never model-specific buckets such as Spark), maps whatever 5-hour/7-day windows it supplies, and omits the provider row when unavailable. Credentials stay inside the CLI and no auth material is sent to the browser. `plan-usage-latest.ts` merges both process-wide sources and replays them in the SSE init snapshot (`getLightState`) so `#planUsageChip` renders immediately on page load/reconnect. `planUsageChipEnabled()` remains the single resolver behind the checkbox, chip visibility, and Claude create-time exporter flag. **Distinct from auto-resume** (which reacts to the Claude limit _message_; this proactively shows live percentages). Design: `docs/usage-limits-display-plan.md`. Tests: `test/usage-telemetry.test.ts`, `test/codex-plan-usage.test.ts`, `test/plan-usage-chip.test.ts`, `test/plan-usage-latest.test.ts`.

### Cron jobs

**Cron (cron-style `CronJob`s)**: saved, named jobs with a recurring schedule (`once`/`interval`/`daily`/`weekly`), enable/disable, Run Now, next-run calc, and per-job run history (`CronJobRun`). ⚠️ **Distinct from the legacy `ScheduledRun`** (`/api/scheduled`, a run-now duration-bounded autonomous loop) — the two never interact; the legacy concept keeps the `Scheduled*` names, the recurring-job feature is `Cron*`. `CronService` (`src/cron/cron-service.ts`) owns CRUD + the 30s background due-tick (`tickDueJobs`, registered via `cleanup.setInterval` in `server.ts`; `init()` recomputes nextRunAt on boot) and **reuses the existing session layer** (create → `addSession` → `setupSessionListeners` → `startInteractive`/`startShell` → prompt via `writeViaMux`/`write`) rather than rebuilding tmux logic. Next-run math is pure/unit-tested in `cron-time.ts` (SERVER-LOCAL timezone for daily/weekly). Dup-launch guard = `lastDueKey` (jobId:fireTime); schedule is advanced BEFORE launch so a slow launch can't re-trigger. `once` jobs self-disable after firing (`completedOnce`). Persisted via `AppState.cronJobs`/`cronJobRuns` (StateStore accessors). Routes `/api/cron/jobs*` + `/api/cron/runs` (`cron-routes.ts`, `CronPort`); schema `CronJobSchema` (cross-field `superRefine`; the `.partial()` update schema does NOT re-run it); SSE `cron:*`. Frontend `cron-ui.js` (#cronModal). Claude/shell/opencode/codex/gemini/antigravity/pi agent types. Tests: `test/cron-time.test.ts`, `test/cron-service.test.ts`. Design: `docs/cron-discovery.md`.

### Unified session list and Session Manager

**Unified session list** (COD-160/#139): `GET /api/sessions/unified?limit=&q=` merges live sessions, persisted state, lifecycle-log history, and transcript files into one deduped list (pure core in `src/services/unified-session-service.ts`). ⚠️ **Transcript history is three stores** (#386): Claude's `~/.claude/projects`, omp's `~/.omp/agent/sessions` and codex's `~/.codex/sessions`. Rows are keyed by whatever id that CLI names the conversation with and folded into their owning session via the `claudeSessionId → Codeman id` alias map (resumed//clear-respawned sessions must not appear twice; the field keeps its Claude-era name and is not Claude-only). A codex row additionally carries `resumeId`, the rollout's own thread id, set by the scanner and never by a live session, which is what lets a row be resumed through `codexConfig.resumeSessionId` while a row without one stays a fresh session; the alias chain therefore includes `config.codexConfig?.resumeSessionId`, and a fresh codex pane is matched by `session_meta.originator` (`codeman_<sessionId>` for every pane Codeman spawns); lifecycle name/mode resolution is first-seen-wins (the log returns entries NEWEST-first). No terminal buffers in the response (unlike `/api/sessions`). Consumed by the Cmd+K Session Manager (#146). Session Manager polish (COD-162/#157, 1.6.0): **pinning** via `POST /api/sessions/:id/pin` (`session:pinned` SSE; killing a pinned session demotes it to a lightweight stopped record that stays visible/resumable, and cleanup skips pinned records); **cross-device tab order** via `PUT /api/session-order` (`session:orderChanged` SSE, persisted in `state.json`; pure `normalizeSessionOrder`/`mergeSessionOrder` in `src/session-order.ts`: pushing device wins, server-only ids fall to the end, never dropped); resume from the manager keeps the original session name (COD-143); `firstPrompt` is backfilled for sessions whose id != transcript UUID and the most recent prompt (`lastPrompt`) is shown + searched (COD-140/145).

### Session lineage lines (tab → tab it spawned)

**The relationship did not exist before this** (1.17.0): `SessionState` had no `parentSessionId`, `quick-start` recorded only the multi-user *human* owner, and an agent's spawn call is plain `curl` from a tmux pane, so nothing in the request identifies the caller (`SO_PEERCRED` needs a unix socket; the API is TCP). The caller therefore supplies it — every managed pane already gets `CODEMAN_SESSION_ID` from `session-cli-builder.ts`. Two equivalent inputs, body wins: a `parentSessionId` field on `POST /api/sessions` / `POST /api/quick-start`, or the `X-Codeman-Parent-Session` header, which exists so the agent skill can set it ONCE on its shared curl invocation and have every present and future spawn recipe carry it.

**Resolved, not trusted** (`resolveParentSessionId()`, route-helpers.ts): exact id first, then a UNIQUE prefix of ≥8 chars (ids reach agents truncated — mux names and a Docker export's `$CODEMAN_SESSION_ID` both carry 8), and an ambiguous prefix resolves to NOTHING rather than to a guess. The parent must be a live session the caller can already see (`canAccessOwned`) AND carry the same owner as the session being created, so a multi-user caller cannot staple their session under someone else's tab. ⚠️ **Everything unresolvable is DROPPED, never a 400**: a stale id from a cached skill preamble must cost a decorative line, not a worker. ⚠️ It is decoration at every layer — never an ownership, permission or lifecycle signal; a child outlives its parent, and the Session ctor refuses a self-parent (reachable only via recovery, where both values come off disk). It rides `toState()` into `session_created` / `session_updated`, so there is **no new SSE event**, and `server.ts`'s recovery path restores it so lineage survives a restart.

**Rendering is an additional LAYER, not a second pass** (`session-lineage.js`, loadorder 15.6): `_updateConnectionLinesImmediate()` (subagent-windows.js) calls `_appendLineageConnectionLines(svg, rects)` at its tail, exactly like ultracode's two layers, so all of them share ONE batched read→write reflow and the same `tab:<id>` rect cache. Geometry is pure and unit-tested in `computeLineagePath()` (constants.js): both endpoints live in one horizontal strip, so the subagent shape (tab-bottom → window-top) has nothing to aim at, and every pair gets a U-bridge HANGING BELOW the strip, anchored on both tabs' BOTTOM edges (dip scales with distance, plus a per-sibling step so several children of one parent nest instead of overprinting, plus the row offset when the strip has wrapped). ⚠️ **A wrapped strip used to get its own shape, and that shape was the bug** (fixed 2026-08-14): `tabs-two-rows`/`tabs-auto-wrap` put a parent on row 1 ~14px above its child on row 2, so the old parent-bottom → child-TOP bezier had 14px to bend in and drew a flat line inside the row gap, siblings overprinting. Hanging the control points below the LOWER row gives the wrapped case the same bracket as the flat one and deletes the branch. The same pass raised the dip clamp (44 → 104, 0.06 → 0.085/px) because a skill worker is appended to the END of the strip, where the old cap flattened an 800-1500px span into a straight thread across the terminal, and traded weight for a second, wider glow (2 → 2.5px, `4 4` → `5 5` dashes at `-20`, opacity .55 → .72 / .95 working) because the original styling vanished into terminal text at 1:1.

⚠️ **Desktop only, for a z-index reason**: the overlay is `z-index: 999` and the desktop header is 100, so arcs paint OVER it — which is exactly what lets them touch tab bottoms. Under 1024px mobile.css makes the header `position: fixed; z-index: 1200` and would bury them, and the phone strip is a scroller where both endpoints are rarely on screen at once. Raising the SVG to ~1250 (above the fixed header, below modals at 1300) is the phase-2 option, and needs a real check against the mobile overview and the drawer.

⚠️ **`data-agent-id="lineage:<childId>"` is load-bearing**, not a label: `_applyLineEntrances()` queries paths by that attribute, so tagging them this way is the whole reason the arcs get the draw-in animation AND its negative-`animation-delay` resume across `svg.innerHTML = ''` with zero new animation code. ⚠️ `.session-tabs` is `overflow-x: auto`, so a tab scrolled out of the strip still HAS a rect — one lying over the logo or the header buttons; edges with an endpoint outside the strip are SKIPPED (clamping would point at a tab that is not there), and a passive `scroll` listener re-anchors the rest, since a scroll moves both endpoints without firing any render. The incremental tab render also redraws when `_lineageEdgeCount > 0`: a badge appearing widens a tab and shifts every tab after it. Setting: `sessionLineageLines`, per-device (in `displayKeys`, absent from the `.strict()` `SettingsUpdateSchema`), desktop default ON. Tests: `test/session-lineage-lines.test.ts` (geometry), `test/routes/session-routes-parent-lineage.test.ts` (resolution + reject paths).

### Full-scrollback replay

**Full-scrollback replay** (COD-164/#148, reworked for #205): `GET /api/sessions/:id/terminal?full=1` returns the ENTIRE tmux scrollback (capture-pane `-e -S -<lines>` bounded by the configured history limit, explicit `maxBuffer` from the terminal-history config, early byte-cap before normalization, CRLF-normalized for shell panes). On success the capture is returned ALONE (`source='mux-full-history'` — it supersedes the byte buffer; no duplication). The first load of each non-shell TUI session per page requests `full=1` (`_fullHistoryLoaded` Set in app.js — the old one-shot `_initialFullBufferLoad` flag was consumed by whichever tab auto-selected, leaving every other TUI tab one frame of history). Shell sessions instead load a bounded 1 MiB `?tail=` window on every selection and automatic drop recovery: a 100k-line shell capture can be tens of MiB, and automatically parsing it makes tab-switch latency scale with the entire session. Shell full history is explicit-button-only; reaching the top during an ordinary wheel/touch gesture must not reset xterm and replay the multi-megabyte capture on its main thread. Other modes may still re-pull `full=1` at the TOP, and pressing **Load full history** forces the request for any recoverably truncated session (`_maybeRefetchFullHistory`, 4s per-session gesture cooldown, in-flight + tab-switch guards, viewport position held across the replay); Shell full pulls are not retained in the tab cache, so the next switch stays bounded. Chunked replay enqueues 32 KiB pieces across safe yields, appends an xterm parse marker, then releases the live-output gate; output arriving after that release stays ordered behind the snapshot, while the marker callback supplies accurate parse timing without extending the pre-existing queued-event discard window. Live output is separately one-chunk-in-flight: xterm's callback releases each 32/64 KiB write before the next is submitted, keeping the remainder in the app queue where the 128 KiB cap can observe it instead of hiding an unbounded backlog in xterm's private WriteBuffer. While WebSocket owns terminal I/O, parallel SSE terminal/output-recovery events are discarded before JSON parsing; fallback recovery is single-flight per active session so backpressure cannot start overlapping reset+replay cycles. The route exposes capture/prepare totals in `Server-Timing`, while `[TERMINAL-PERF]` separates TTFB, body/JSON, reset+parse and total time for both selection and on-demand full pulls; parse completion is not a browser compositor/GPU paint measurement. The re-pull exists because xterm's buffer is only a WINDOW onto tmux's history and two things shrink it: tmux coalesces bursty output into pane REPAINTS that overwrite rows instead of emitting linefeeds (measured: a 60-line burst added 1 row of browser scrollback and destroyed 34), and a tab switch replays only the visible frame. tmux's own history is intact throughout — the browser just has to ask for it again. On-demand rather than automatic because at a 100k history limit the capture can be megabytes. ⚠️ **The capture ENDS with a cursor move back to the pane's own caret position** (`formatCursorRestore`, from the same `display-message` query the visible-frame path uses). The linear replay otherwise leaves the caret wherever the last character landed — the bottom-most row carrying text, which for an agent CLI is the status line — so the caret sat on the composer's border instead of its input line and every cursor-relative update the CLI sent afterwards was measured from the wrong row, until its next full redraw silently repaired it (that self-repair is why the report read as "it fixes itself as soon as Claude writes a line"). ⚠️ **The move is RELATIVE — up `rows - 1 - cursor_y`, then `\r`, then right `cursor_x` — never `CUP`.** `\x1b[<row>;<col>H` numbers rows from the top of the browser's screen, so it lands correctly only while the browser's row count equals `pane_height`, and nothing guarantees that: `resizeWindow` issues its tmux resize fire-and-forget and returns immediately, so a capture can be taken before a requested resize has applied, and `_onSessionNeedsRefresh` sends no resize at all. Counting up from the last replayed row anchors to the content both ends share. Restoring the cursor makes ROW ALIGNMENT load-bearing on this path: **no transform that can DELETE A LINE may run over a full-history capture**, because every deletion shifts the frame out from under the restored position. Four had accumulated — trailing blank rows stripped by `\n+$`, `stripInkRedrawBloat`, the `CLAUDE_BANNER_PATTERN` trim that cuts everything above the banner, and `LEADING_WHITESPACE_PATTERN` — each correct for a byte stream of successive frames and each wrong for a single rendered frame. ⚠️ **Those skips key on `isFullCapture`, meaning a capture actually came back — never on `?full=1` alone.** When `captureActivePaneBuffer` returns null (ENOBUFS, a timeout, a vanished pane, or a session with no mux at all) the reply falls back to `session.terminalBuffer`, which IS a byte stream and must still be stripped; gating on the query flag returned it whole, and a direct-PTY session takes that path on every first selection rather than only during an outage. ⚠️ A capture holding nothing visible (`hasVisibleContent`) returns `''`, because the caller reads an empty capture as "unavailable" and keeps its byte history — retaining trailing blank rows made an all-blank pane non-empty, which would have replaced real history with a blank screen from the server side, where `_replayWouldShrinkBuffer` cannot see it. ⚠️ **"One line per screen row" holds only where no row was hard-wrapped**: `-J` joins a wrapped row into its logical line (measured: a 100-character line in a 40-column pane captures as 10 lines against a 12-row pane), and the counts reconcile only once the browser xterm re-wraps at the same width — the same assumption `_estimateReplayRows` already documents. Tests: `test/tmux-capture-full-history.test.ts` covers the cursor move, the trim pairing and `hasVisibleContent`; `test/routes/session-routes.test.ts` covers a surviving blank first row, an unstripped byte-history fallback, and an empty capture leaving history intact. ⚠️ **The re-pull must never DOWNGRADE the buffer** (#205 round 2): the same reasoning that makes it a win for a shell pane makes it destructive for a repaint-mode CLI pane, where tmux keeps no history of its own (`history_size≈0` measured for a Claude pane) and the capture is roughly ONE frame while xterm may hold hundreds of rows of replayed frames — `_resetTerminalForReplay()` + rewrite then deletes history mid-scroll ("goes back a bit, repeats blocks, gets worse the further up I go"; measured A/B on a live pane: 341 rows → 42 with the guard off). `_replayWouldShrinkBuffer()` (terminal-ui.js) estimates the capture's rendered rows — escape sequences stripped, `capture-pane -J` re-wrapping accounted for — and the pull is skipped when that is more than one screen short of `buffer.active.length`. The one-screen tolerance matters: both sides are estimates (the buffer length counts trailing blank rows), so only a clear downgrade is refused. A refused session joins `_fullHistoryRepullUseless`, raising its cooldown from 4s to 60s so a hollow pane stops re-fetching megabytes on every scroll-up. Tests: `test/tmux-capture-full-history.test.ts`, `test/tmux-scrollback-eol.test.ts`, `test/terminal-scroll-routing.test.ts`, `test/terminal-flush-budget.test.ts`.

### Terminal scrollback: strip flavors and wheel/touch forwarding

**Two strip flavors, one carry** (#205, `session.ts:_handleTerminalOutput`): the FULL strip (`isAltScreenStripMode` = codex/claude/gemini) removes alt-screen toggles, `3J`, and mouse-tracking DECSETs. Every other mode (shell/opencode/antigravity/pi) gets the NARROW strip (`isMuxAltScreenOnlyStripMode`) — alt-screen toggles ONLY — and only when tmux-backed (`useMux`). Rationale: the tmux CLIENT emits `smcup` as its first bytes at attach, before any program runs, parking xterm in the scrollback-less alternate buffer for the whole session (touch scrolling no-ops; xterm's own wheel handler converts the wheel to Up/Down arrows = readline history cycling — both #205 symptoms). tmux never forwards a pane program's alt-screen toggles to its client (it repaints instead; measured — vim/less inside a pane emit zero to the client), so the only thing the narrow strip ever removes is tmux's own smcup. It keeps `3J` (a user's `clear` is a deliberate scrollback wipe) and the mouse DECSETs (tmux passes those through even with `mouse off`; stripping them would break htop/vim mouse support). ⚠️ The `useMux` gate is load-bearing: `startShell()`/`startInteractive()` fall back to a DIRECT PTY when mux creation fails, and there the inner program's own `?1049h` really does reach xterm — stripping it would break vim/less/htop for real. The replay path (`session-routes.ts`, via `session.usesMux`) applies the same narrow branch; the frontend mirror (`_shouldReportMouseToCli()`) stays claude/codex/gemini because only the FULL strip touches mouse DECSETs. The chunk-boundary carry (`_altScreenSeqCarry`) runs for both flavors. Tests: `test/claude-scrollback-strip.test.ts`.

⚠️ **What the full strip removes, it must REMEMBER.** Stripping the mouse DECSETs means xterm's `modes.mouseTrackingMode` is permanently `'none'` for those modes, so the browser hand-encodes click reports to compensate (`_sendSyntheticSgrTap`). With no state to consult it did that on EVERY click, which delivered mouse reports to programs that never asked for them: the same pane runs a plain shell whenever the CLI has exited or a `shell` was started inside a claude-mode session, and a shell prints the report as literal text (`[<0;88;20M`), garbling the next line typed. `_recordStrippedMouseMode()` therefore records each stripped sequence as it goes and publishes `cliMouseTracking` through `toState()`, and `_shouldReportMouseToCli()` requires it. ⚠️ Only the TRACKING modes count (1000/1001/1002/1003): 1005/1006 select an ENCODING and 1007 is alt-scroll, and counting those would put the stray reports straight back. ⚠️ The change broadcasts IMMEDIATELY rather than through `broadcastSessionStateDebounced`, because the flag flips when a dialog opens and the user can click that dialog inside the 500ms debounce window. Measured on a live claude 2.x: the CLI holds a tracking mode on continuously (so clicks keep being reported exactly as before), while a bash prompt in the same stripped mode reports nothing. Fails toward silence: after a server restart the flag is false until the CLI re-emits, which tmux does at client attach.

**Only claude ≥ 2.1.187 forwards the wheel; every other mode scrolls local scrollback** (#227 follow-up, `terminal-ui.js:_shouldForwardWheelToApp`). Codex was in the forward list until a reporter hit a completely dead wheel in codex tabs while the scrollbar drag worked. Measured against codex-cli 0.147.0 in a bare tmux: it never enables mouse tracking (`mouse_any_flag=0`) and SGR wheel reports fed to its PTY change nothing on screen, because it runs an INLINE viewport (`alternate_on=0`) and pushes its transcript into the terminal's own scrollback (tmux `history_size` grows) instead of paging in-app. So for codex, local scrollback IS the transcript and forwarding swallowed every tick. ⚠️ "The TUI is a strip mode" is NOT evidence that it consumes wheel reports — verify with a real `\x1b[<64;c;rM` write into a live pane before adding a mode here. Hand-encoded SGR TAPS are gated by `_shouldReportMouseToCli()` (strip mode AND the server-observed `cliMouseTracking` flag, recorded by `_recordStrippedMouseMode` in session.ts as it strips): codex never enables mouse tracking, so since #325 no tap report is sent there at all — click-to-position was already a measured no-op in codex, and a pane that has fallen back to a shell no longer receives `[<0;88;20M` junk.

**Wheel/touch forwarding is NOT gated on viewport-at-bottom** (#205, `terminal-ui.js:_shouldForwardWheelToApp`): for sessions verified to scroll their own transcript on SGR wheel reports (claude ≥ 2.1.187 — version via the local/docker/remote `--version` probes), the plain wheel AND touch drags forward as coalesced SGR reports (`_forwardScrollToApp` → `_sendSyntheticSgrWheel`, 40ms batches, 5-tick cap, 512-byte queue bound). It used to gate on the viewport being at the bottom so both scrollbacks stayed reachable, but a repaint-mode CLI keeps NO terminal scrollback of its own — xterm's buffer holds only replayed repaint frames, so local scrolling drags the CLI's pinned prompt box up the screen over stale frames; and `scrollToLastNonEmptyLine()` routinely parked the viewport off-bottom, silently pinning the wheel to local. Forwarding now snaps the viewport home first (SGR coordinates address the LIVE screen — a report computed from a scrolled-up viewport would hit-test the wrong row). Local scrollback remains on Shift+wheel and the `terminalWheelLocalScrollback` opt-out (both also cover touch via the shared gate; touch has no Shift, so the setting is its only local pin). `_wheelScrollLines()` normalizes `deltaMode` (Firefox fires LINE deltas ≈3/notch — read as pixels that rounded to 0 and fell to the ±1 fallback, ~4× too slow; PAGE deltas scale by `terminal.rows`) while keeping the #154 Shift-axis trap (macOS trackpads put Shift+scroll magnitude on deltaX). Tests: `test/terminal-touch-tap.test.ts`.

**A false gate on a Claude session must not mean a DEAD gesture** (#205 round 2, `_maybePageCliTranscript`): every way `_shouldForwardWheelToApp()` returns false leaves a repaint-mode pane scrolling a buffer that has nothing in it (`baseY === 0`) — the version probe came back empty, the CLI really is older than 2.1.187, or the user turned on `terminalWheelLocalScrollback`. The 1.12.0 retest reported exactly that: a wheel that did nothing at all while Fn+Up (PageUp) paged back through intact text, which is the proof that the CLI's own history and the PTY input path were both fine. So under the triple guard (claude mode + gate false + `baseY === 0`) wheel and touch travel is translated into coalesced `\x1b[5~` / `\x1b[6~` through the same 40ms queue as the SGR reports, at half a screen of travel per page key (the key jumps a whole screen; a 1:1 mapping was unusably slow with a discrete wheel). ⚠️ Shift is excluded on purpose — it is the explicit "give me local scrollback" gesture and must keep that meaning. ⚠️ `terminalWheelLocalScrollback` is deliberately NOT scoped away from repaint-mode CLIs even though it is a footgun there: that would silently override an explicit user choice, so the fallback catches it instead. **Server-side counterpart**: `getClaudeCliVersion()` caches SUCCESS for the process lifetime but must never cache FAILURE — it used to, so one timed-out or PATH-starved probe at the first Claude session start disabled wheel-forwarding for every Claude session until the server restarted (a dead wheel on phone, tablet and laptop at once, the signature of a server-side cause). Failures now retry with a 1/2/4…15min backoff; the policy is the pure `resolveClaudeCliVersion()`. Tests: `test/terminal-scroll-routing.test.ts`, `test/claude-cli-version-cache.test.ts`.

**Why the wheel went where it went is LOGGED** (`_logScrollRouting`): one console line per session per distinct decision — `[scroll] <id> → forward-sgr|page-keys|local-scrollback|repull-refused-downgrade (mode=…, cliVersion=…, localScrollbackOptOut=…, mouseTracking=…, localScrollbackRows=…)`. #205 ran two rounds of remote guesswork over questions this line answers directly; keep it when touching the routing.

**The wheel listener is CAPTURE-phase and Codeman owns the scroll** (#205 follow-up, measured on the live instance): xterm's viewport is a vscode-style ScrollableElement that consumes wheel events itself (preventDefault + stopPropagation) whenever it believes a scrollbar exists, ignores `attachCustomWheelEventHandler`, and goes DEAF after `terminal.reset()` — a tab switch or full-history replay leaves its scroll dimensions stale, after which wheel events neither scroll nor propagate reliably. A bubble-phase container listener therefore never fired once local scrollback existed (forwarding, deltaMode and the top-of-buffer re-pull all silently dead exactly on sessions WITH history), and after a tab switch nothing scrolled at all ("works at first, breaks after a tab switch"). The container wheel listener is `{capture: true}`, stops propagation, and scrolls locally via buffer-level `terminal.scrollLines()` (immune to the stale scroller). ⚠️ Two cases are deliberately passed through untouched, in this order BEFORE preventDefault: `mouseTrackingMode !== 'none'` (xterm's encoder forwards the wheel to the PTY — htop/vim with mouse on) and `buffer.active.type === 'alternate'` (direct-PTY vim/less: xterm's alt-scroll converts the wheel to cursor keys). Do not "simplify" this back to a bubble listener or re-delegate local scrolling to xterm's viewport. E2E guard: the reload → tab-switch → wheel matrix in the #205 verification scripts.

### Run launch synchronization

**Run launch synchronization**: the main Run entrypoint in `session-ui.js` holds an in-flight lock and disables `#runBtn` for the whole launch (at least 500ms), so a double click cannot create duplicate sessions with the same `w<n>-<case>` name. A successful create/quick-start also calls `_ensureCreatedSessionVisible()` before `selectSession()`: local creates use the response's full session snapshot; quick-start modes fetch `GET /api/sessions/:id` only when `session:created` SSE has not already populated the map. The normal `_onSessionCreated()` handler remains the idempotent upsert, so POST-first and SSE-first ordering both produce one immediately-rendered tab. Tests: `test/run-mode-ui.test.ts`.

### Circuit breakers: Ralph and PTY-exit

**Circuit breaker**: Prevents respawn thrashing. States: `CLOSED` → `HALF_OPEN` → `OPEN`. Reset: `/api/sessions/:id/ralph-circuit-breaker/reset`. **Distinct: PTY-exit breaker** (COD-115/118/#147, `session-pty-exit-breaker.ts`) trips after repeated rapid PTY exits (crash loops on attach), blocks further auto-restarts, broadcasts SSE `session:respawnBreakerTripped` + push (in `PUSH_EVENT_MAP`). Reset ONLY via an explicit `{clearBreaker:true}` body on `POST /api/sessions/:id/interactive` (sent by the user-facing restart control) — the frontend's auto-reattach in `selectSession()` sends no body and must never clear it. Sessions also scrub inherited `TMUX`/`TMUX_PANE` env so Codeman-in-tmux doesn't nest. Tests: `test/respawn-pty-breaker.test.ts`.

## Features

### Attachments

**Attachments** (live external document references; COD-37/#119 core, COD-38/#120 previews, COD-39/#121 history): all wiring in `file-routes.ts`. **Registry** (`attachment-registry.ts`): an **in-memory** map of a stable `attachmentId` → an absolute, `realpath`-resolved, extension-allowlisted file path, so browser requests (`GET /api/sessions/:id/attachments/:attachmentId/raw`) never carry arbitrary absolute paths; `POST /api/sessions/:id/attachments` registers one. **Magic links** (`attachment-magic.ts`): parses `codeman://attach?...` out of terminal output — ⚠️ this scanner is prompt-injectable, so the scan path is **force-confined to the session workspace** (a hostile prompt could otherwise make it read arbitrary host files over SSE); emits the `attachment:detected` SSE event. Security gate is an extension **allowlist** (`isSupportedAttachmentExtension`, in the registry/magic modules), not a blocklist; a separate path layer (`config/attachment-guard.ts`) confines reads to the workspace (`attachmentConfineToWorkspace`) and blocks sensitive trees (`/root`, `/etc`). **Previews + thumbnails** (COD-38): `:attachmentId/preview` + `:attachmentId/thumbnail` (and the workspace-file equivalents `file-preview`/`file-thumbnail`) render Office docs/PDFs via external converters (`pdftoppm` / LibreOffice `soffice` / Word-COM `powershell`); `document-preview-cache.ts` is a shared disk cache (de-dups _identical_ in-flight inputs), `document-thumbnailer.ts` does best-effort first-page images, and `document-conversion-limiter.ts` is a **global converter-spawn concurrency cap** (`runWithConversionLimit`) — without it, N distinct large docs detected at once fork N multi-minute converter processes = a localhost fork-bomb-shaped resource-exhaustion vector. **History drawer** (COD-39): `session-attachment-history.ts` tracks the last `ATTACHMENT_HISTORY_LIMIT` (100) attachments per session (`Session._attachmentHistory`, persisted via `SessionState.attachmentHistory`, replayed so externals re-register on reconnect); `GET /api/sessions/:id/attachments` is the list endpoint. ⚠️ The history drawer's launcher button is desktop-only — hidden on phones (regression-guarded; see `mobile-header-buttons-policy` test). Session-local files keep using the existing workspace-scoped `file-routes` paths; the registry is only for explicit live externals. **Codex generated artifacts** (COD-166/#150, `generated-artifact-attachments.ts`): codex-mode sessions ALSO scan (ANSI-stripped) output for `Saved to: file:///…` lines and surface those files as attachment cards with a relaxed trust policy — the allow decision runs on the **realpath-resolved** path against `os.homedir()`-anchored `~/.codex` marker dirs (symlink escapes fall back to force-confinement); gated to `mode === 'codex'` only (`source` is a REQUIRED param through the listener-deps chain — a dropped arg here silently kills the feature). Image thumbnails pass through jpg/jpeg/gif/webp.

### File-path links (terminal + response viewer)

A file path an agent prints is a link on both surfaces it can appear on, and clicking it opens the file-preview overlay. Three things make that work and each has bitten:

**One pattern, two consumers.** `FILE_PATH_LINK_PATTERN` / `absoluteFilePathPattern()` live in `constants.js`; the xterm link provider (`registerFilePathLinkProvider`, terminal-ui.js) and the response viewer's `_linkifyFilePaths()` (app.js) both build a fresh instance from it. ⚠️ Fresh per call, never one shared object: `lastIndex` is per-object state on a `/g` regex. The pattern is anchored on a known absolute root and terminated by a known extension, so a fraction (`3/4`) or a date can't match and trailing punctuation stays out. Roots include `Users` and `mnt`, without which nothing was clickable on macOS or WSL. The linear-time guard and the "terminal-ui builds from the factory" structural check are in `test/link-provider-regex.test.ts`.

**The chat linkifier walks text nodes.** `_linkifyFilePaths()` builds anchors with `createElement`/`textContent` on the rendered subtree, never by rebuilding sanitized markup as a string — the source is model output. Subtrees already inside an `<a>` are skipped (marked autolinks URLs; a nested anchor would swallow the click), and the anchor's text is the path verbatim so "copy code" still yields what the agent printed. `test/response-viewer-file-links.test.ts` pins both properties.

**Out-of-workspace paths go through the attachment routes, not the file routes.** `file-content`/`file-raw` resolve against `workingDir` and 404 anything that escapes it, which is correct and unchanged — but the paths agents most often print (a `/tmp` capture, Claude's own scratchpad, another checkout) are exactly that, so clicking one used to report "File not found" for a file sitting on disk. `openFilePreview()` now detects the case (`_isExternalPreviewPath`, a string compare for ROUTING only; the real decision stays server-side) and registers the path via `POST /api/sessions/:id/attachments` first, rendering by id. ⚠️ That registration passes `notify: false`, which suppresses ONLY the `attachment:detected` broadcast — the guard, the registry entry and the by-id routes are identical either way. Without it every click also popped an attachment card announcing the file already filling the screen. ⚠️ The click is an explicit user action on the **explicit, Origin-guarded** registration route, which is why it may cross the workspace boundary at all; the passive magic-link scanner stays force-confined. A type outside `SUPPORTED_ATTACHMENT_EXTENSIONS` (`.svg`, `.bmp`) is refused with a message naming what IS previewable, rather than the registry's own policy term.

⚠️ **The terminal routes an out-of-workspace path to the preview, not the log viewer.** The log viewer spawns `tail -f` and allows only the workspace, `/var/log` and `~/logs`, so an external `.log`/`.json`/code path answered `Path must be within working directory or allowed log directories` while the SAME path clicked in the response viewer previewed fine. `activate()` now checks `_isExternalPreviewPath` alongside `previewsInFileViewer`. In-workspace text keeps the tail viewer, which is the point of it (live follow); nothing widened `file-stream-manager`'s allowlist, so no `tail -f` is spawned on an arbitrary host path.

**Text reuses the edit-mode allowlist; markup stays download-only.** `TEXT_ATTACHMENT_EXTENSIONS` IS `EDITABLE_EXTENSIONS` (`config/file-editing.ts`) rather than a second curated list that would drift from it: if the viewer would open a file for editing inside the workspace, the same file outside it can be read. The justification for widening is that the agent in the session can already `cat` any of these and the picker already previews them, so the suffix was never the confidentiality gate; the path guard is (sensitive-file blocklist, `/root` and `/etc` trees, realpath first). ⚠️ Two consequences had to be handled at the same time: `~/.codeman*/state.json` joined `isSensitivePath` (it persists `SessionState.envOverrides`, and the env allowlist admits key-shaped names like `GEMINI_API_KEY`, so it can hold a live credential), and `html`/`htm` joined `svg` in `serveRawFile`'s **download-only** branch so that widening what can be READ never widens what can RUN on our own origin. Text with no dedicated MIME entry goes out as inert `text/plain; charset=utf-8` + `nosniff`, matching the picker. The by-id text preview is bounded like the workspace one: a `Range` request for the first 512KB (a real partial read, not a discarded 50MB download) plus a 500-line cap, with the footer saying so.

**Media is single-sourced across the two preview paths.** `VIDEO_ATTACHMENT_EXTENSIONS` / `AUDIO_ATTACHMENT_EXTENSIONS` live in `attachment-registry.ts` and are imported by `file-content`'s media classification, so a clip plays identically whether it is in the workspace or reached by id from outside it. They diverged first: the workspace path had its own inline sets and the registry allowlist had no media at all, so a video an agent wrote to `/tmp` was refused as an unsupported type while the same file inside the repo played. ⚠️ Three things have to line up for a player rather than a dead frame: the extension in the allowlist, a **real MIME entry** in `MIME_TYPES` (a `<video>` refuses to decode `application/octet-stream`, which presents as a player that renders and then does nothing), and the range-aware body (`serveRawFile` → `sendFileBody`) that makes the scrub bar work. `getAttachmentType()` returns the `video`/`audio` members of `AttachmentDetectedType` for them; the attachment card has no per-type CSS and its thumbnail falls back to the type label, since `generateFirstPageThumbnail` has no media branch and answers 204. ⚠️ The image-watcher keeps its OWN narrow detection list (`png/pdf/docx/pptx`), so this does not start popping cards for every video an agent writes.

⚠️ **The preview overlay must outrank the panel that launched it.** `.file-preview-overlay` sits at `z-index: 5100`, above the response viewer (5000) and its backdrop (4999); at its historical 2000 a path clicked in the chat opened the overlay *behind* the chat, which reads as a dead link. It stays below the toast/picker band (10000+) so a "Saved" toast still lands on top.

### Filesystem path picker

**Filesystem path picker** (Link Existing "Browse" button + the extended mobile keyboard's `📁 Path` key): a lazy one-directory-at-a-time browser over `GET /api/filesystem/browse`, with `GET /api/filesystem/preview` serving the tapped file. It starts at the active session's working directory (falling back to the Codeman Cases root, then `/mnt/d`, then the first root), hides dot entries, and inserts the chosen path **without** Enter so the prompt is not submitted. The companion `⌫ All` key clears only the current unsent prompt buffer and must never emit the agent's `/clear` command.

⚠️ **This is a second file-serving surface, so it carries the same confinement burden as [Attachments](#attachments) and does not inherit it automatically.** Traversal is allowlisted to Home, `CASES_DIR`, `/mnt/d`, or extra roots explicitly configured via `CODEMAN_FILE_PICKER_ROOTS`; sensitive trees are blocked and symlink escapes are rejected after `realpath` resolution rather than before. Without the realpath step a symlink inside an allowed root would walk straight out of it. `preview` reuses the shared conversion cache and the **global** `document-conversion-limiter`, which is what stops N concurrent large-document previews from forking N multi-minute converter processes. Content types are pinned: images and PDF inline, DOCX/PPTX through the converters, and Markdown/TXT/JSON as inert `text/plain` (never `text/html`, which would be stored XSS on our own origin). Size caps are 2MB for text and 50MB for binary/document previews.

⚠️ **Ownership scoping is also not inherited, and both endpoints must do it themselves.** Two separate holes shipped in the original version and are now regression-guarded in `test/routes/file-routes.test.ts`:

1. The optional `sessionId` param adds that session's `workingDir` as a "Current Folder" root. It is looked up directly off `ctx.sessions`/`ctx.store` rather than through `findSessionOrFail`, so the `canAccessOwned` check has to be written out by hand. Without it a multi-user caller pins **another user's** working directory as a browse root just by passing their session id. It reports 404 rather than 403 so the endpoint does not confirm that a session id exists.
2. `Home` and `CASES_DIR` were unconditional roots. Per-user spaces live at `<USER_SPACES_DIR>/<username>`, which is **inside `homedir()`**, so a `Home` root alone let any authenticated user browse and preview every other user's workspace. In multi-user mode a non-admin now gets only `My Space` (their own `userSpacePath`) plus anything in `CODEMAN_FILE_PICKER_ROOTS`; `/mnt/d` is dropped too, since a broad host mount should be an explicit operator decision in a multi-user deployment. Admins and single-user mode keep the host-wide set unchanged.

The general rule: **any new endpoint that turns a caller-supplied `sessionId` into a filesystem path is an ownership boundary**, whether or not it goes through `findSessionOrFail`.

### File Viewer edit mode

**File Viewer edit mode** (issue #212, design in `docs/file-viewer-edit-plan.md`): the file-preview overlay can edit workspace text files in place — `GET /api/sessions/:id/file-content?edit=1` (read-for-edit) + `PUT /api/sessions/:id/file-content` (save), policy in `src/config/file-editing.ts`, UI in `panels-ui.js`. This is the **only file surface that writes**, so it carries every rule the read surfaces have plus its own:

- **Confinement is the read path's, plus write-only gates.** `findSessionOrFail` (ownership) → `validateSessionFilePath` (realpath + workspace boundary; escapes report as 404, same as reads) → sensitive-path + attachment-guard blocklists (403) → `.git/` subtree deny (403 — `.git/hooks/*` is code execution) → extension **allowlist** (400; `svg` and `env` deliberately excluded). ⚠️ **There is no `O_CREAT` anywhere in the handler** — that absence is what makes "edit-in-place only, never create" a structural property instead of a convention. Do not add a create path without treating it as a new security surface.
- **A truncated buffer must never become an edit buffer.** The plain preview truncates to `lines` (default 500); saving such a buffer would silently delete everything past the cut, and the hash check cannot catch it (the loaded prefix hashes differently from the full file, which reads as an ordinary conflict at best). `edit=1` therefore never truncates — it 413s over `MAX_EDITABLE_BYTES` (512KB) instead — and the frontend always re-fetches with `edit=1` before swapping in the textarea, even though the preview already holds content.
- **Concurrency is optimistic by content hash, not mtime.** The client echoes the sha256 it loaded (`baseHash`); mismatch → 409 CONFLICT (plain envelope — the error arm carries no data; the client re-fetches `edit=1` for fresh state) unless `force:true`. mtime alone is wrong: agents rewrite files within one timestamp tick.
- **Writes are `wx` temp + `fchmod` + `fsync` + `rename` in the target's directory.** `wx` cannot follow a pre-existing symlink and `rename()` replaces (not follows) a symlink final component, which closes the validate-then-write TOCTOU window; `fchmod` because `open()`'s mode argument is masked by the umask; a symlink whose target is *inside* the workspace is deliberately written through (validation returns the realpath). Trade-off (same as vim): the inode changes, so hardlinks keep old content.
- **Corruption guards**: NUL-sniff + UTF-8 **round-trip compare** (`Buffer.from(buf.toString('utf8'), 'utf8').equals(buf)`) refuse binary and non-UTF-8 files — decoding latin-1 yields U+FFFD replacements and writing those back destroys the original bytes. EOL is detected server-side and re-applied on save because a `<textarea>` normalizes to LF (a two-line edit of a CRLF file must not become a whole-file diff).
- **Two size caps on the wire**: the Zod `.max()` counts UTF-16 code units (coarse pre-filter, 400) while the handler's `Buffer.byteLength` check enforces the real byte cap (413); the route sets `bodyLimit: 4MB` because JSON escaping can expand 512KB of content past Fastify's 1MB default. Error paths **throw** structured `{statusCode, body}` errors (`throwFileEditError`) rather than returning envelopes — the central preSerialization status-mapping hook is absent from the route-test harness, and 413 has no errorCode mapping at all.

Tests: `test/file-editing-policy.test.ts` (pure policy), `test/routes/file-write-routes.test.ts` (deliberately **unmocked fs** against a real temp workspace — symlink/TOCTOU/mode behavior must be exercised for real).

### Clone a repository as a case

**Clone Repo tab** (issue #236, proposed by @DodgyBadger): `POST /api/cases/clone` clones a public repository into the caller's case space and registers it as a normal local case; `POST /api/cases/clone-preflight` answers "can this be cloned anonymously, and what refs does it have?" while the user is still typing. Core in `src/git-clone.ts`, split into a PURE half (URL parse, argv/env, `ls-remote` parse, stderr classification) and a thin IO half (`probeGitRemote`, `cloneRepository`).

- ⚠️ **The URL is a code-execution surface, which is why it is parsed rather than forwarded.** `ext::sh -c <cmd>` makes git run an arbitrary command as its transport, and ANY `<name>::<payload>` dispatches to a `git-remote-<name>` helper, so every `::` form is refused outright. A repository starting with `-` is read by git as a flag; that is rejected AND every spawn puts `--` before the operands, because either defence alone is one edit away from being a hole. Spawns are argv arrays, never a shell (unlike `remote-hosts.ts`, which does build a shell line and must `shellescape`). The Zod schema deliberately only length-bounds `repository` — a weaker regex duplicate of `parseGitRepositoryUrl` would be the copy that drifts.
- ⚠️ **Non-interactive or it hangs the request.** The clone is synchronous by design (no job store, no polling, no cancellation surface), so an invisible credential prompt would pin an open HTTP request until the timeout. `gitNonInteractiveEnv()` closes all four prompt paths at once: `GIT_TERMINAL_PROMPT=0`, empty `GIT_ASKPASS`/`SSH_ASKPASS` + `SSH_ASKPASS_REQUIRE=never` + empty `DISPLAY`, `GCM_INTERACTIVE=never`, and `ssh -oBatchMode=yes`. `HOME`/`PATH` are inherited on purpose — a user whose own agent or credential helper already works keeps working (so a private repo may well clone; Codeman just never collects or stores credentials, and refuses a `user:password@` URL).
- ⚠️ **Bounded in time, output and concurrency.** Timeout → SIGTERM → SIGKILL, signalled to the whole process GROUP (`detached: true`, negative pid) because `git clone` fans out into `git-remote-https`/`index-pack` children that a polite signal to the parent leaves running. stderr is kept as a bounded, credential-redacted, control-stripped TAIL; `ls-remote` stdout is capped and refs are capped at 500 each. A small global pool (default 2, `CODEMAN_MAX_GIT_OPERATIONS`) caps concurrent git network ops, same reasoning as `document-conversion-limiter.ts`.
- **Repository contents beat scaffolding.** An existing `CLAUDE.md` is kept (a generated one is written only when absent) and hooks are MERGED into whatever `.claude/settings.local.json` the repo shipped. A repo that ships its own `.claude/settings*.json` is reported back as a warning, because repo-supplied hooks run on the user's machine as soon as a session starts there.
- **Failure leaves nothing behind.** The destination is removed only when it did not exist before the attempt, and a pre-existing directory is refused rather than cloned into, so a failed clone never squats on a case name and never touches an existing tree.
- ⚠️ **Error detail comes from the LAST diagnostic line, not the first.** `git clone` opens with `Cloning into '<dest>'…`, so a first-line pick reported the destination path as the reason a bad branch failed (observed against a real remote). `NOT_FOUND` wording must also say "or private": GitHub answers "Repository not found" for a private repo and a typo alike when unauthenticated.
- **Multi-user**: NOT admin-gated, unlike `/api/cases/link` — it writes only inside the caller's own `resolveCasesDir`. The exception is a `local`-transport source (an absolute path or `file://`), which is admin-only there because per-user spaces live inside one `$HOME` and a local clone would read straight through that boundary.
- **UI** (`case-clone` tab in the Add Case modal): debounced preflight paints a verdict under the field, fills the case name from the parsed repo (until the user types their own), and turns the branch/tag field into a datalist of the remote's real refs. The **Brain** picker sets the toolbar run mode on success (gated by `isCliAvailable()`, like `#runModeMenu`), so Run already points at the chosen CLI; starting a session stays opt-in. The tab hides itself when the server reports no `git` (injected via `window.__codemanCliAvailable`).

Tests: `test/git-clone.test.ts` (pure half exhaustively, plus REAL git against a REAL local bare repo for clone/ref/timeout/cleanup), `test/routes/case-clone-routes.test.ts` (deliberately **unmocked fs**, real clone through the endpoint).

### Ultracode and workflow-run visualization

**Ultracode / Workflow-run visualization** (opt-in `showUltracodeAgents`, default OFF; released 1.1.2): the Workflow tool ("ultracode") writes a COMPLETION artifact per run at `~/.claude/projects/<projHash>/<sessionUuid>/workflows/wf_*.json` (written only at run end); LIVE in-flight runs exist only as transcript dirs at `…/subagents/workflows/wf_<id>/` (journal.jsonl + `agent-*.jsonl`). `workflow-run-watcher.ts` (STANDALONE — deliberately never imports/touches `subagent-watcher.ts`; separate singleton, though it independently reads the same `subagents/workflows/` tree) scans BOTH sources via periodic poll + per-directory chokidar watchers with per-source mtime skip (LRU agentStatCache + journalCache), synthesizing ACTIVE runs (live per-agent tokens/tools/state from transcripts, title/phases from the workflow script) until the completion `wf_*.json` appears and supersedes, and broadcasts SSE `workflow:run_discovered`/`run_updated`/`run_removed`. The watcher is started when **either** `showUltracodeAgents` **or** `ultracodeFloatingWindows` is on (`server.ts` `isWorkflowAgentTrackingEnabled()` returns `(showUltracodeAgents ?? false) || (ultracodeFloatingWindows ?? false)`). Served via `GET /api/workflows` (optional `?minutes=` filter) and `GET /api/workflows/:runId`. Frontend `ultracode-panel.js` renders a docked master-detail view (LEFT: runs + phases; RIGHT: per-agent tokens + tool-calls; click an agent card → its live transcript via client-side `agentId` join). **Additionally**, `ultracode-windows.js` auto-pops a draggable **floating window per active run** (gated on a **DEDICATED** `ultracodeFloatingWindows` toggle, default OFF — independent of the dock panel's `showUltracodeAgents`; see `_ultracodeFloatingEnabled()`), connected by a glowing line to the originating session tab (resolved by `session.claudeSessionId === run.sessionUuid`) — same line idiom as subagent windows, drawn into the shared `#connectionLines` SVG from the tail of `_updateConnectionLinesImmediate`. The window auto-closes ~8s after its run finishes; explicit dismissals are remembered. Clicking an agent card opens an **in-page** connected transcript window (not a browser popup); both run and transcript windows minimize **into** the originating session tab as a merged `ULTRA` badge (🧬 runs / 📄 transcripts) with a restore/dismiss dropdown — minimized runs are skipped by auto-pop. Gesture beta: floating subagent/ultracode windows are pinch-draggable (a `window` grab kind in `entry.ts`). Types: `src/types/workflow-run.ts`. Config: `src/config/workflow-config.ts`.

### Cross-session search

**Cross-session search** (COD-113/#133): `GET /api/search?q=&types=&limit=` federates an **in-memory** search across all live sessions — session metadata (name/workingDir/id), run-summary events, and per-session attachment-history file entries (workspace-relative path only; the server-private `externalPath` is never read). Pure core `searchSources()` in `search-service.ts` (substring-matches with hard per-type caps — no regex, so no ReDoS; no filesystem reads, so no traversal); `harvestSources()` in `search-routes.ts` gathers the in-memory sources. `SearchQuerySchema` bounds `q` (1–200), allowlists `types` (`session,event,file`), clamps `limit` (1–60). Returns the `{success,data}` envelope. Frontend: history-panel search box in `terminal-ui.js`. Types: `src/types/search.ts`.

**Past sessions in the corpus** (#261): the live session map alone made every CLOSED session unfindable, searching a folder name that was sitting in the home screen's Resume list below the box returned nothing. Past sessions now come from `src/web/session-history-index.ts`: a capped (`HISTORY_INDEX_MAX_ITEMS` 400) snapshot of the unified list, read synchronously by `harvestSources()`. ⚠️ It is filled OUTSIDE the request path, which is what preserves the no-fs property above: `/api/sessions/unified` publishes it as a side effect (free, it just merged that list, and the home screen fetches it whenever it opens, which is the same screen the search box lives on), and `ensureHistorySessionIndexFresh()`, **fire-and-forget, single-flight, TTL-guarded (60s)**, kicks a rebuild when a search finds it stale. A cold process therefore answers its first search without history and its second with it; never `await` the refresher from a handler. ⚠️ The snapshot is stored **UNSCOPED** with a per-row `owner` (`undefined` = host-wide transcript history), and `harvestSources()` re-applies `canAccessOwned()` per row, the same rule `/api/sessions/unified` applies when it drops history for non-admins. A scoped (non-admin) unified request therefore re-merges unscoped before publishing, rather than writing its own subset into the shared snapshot. ⚠️ Live rows are harvested FIRST and win the dedupe, so a session that is both live and in the snapshot keeps `jumpTo.kind:'session'`; history rows get `'resume-session'` (with `claudeSessionId`/`workingDir`), because selecting a tab that no longer exists is a silent no-op the user reads as a broken result. Tests: `test/session-history-index.test.ts`, `test/routes/search-routes.test.ts`.

### Away digest

**Away digest** (COD-41/#136): `GET /api/away-digest?range=&since=&until=&lastViewed=` aggregates "what happened while you were away" from the lifecycle log + run-summary events + live sessions + daily token stats + recently-completed subagents into needs-attention/completed/still-running/idle/informational sections. Pure aggregator in `web/away-digest.ts` (`resolveAwayDigestRange()` validates the window — `since-last-visit`/`1h`/`today`/`24h`/`custom`, server-local TZ; `buildAwayDigest()` classifies). Header-button modal in `panels-ui.js` (button hidden on phones — regression-guarded). ⚠️ Returns `{success:true,digest}` (a legacy raw-ish shape, consistent with the other raw GET handlers in `system-routes.ts` — `{entries}`/`{config}`/`{files}`/`getSystemStats()`); frontend + tests read `.digest`. Subagent lookback is a fixed 60-min window regardless of range.

### Detached start and service install

**`codeman web -d` / `codeman service install`** (issue #231). Two answers to "keep it running", split by how long: `-d` survives the shell, the service survives a reboot. `src/daemon-control.ts` and `src/service-installer.ts`, both splitting pure builders (argv, URLs, pidfile parsing, unit-file text) from the IO.

Why a flag at all, when `nohup codeman web &` looks like it should work: it does not reliably. **Node re-arms SIGHUP to its default disposition even when it inherits "ignore" from `nohup`** (verified: `nohup node script.js &` then `kill -HUP` prints "Hangup" and dies; `/proc/<pid>/status` shows SIGHUP absent from `SigIgn`, where `nohup sleep` has it set). `cli.ts` then adds a SIGHUP handler that shuts the server down gracefully, so a delivered HUP always stops it. What actually works is removing the shell's ability to send one: `disown` in the user's shell, or `detached: true` (setsid) here. zsh HUPs running jobs on exit by default, bash does not on a clean `exit` but does when it receives SIGHUP itself, which is why "does `&` survive?" gets opposite answers on macOS and Linux.

Invariants:

- **Never a second server on one data dir.** `-d` and `service install` both check the pidfile AND probe `/api/status` first, and refuse. This is the instance-isolation hazard, not politeness: a second instance on the shared `tmux -L codeman` socket discovers the first one's live sessions, attaches PTYs to them and resizes them (see [Instance isolation](#instance-isolation-and-the-multi-instance-attach-danger)).
- **Never report success that was not observed.** The parent polls `/api/status` until the child answers or exits, then prints the URL or the tail of `web.log`. A `launchctl load`, a `systemctl enable --now` and a plain spawn are all silent about a server that starts and dies half a second later, which is why `install.sh` verifies too. The log is append-only across launches, so each start writes a separator line and the failure tail begins there.
- **A 401 counts as up.** `CODEMAN_PASSWORD` gates `/api/status`, so requiring a 200 would make readiness detection fail on exactly the installs that took security advice. The body is still checked for `"success"` so an unrelated service squatting on the port is not mistaken for Codeman.
- **`--stop` verifies identity before signalling.** Pids are recycled; a stale pidfile plus a blind `process.kill` is how a tool SIGTERMs someone's database. `ps -o command=` (portable to macOS) must still look like a Codeman web process. When `ps` itself fails, the pid is treated as ours rather than orphaning the pidfile.
- **One source of truth for the job name.** `src/config/service-names.ts` holds the systemd unit name and launchd label used by `install.sh`, `detectSupervisor()` in self-update, and `service install`. Drift here is silent and bad: `service install` would supervise a SECOND copy alongside the installer's. The names are instance-scoped (`CODEMAN_INSTANCE=beta` → `codeman-web-beta.service` / `com.codeman.beta.web`) so a beta cannot overwrite the production unit, and are byte-identical to the historical names for the default instance.
- **PATH is the reason hand-written units fail.** launchd hands a job `/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin` and systemd's user manager is nearly as bare, so a Homebrew or nvm `node`, `tmux` or `claude` is simply absent. The unit therefore carries the installing shell's PATH with the running node's directory in front; `node_modules/.bin` entries are dropped, since npx injects those for one command and they would outlive the checkout.
- **No secrets in unit files.** `CODEMAN_PASSWORD` present in the installing shell is NOT copied into the plist/unit; the operator is told to add it. `CODEMAN_INSTANCE` IS copied, because without it a supervised beta would silently run against the production data dir and tmux socket.

### Self-update

**Self-update** (App Settings → System → Updates): in-app updater for **git-clone installs** supervised by systemd/launchd. Supervisors: `systemd` (user unit), `launchd` (GUI LaunchAgent, gui-domain kickstart), `launchd-daemon` (KeepAlive system LaunchDaemon on headless Macs — restarts rootlessly by killing the server PID and letting launchd respawn it; detected only when the daemon is bootstrapped AND KeepAlive), else `none` → "restart manually" message; on next boot a manual-restart status auto-completes when the running version matches the target. The update restarts the very process running it, so the real work runs in a DETACHED `scripts/self-update.sh` (`git checkout <release tag> && npm install && npm run build && restart`) that outlives the restart; it writes progress to `dataPath('update-status.json')`, which the browser polls across the connection drop. Channel = latest `codeman@X.Y.Z` release tag; dirty trees are auto-stashed. `src/web/self-update.ts` splits PURE helpers (semver/tag parsing, reconcile decision — unit-tested) from IO wrappers (`getInstallInfo`/`checkForUpdate`/`startUpdate`/`reconcileUpdateOnBoot`). Routes: `GET /api/system/update/check`, `POST /api/system/update`, `GET /api/system/update/status`. Types: `src/types/update.ts`. npm installs report as non-updatable.

### Web tabs

**Web tabs** (saved dashboard URLs rendered as tabs beside agent sessions; user guide `docs/web-tabs.md`). A webview is **NOT a `SessionMode` of its own**: no PTY, no tmux, no respawn, no idle detection. It is a separate resource (`~/.codeman/webviews.json` via `src/webview-store.ts`, types in `src/types/webview.ts`, limits in `src/config/webview-limits.ts`) that shares only the tab strip and the main content area, exactly as Docker and remote-SSH are case overlays rather than modes.

**Why there is a reverse proxy at all.** A direct `<iframe src="http://box:4000">` fails three independent ways in the shipped deployment: (1) prod serves `--https` behind `tailscale serve`, and browsers hard-block `http://` iframes on an HTTPS page with no override (none at all on iOS Safari); (2) Grafana/Portainer/Home-Assistant-class dashboards send `X-Frame-Options: DENY` or `frame-ancestors 'none'`; (3) our own `default-src 'self'` CSP makes `frame-src` fall back to `'self'`. Serving the dashboard through Codeman's origin dissolves all three, and as a bonus leaves the production CSP **byte-for-byte unchanged**, because `/webview/...` is already covered by `'self'`. A `direct` mode still exists for HTTPS targets that permit framing; `POST /api/webviews/probe` runs a server-side reachability + framing check and recommends which to use.

**Origin-scoped, not path-scoped.** `/webview/<cap>/x/y` always maps to `<upstream origin>/x/y`, never `<upstream origin><saved path>/x/y`. Dashboards reference assets root-absolutely (`/public/build/app.js`), so origin-scoping is the only mapping under which those resolve; the saved URL's own path+query is used solely as what `/webview/<cap>/` itself serves.

**The capability, and why the auth exemption is safe.** A sandboxed iframe (no `allow-same-origin`) is OPAQUE-ORIGIN, so every request it makes is cross-site: the `SameSite=lax` `codeman_session` cookie is never attached, and writes and WS upgrades arrive with `Origin: null`, which `isAllowedRequestOrigin` rejects by design. Cookie auth therefore cannot work. `src/webview-capabilities.ts` mints a 192-bit `randomBytes` token (memory-only, so a restart invalidates every outstanding one; rolling TTL; bound to the minting user; revoked on edit/delete) which `middleware/auth.ts` recognizes via `hasValidWebviewCapability()` to skip the cookie and Origin checks. ⚠️ The **Host allowlist is never bypassed**, so DNS-rebinding protection is intact. ⚠️ There is a second, `Referer`-keyed form of the exemption for root-absolute assets that `<base href>` cannot rewrite (`fetch('/api/data')`, `url(/img.png)` in a stylesheet); it is the only exemption decided by a request-supplied header, so it is fenced to **safe methods on paths that resolve to NO registered Codeman route** (`matchesRegisteredRoute`), plus a blanket refusal of `/ws/` and `/q/`. Without that fence a page could present a webview Referer and skip auth on a real API route. ⚠️ The fence uses `findRoute()`, NOT `hasRoute()`: `hasRoute` matches the registered PATTERN literally, so `/api/sessions/abc` reports false against `/api/sessions/:id` and would hand out an exemption on a live route. It also has to treat `@fastify/static`'s root catch-all (mounted at `/`, matches everything) as "no real route", which is detectable because a root catch-all is the only route whose `*` param equals the whole request path. `/api` used to be refused by prefix instead, which permanently broke dashboards serving their own assets from an `/api/...` namespace. `test/webview-auth-exemption.test.ts` pins every edge.

**Egress guard (2026-09-04).** The proxy's reach is a documented property, but `169.254.169.254` sat inside it: the URL schema accepted any http(s) host, the proxy relayed arbitrary request headers and PUT/POST, and a `curl` PoC pulled an IMDSv2-shaped request through to a loopback echo server with no cookie. `src/web/webview-egress-policy.ts` (pure) refuses link-local and the fixed cloud-metadata addresses, and ONLY those: loopback and RFC1918 stay allowed because a `localhost` Grafana is the feature (`test/webview-proxy.test.ts` pins `127.0.0.1:4000` as valid). ⚠️ It is applied at three stages and each is load-bearing: the Zod schema (a clear refusal at save time), a synchronous hostname check on every connect (Node's `net.connect` skips DNS for an IP literal, so a lookup hook never sees one), and a `lookup` hook (`src/web/webview-egress.ts`) on the undici `Agent` behind `webviewFetch()` and on the `ws` client, which judges the RESOLVED addresses of a name and refuses when ANY of them is blocked (`autoSelectFamily` races the whole list). The hook is what closes rebinding: a hostname-string check alone, like the push-endpoint guard's, is bypassed by an attacker's own DNS. ⚠️ The proxy uses the `undici` PACKAGE's own `fetch` with that package's own `Agent`, never Node's global fetch with a foreign dispatcher: Node bundles its own undici, and a dispatch-protocol mismatch between package and bundle fails in ways no unit test here would see. Tests: `test/webview-egress-policy.test.ts`, `test/webview-egress.test.ts` (a real Agent against a real local server with an injected resolver), the egress block in `test/routes/webview-routes.test.ts` (schema refusal, probe refusal, and a record written straight to the store to prove the proxy re-judges).

**Capabilities die with the login.** `revokeOwner()` shipped for two releases with a docstring claiming logout called it and NO caller: the rolling TTL is refreshed on every use, so a leaked proxy URL stayed valid for as long as anything polled it. It is now called from `POST /api/logout` (own identity; `undefined` in single-user mode, i.e. everything), the admin forced-logout route and user deletion, pinned by `test/webview-capability-revocation.test.ts`. Proxied responses additionally carry `Referrer-Policy: same-origin` (the upstream's own policy is dropped): every URL inside the frame carries the capability, and a dashboard on `no-referrer-when-downgrade` or `unsafe-url` handed it to any third-party host it linked. `same-origin` keeps the Referer the 404 fallback and `refererPath` depend on, since both compare URL origins; a `<meta name="referrer">` inside the document can still override it, which is the dashboard author's call about their own page.

**Sandbox default.** The iframe carries `allow-scripts allow-forms allow-popups allow-downloads allow-modals` and gains `allow-same-origin` ONLY when the dashboard is explicitly `trusted`. A proxied page is served from Codeman's own origin, so granting it would let the dashboard read the Codeman document and drive the agent-spawning API. ⚠️ In **both** modes, `Authorization` and the `codeman_session` cookie are stripped before the upstream request (`buildUpstreamRequestHeaders`), because a trusted (same-origin) frame makes the browser attach Codeman's own Basic-auth header to every proxied request; forwarding it would hand `CODEMAN_PASSWORD` to the dashboard.

**Two things a sandboxed frame breaks that are invisible to `curl`.** Both were found only by driving a real dashboard in a real browser, and both present identically as the dashboard's own "Failed to fetch" while the page itself renders fine:

1. **Root-absolute URLs built at runtime.** `<base href>` only governs URLs the HTML parser resolves; `fetch('/api/data')` bypasses it and lands on Codeman's root. That is how most dashboards talk to their own backend. The `Referer`-keyed 404 fallback is only a rescue (it fires after every real route missed, and only when the browser sends a usable `Referer`), so the fix is `runtimeUrlShim()`: a small script injected right after `<base>` that rebases root-absolute and same-origin-absolute URLs into the prefix. It removes the whole class inside the iframe instead of trading security for it. ⚠️ It must be injected even when the page ships its OWN `<base>` (an early return there silently breaks exactly the pages that need it most). ⚠️ **The DOM sinks are as load-bearing as `fetch`.** Patching only `fetch`/`XHR`/`WebSocket`/`EventSource` leaves `container.innerHTML = '<img src="/api/hero?slug=x">'` and `img.src = '/api/slide'` untouched, and neither of the other layers can reach those either (`<base>` never applies to root-absolute URLs, and `rewriteHtml()` only ever sees the INITIAL document, never markup built later by page script). The symptom is precise and easy to misdiagnose as an upstream fault: the dashboard's **data** loads while every **image** stays broken. So the shim also wraps `innerHTML`/`outerHTML`/`insertAdjacentHTML`, `setAttribute`/`setAttributeNS`, and the `src`/`srcset`/`href`/`poster`/`data`/`action` property setters, with a `MutationObserver` as a last net for sinks not patched above. Every rewrite routes through the same idempotent `rw()`, which matters because unlike the server-side rewrite this one sees markup that may ALREADY be proxied (a page re-injecting its own `outerHTML` would otherwise double-prefix). The DOM half is pinned in jsdom by `test/webview-proxy.test.ts`; `curl` cannot see any of it.
2. **CORS on same-host requests.** An opaque-origin document treats EVERY request as cross-origin, including to the very host it was served from, so its `fetch`/XHR are CORS-checked and its preflights carry `Origin: null`. Static subresources (script/css/img) are NOT CORS-checked, which is why the page renders while its API calls die with an opaque `net::ERR_FAILED`. `buildProxyCorsHeaders()` echoes the origin (omitting `allow-credentials` for `null`, which browsers reject in combination), upstream `access-control-*` headers are dropped (they describe the dashboard's origin, not the frame's), and the proxy answers preflights itself rather than relaying them. ⚠️ `registerSecurityHeaders` answers EVERY `OPTIONS` with a bare 204 before routing, and its CORS block only emits headers for localhost origins, so that short-circuit **must** exempt a valid webview capability or every preflight fails. `curl` cannot reproduce any of this because curl does not enforce CORS.

**Rewrites, each load-bearing** (pure + unit-tested in `src/web/webview-proxy.ts`): drop `x-frame-options` and the CSP `frame-ancestors` directive (the point of the proxy); drop `content-encoding`/`content-length` because undici's `fetch` already decoded the body (forwarding them makes the browser gunzip plaintext); rewrite `Location` for same-origin redirects only, handing CROSS-origin redirects back unchanged so this never becomes an open relay; rebase `Set-Cookie` `Path` onto the prefix and drop `Domain`; inject `<base href>` and rebase root-absolute `src`/`href`/`action`. `resolveUpstreamUrl()` returns null on anything escaping the upstream origin.

**Fastify specifics.** The proxy lives in an **encapsulated plugin scope** with `removeAllContentTypeParsers()` + a `'*'` pass-through parser, so raw bodies relay byte-for-byte while the root instance keeps its JSON parsing (and keeps `text/plain` RAW, which was a real CSRF hole once). One `app.route({ method:'GET', handler, wsHandler })` serves both HTTP and the WebSocket upgrade; **HEAD must NOT be declared** on the sibling route because `exposeHeadRoutes` already derives it and the duplicate is a startup error. ⚠️ **Every exit path in the proxy handler RETURNS `reply.send(...)`**: the handler is `async`, and a bare `return` after `reply.send(stream)` resolves the handler promise to `undefined` before the stream is consumed, so Fastify answers with an EMPTY body. HTML survives that (synchronous string payload) while every streamed asset comes back zero-length, which is a genuinely confusing failure. The root-absolute fallback hangs off `setNotFoundHandler`, so real Codeman routes always win.

**Frontend** (`src/web/public/webview-tabs.js`, load order 12.5): web tabs render into `#sessionTabs` carrying `data-webview-id` instead of `data-id`, so every session-tab path (drag-and-drop, alerts, badges) skips them. ⚠️ `_renderSessionTabsImmediate()`'s `canIncremental` check must include the web-tab comparison: the session-only comparison is vacuously "unchanged" whenever session count is stable, most visibly at ZERO sessions (`0 === 0`), where opening a dashboard would never draw its tab. ⚠️ `isActive` for a session tab is `id === activeSessionId && !activeWebviewId`: `activeSessionId` stays set while a web tab is showing (the terminal keeps streaming underneath), so without that clause the debounced re-render lights two tabs at once. Frames stay MOUNTED while hidden (LRU-evicted past `maxLiveFrames`) so tab switching never reloads a dashboard.

**Pre-existing bug fixed alongside**: `.toolbar` has `backdrop-filter`, which makes it a stacking context and TRAPS `.run-mode-menu`'s `z-index: 1000` inside it. With the toolbar itself at `z-index: auto`, `.welcome-overlay` (z-index 10, inside `<main>`) painted over the popped-up Run menu, making **every** item in it unclickable whenever no session was open. `.toolbar` now carries `z-index: 20` (must stay below `.modal`'s 1000).

### Multi-user mode

**Multi-user mode** (opt-in `--multiuser` / `CODEMAN_MULTIUSER=1`, OFF by default; shipped 1.5.0 via PR #161, design `docs/multi-user-plan.md`): named users with individually scrypt-hashed passwords in `~/.codeman/users.json` (via `src/user-store.ts`: atomic 0600 write, short-TTL cache, SERIALIZED read-modify-write so a fire-and-forget `touchLastLogin` can't clobber a concurrent route write, last-admin invariants). Gated everywhere by `isMultiUserMode()` (`src/config/multiuser.ts`); when OFF, behavior is byte-identical to single-user (all scoping helpers short-circuit). ⚠️ **Not a security boundary at the agent layer** — every session still runs as the SAME OS account; this separates WORKSPACES, it does not sandbox users (Docker cases are the isolation story). Auth: a PARALLEL async branch in `middleware/auth.ts` (single-user branch untouched) verifies `username:password` against the store, mints identity-carrying cookies (`AuthSessionRecord` gains `username`/`role`/`mustChangePassword`), decorates `req.authUser` (Fastify augmentation; single-user leaves it undefined and the ownership helpers default to a synthetic admin), enforces a per-username failure bucket + the `mustChangePassword` lockbox. Ownership threads through `Session.owner` (stamped from `req.authUser`/`job.owner` at every `new Session()`, round-tripped via `MuxSession.owner` on recovery); `findSessionOrFail(ctx,id,req)` does a NOT_FOUND owner check; list endpoints + `getLightState` + SSE (`deriveSseHint` routes session-scoped events by owner, fail-closed; machine-level + host-plan telemetry admin-only) + WS + search + file-preview all filter by owner. §6.3 permission policy: non-granted users are forced to `--permission-mode auto` (via `resolveClaudeModeForUser` at all spawn sites, incl. one-shots because `buildPromptArgs` now respects the session mode), and shell mode / cron `launchCommand` require the `canBypassPermissions` grant. Cases live in per-user `~/codeman-users/<name>/cases` (`resolveCasesDir`); a non-admin's `workingDir` is realpath-confined there; host CRUD is admin-only. Admin API `src/web/routes/admin-routes.ts` (`/api/admin/users*`, one-time passwords, audit log `admin-audit.jsonl`) + self-service `/api/me` + `/api/me/password` (`me-routes.ts`); frontend `public/admin-ui.js` (identity boot, change-password modal + interceptor, admin Users tab, and the header **Admin Panel** button `#adminPanelBtn`: ships `btn-admin-panel--hidden`, revealed for admins in multi-user mode, phone-hidden via mobile.css; opens the full Admin Panel modal with user CRUD, per-user permission toggles, and case-folder list/delete via `GET/DELETE /api/admin/users/:username/cases[/:caseName]`; live-refreshes on SSE `admin:usersChanged`, wired in app.js). CLI `codeman users add|passwd|list|rm`. Per-user session cap via `sessionCapacityState`/`sessionCapacityMessage`. Tests: `test/user-store.test.ts`, `test/multiuser-auth.test.ts`, `test/ownership-scoping.test.ts`, `test/admin-routes.test.ts`, `test/admin-ui.test.ts`.

## Frontend

### Command palette and shortcut registry

**Command palette + shortcut registry** (COD-151/153/157/192, #146): `Ctrl/Cmd/Alt+K` opens the session palette (fuzzy search over live sessions; "Browse all sessions" → the Session Manager modal backed by `GET /api/sessions/unified`); the quick-start case `<select>` is fronted by a searchable picker (`buildCasePickerOptions`/`formatCasePickerLabel` — remote cases render `name @ hostId`). Shortcuts live in a rebindable registry (`DEFAULT_SHORTCUTS`/`getShortcutRegistry()`/`matchesShortcutEvent()` in app.js; overrides persist under `settings.shortcutOverrides` via `saveAppSettingsToStorage`); App Settings → Shortcuts renders capture/disable rows; `Ctrl+?` opens the registry-driven overlay (footer links to the full `#helpModal` reference). ⚠️ Palette-chord keys must ALSO be swallowed in `attachCustomKeyEventHandler` (terminal-ui.js) or xterm writes the control byte (0x0B) into the PTY. ⚠️ `saveAppSettings()` rebuilds settings from the DOM — keys edited elsewhere (`shortcutOverrides`, `showTokenCount`, `showCost`) need explicit `_prev` carry-over.

**Terminal smart copy** (#211): `Ctrl+C` copies the selection when there is one and stays the interrupt when there isn't. Three rules keep that split honest, and breaking any of them silently costs the user their interrupt key:

1. The branch lives in `attachCustomKeyEventHandler` (terminal-ui.js) and the **no-selection path returns `true` with no `preventDefault()`**, so xterm still evaluates `Ctrl+C` into `0x03`. Returning `false` alone does not cancel the event either way: xterm's `_keyDown` calls the custom handler *before* its own `cancel()`, which is exactly why the copy path calls `preventDefault()` explicitly (otherwise the browser also runs its native copy on top).
2. `copyTerminalSelection` is a registry `action` **deliberately missing from `SHORTCUT_ACTIONS`** (same trick as `command-palette`): the entry stays rebindable and disableable in App Settings, while the generic document-capture loop, which `preventDefault()`s every match it dispatches, skips it and lets the terminal handler decide.
3. The gate is keydown-only (the custom handler also runs for `keypress`/`keyup`), and `Ctrl+Shift+C` never falls through to the PTY: an "explicit copy" chord that interrupts a running agent because the selection happened to be empty is a footgun with no upside.

Copy goes through `_copyText()` (Clipboard API, then hidden-textarea + `execCommand`), not raw `navigator.clipboard`, because `install.sh`'s LAN option serves plain HTTP where `navigator.clipboard` is undefined; the fallback steals focus, so the terminal is refocused afterwards. Related: xterm registers its own `copy` listener on the terminal element gated on `hasSelection()`, which is why right-click → Copy has always worked. Selection itself is unavailable on touch devices by design (`user-select: none` on the terminal subtree), and in `shell`/`opencode`/`antigravity` tabs the TUI owns the mouse, so selecting there needs Shift+drag. Tests: `test/terminal-copy-selection.test.ts` (gate + wiring invariants), `test/terminal-copy-shortcut.test.ts` (browser, real key presses).

### Auto Copy (copy-on-select)

**Auto Copy** (`autoCopySelection`, per-device, default OFF) puts a finished terminal selection on the clipboard without a keystroke. It is a thin layer over the smart-copy machinery above and shares `_copyText()` with it, but the two paths differ in every decision that matters:

- **It fires at the END of a gesture, never on selection change.** `onSelectionChange` runs for every cell a drag crosses, so copying there would be one clipboard write per mouse move. The callback only ARMS `_autoCopyPending`; the flush is a document-level `mouseup` listener installed once in `initTerminal`, plus explicit calls from the touch selection path.
- **The flush is synchronous inside the handler.** Both clipboard paths need user activation: Firefox gates `navigator.clipboard.writeText` on it, and `document.execCommand('copy')` (the plain-HTTP fallback that `install.sh`'s LAN option lands on) has to run in the gesture's own task. Deferring to a timer or waiting for `onSelectionChange` loses it, and the failure is browser-specific and invisible in Chrome.
- **The listener is on `document`, not the terminal container**, because a drag that ends outside the terminal (sweeping up past the header) delivers its mouseup to the document. Unrelated mouseups elsewhere on the page are filtered by the decision helper, not by the listener's target.
- **Touch has its own entry point.** `_endTouchSelectionGesture()` and `_selectTouchSelectionLine()` call the flush directly, because the touch path `preventDefault()`s its touchend (that is what stops the compat mouse pair from stealing the selection back), so no mouseup ever reaches the document there. Without those two calls the toggle is simply dead on a phone.
- **It must NOT do what `copyTerminalSelection()` does.** That one clears the selection (so a second `Ctrl+C` is an interrupt) and focuses the terminal. Clearing would make text vanish from under the cursor that just highlighted it, and focusing opens the on-screen keyboard over it on a phone. Focus is instead RESTORED to whatever held it before the copy, which only matters for the `execCommand` fallback (it focuses a temp textarea on the way through); the Clipboard API path never moves focus at all.

`decideAutoCopy()` (constants.js, pure) holds the guards: setting off, blank or whitespace-only text (what a drag across empty cells produces), and a `AUTO_COPY_MAX_CHARS` (1M) cap. ⚠️ The cap is not decoration: a drag off the top of the viewport autoscrolls, so one gesture can sweep the whole 50k-line scrollback. Past it the copy is REFUSED rather than truncated, with a toast pointing at `Ctrl+C`, which still copies everything through the explicit path.

⚠️ **Two dedupe rules, and both earn their place.** A genuine selection change (`pending`) always copies, so re-selecting the same text after copying something else in between still works. Otherwise only text differing from the last auto-copy does, which is what stops an unrelated mouseup from re-copying a stale selection AND what makes the first copy of a drag work at all: xterm fires `onSelectionChange` from its own document `mouseup` handler, and listener order between the two is registration order, not something this code controls. Gating on `pending` alone silently drops that first copy.

Feedback is silent on success except ONCE per page load (a feature that works by doing nothing visible cannot otherwise be told from a dead toggle); failures and refusals toast, throttled to 10s so a permanently blocked clipboard cannot paint a toast on every drag. The setting is per-device on both counts required by the settings rule: it is in `displayKeys` AND absent from the `.strict()` `SettingsUpdateSchema` (clipboard access differs by device and by origin, and the plain-HTTP LAN install has no `navigator.clipboard` at all). Tests: `test/terminal-auto-copy.test.ts`.

### Terminal paste (Ctrl+V)

**The Ctrl+V paste trap consumes exactly ONE paste event.** `_handleImagePaste()` (image-input.js) appends a hidden `contenteditable` div, focuses it, and reads the clipboard out of the paste event that lands there. An image becomes an upload whose saved path is typed into the session; text goes through `terminal.paste()`, so the bracketed-paste markers survive. Two independent routes deliver that event for one keypress, and a browser may fire both:

1. **`document.execCommand('paste')`**, which the function calls itself. ⚠️ Its return value proves nothing about whether it fired. Firefox dispatches a trusted `paste` event carrying the real clipboard and still returns `false`, because the trap cancels the event and the command therefore never completes. Chromium refuses the command outright and dispatches nothing.
2. **The keydown's own default action.** The `Ctrl+V` branch in `attachCustomKeyEventHandler` returns `false`, which stops xterm from evaluating the key into `^V` but does not cancel the DOM event, for the same reason rule 1 of smart copy above spells out. `trap.focus()` has already run by then, so the browser sends its own paste to the trap as well.

Measured against a live install, one `Ctrl+V` each: Firefox delivers two paste events, Chromium and WebKit one. Handling both wrote the clipboard text to the PTY twice, which is why `Ctrl+V` pasted twice while right-click → Paste pasted once. That menu path involves no keydown, so route 2 cannot exist for it.

⚠️ **Route 2 alone is enough in all three engines, so route 1 is redundant where it can be measured.** Strip the `execCommand('paste')` call out and each of the three still delivers exactly one paste event to the trap, Firefox included. The call is kept anyway, because the trap technique was written for the mobile engines that a desktop measurement cannot reach, and a browser that resolves the key's default action against the element focused when the keydown began would send its paste to xterm's textarea instead. Text paste survives that on xterm's own `handlePasteEvent`; image paste does not, since the trap's listener is the only place clipboard image blobs are read. Removing the call is therefore a decision about mobile coverage, not a cleanup.

The guard is a one-shot flag on each trap rather than a browser test or a reading of `execCommand`'s return value, so any count of events produces one insert. Tests: `test/image-paste-trap.test.ts`.

### Settings surface: App Settings, Session Options, Add Case

**One visual language, three modals.** `#appSettingsModal`, `#sessionOptionsModal` and `#createCaseModal` share the `set-*` surface (left rail, sections of grouped row cards, label + description on the left, control pinned right) through a single `:is(#appSettingsModal, #sessionOptionsModal, #createCaseModal)` scope in `styles.css`. An `:is()` list takes the specificity of its **most specific argument**, and all three arguments are ids, so every rule kept exactly the weight it had when the block was `#appSettingsModal`-only: nothing downstream shifted in the cascade. That property is what let the surface absorb Session Options and then Add Case in two separate commits without a cascade audit each time.

Anatomy: `.set-shell` → `.set-shell-head` (title + `.set-head-actions`) + `.set-body` (grid of `.set-rail` and `.set-doc`). The rail holds `.set-search`, `.set-rail-items` and `.set-rail-foot`; the document holds `.set-section`s, each with `.set-section-head` + `.set-section-blurb` + `.set-group`s of `.set-row`s (`.set-row-text` = `.set-row-label` + `.set-row-desc`; controls sit in `.set-row-actions`). ⚠️ Close is deliberately **first in the DOM** inside `.set-head-actions` so the focus trap lands on it rather than on Save; `row-reverse` is what puts Save to its left visually on phones.

**The rail means two different things, and that is deliberate:**

- **App Settings** is a **table of contents over ONE scrolling document**. Every section stays mounted; rail entries carry `data-section` and `switchSettingsTab(id)` keeps its historical name but SCROLLS instead of hiding. Section order in the DOM is `settings-updates|terminal|layout|appearance|models|clis|notifications|voice|shortcuts|system`, and the modal opens scrolled to **Updates**, which carries ONLY the current version and the update action: what this install runs, and whether a newer release is waiting, before any preference. The rest of the old System section (Paths, Automation, Remote access) tails the document under **System**, set once and rarely touched, which puts Terminal & Input (where Local Echo lives) second in reach.
- **Session Options** and **Add Case** really SWITCH: `switchOptionsTab(tab)` / `switchCaseModalTab(tab)` (session-ui.js) show one `.set-section` and put `.hidden` on the rest, then reset the document scroll so a switched-to section starts at its own top. Stacking them into one document would bury both ends: Summary owns its own scroller, Respawn is long, and Add Case is six independent forms. Their rail entries call the handler from an inline `onclick` and pair by id (`data-tab="respawn"` ↔ `#respawn-tab`; `data-tab="case-clone"` ↔ `#case-clone`).

⚠️ **The Session Options rail reads "Session" but the key is still `context`.** The tab was renamed because "context" described only one of its three groups (they are now Identity / Context window / Behavior), and the rename is **label-only**: `data-tab="context"`, `id="context-tab"` and `switchOptionsTab('context')` are unchanged, including the call in `openSessionOptions` that lands external-CLI sessions somewhere valid.

⚠️ **Two sizes on one surface, on purpose.** App Settings is a long dense document you scan, and stays tight: `min(760px, 95vw)` × `min(620px, 86vh)`, 176px rail, 15px doc padding, `5px 10px` rows, 0.76rem row labels. Session Options and Add Case are the opposite (a handful of short panels you act on once), and at that density they read as a few small fields marooned in a large empty frame with rail entries too small to aim at. Both override to `min(900px, 96vw)` wide, a 236px rail with 0.9rem entries and 19px icons, 0.88rem row labels, and **`height: auto` between `min(560px, 80vh)` and `88vh`**, so the shell is as tall as the panel showing instead of a fixed box the content rattles in (Summary used to open two-thirds empty). The per-modal override blocks are the design, not drift; do not "unify" them back into the shared scope.

**Phones (≤860px)** keep the same document and change only the navigation. App Settings collapses the rail to its search field and hands over to the sticky `#appSettingsJump` pill. Session Options and Add Case have neither a pill nor a search, so their `.set-rail-items` becomes a horizontal, scrollable strip instead, close to the tab bar it replaced, so the phone gesture is unchanged. The active marker switches from the vertical rail's left bar (which reads as a stray tick when laid out horizontally) to a filled pill.

**Add Case keeps its legacy `.form-row` markup**, in all six panels, because every id in them is read back by session-ui.js (`resetCaseModalFields`, `submitCaseModal`, `linkRemoteCase`, `linkDockerCase`); restructuring the forms to reach the row classes would be a lot of risk for no visual gain. Instead an **adapter block scoped to `#createCaseModal .set-doc`** maps the old primitives onto the look: a `.form-row` paints as a row card, its `> label` as a row label, its `.form-hint` as a row description, and `<details class="advanced-options">` as a collapsed group head. `.form-row` everywhere else in the app is untouched.

⚠️ **`summary { display: flex }` drops the browser's own disclosure triangle.** With the adapter's flex summary and no replacement, all five collapsed blocks (Clone options, Container settings, Advanced SSH, Discover existing sessions, Advanced container settings) rendered as plain uppercase headings with nothing to say they open, and were reported as exactly that. The chevron is now explicit markup (`.set-adv-chev`, rotated 180° on `[open]`, matching the Advanced group in App Settings), and the native marker is suppressed in **both** spellings (`list-style: none` **and** `::-webkit-details-marker { display: none }`) so a browser that would still paint one does not end up with two.

**Respawn is ordered around what people open it for.** Auto-resume on usage limit is a `.set-callout` (accent card, icon, whole card as the hit target) rather than the first row of a list, because it is what turns a limit-halted overnight run back on; the armed "resumes at HH:MM" note renders inside it. ⚠️ That callout `<label>` **wraps its own switch and carries no `for=`**: nesting already associates them, and the label+`for` pair has historically double-fired. Loop control (status + Enable/Stop) sits **above** the loop configuration: a running loop is what you open the tab to see or stop, and Enable is the point of the tab either way. The three respawn cycle steps are real checkboxes in a `.set-checks` / `.set-check` row card, **not chips** (they were chips briefly): they are numbered steps of one sequence, and chips read as a set of independent tags.

⚠️ **`.modal-tabs` / `.modal-tab-btn` / `.modal-tab-content` are RETIRED.** No modal uses them and their CSS is deleted from both stylesheets. The guard in `test/app-settings-structure.test.ts` flipped from "the settings modal must not steal these shared classes" to "nothing uses them any more", so a reappearance now means a modal drifted back off the shared surface.

**Header & Panels live preview**: a scale model of the app (header bar, right-docked panels, toolbar, floating windows) rebuilt by `_syncLayoutPreview()` on every chip change, so "what does this add" is answered in place before saving. ⚠️ It owns **no icons of its own**: it CLONES `.set-chip-ico` out of the chip, so each icon has exactly one copy in `index.html` and a chip can never drift from the button it previews. A chip joins the preview by carrying `data-preview` (which slot) + `data-preview-order` (where in it); readouts that are not buttons (plan usage, CPU, font size) use `data-preview-text` instead. The frame is painted from **skin tokens only** (hardcoded black alphas turned it into a grey slab on the four light skins) and is marked `data-i18n-skip`: the mock tab names are decoration and the labels inside are copies of chip text i18n has already translated. Every Header & Panels chip also carries the icon of the button it switches on, so the list reads as the header itself rather than as a column of names.

⚠️ **The load/save contract is `getElementById` by id.** `openAppSettings()`/`saveAppSettings()` (and `openSessionOptions()`) read every control by a fixed id, so moving a control between sections or groups is free, but renaming or dropping one silently stops it loading or saving. Two static guards: `test/app-settings-structure.test.ts` (rail and document agree on order, System leads with the version above the paths, every previewed chip has both an icon to clone and a slot that exists, the retired classes stay gone) and `test/session-options-structure.test.ts` (rail↔section pairing, the ids `openSessionOptions` reads, the one-visible-section invariant, the Claude-only entries).

`data-claude-only` lives on the **rail entries**, so external-CLI sessions lose Respawn and Ralph and open on Session (`switchOptionsTab('context')`, verified in the browser). `admin-ui.js` injects the multi-user Users entry as a `data-section="settings-users"` rail button plus a `#settings-users` section appended to `.set-rail-items` / `.set-doc`, so those two hooks must survive any restructure.

### WebGL renderer toggle

**WebGL renderer toggle** (#140, `webglRendererEnabled`): per-device (`displayKeys` set, stripped from the server payload — NOT in `SettingsUpdateSchema`, which is `.strict()`). The GPU-stall watchdog's sticky `codeman-webgl-disabled` marker survives page loads; it's cleared only by an explicit OFF→ON save transition or `?webgl=force` (`shouldSkipWebGL` in constants.js). `?nowebgl` still forces the DOM renderer per-load.

### Header button visibility (multi-monitor, response viewer, file viewer, cron)

**Multi-monitor button** (header, top-right; the notification bell it sits beside stays hidden — notifications live in Settings → Notifications). `app.launchMultiMonitor()` (in `panels-ui.js`) POSTs `/api/system/span-displays`, which spawns `scripts/span-codeman.sh` — a fresh, maximized browser `--app` window sized to the union of all displays (macOS; needs "Displays have separate Spaces" OFF). Supports the gesture layer's in-page floating session panels dragging across the physical monitor seam. **Opt-in:** hidden by default; enable under App Settings → Header & Panels → Header buttons ("Multi-monitor Button", `showMultiMonitorButton`). The button carries a `btn-multimonitor--hidden` class in the template; `renderIndexHtml` strips that class at render when the setting is on (a unique class token, not a brittle match on the aria-label/style copy), and `applyHeaderVisibilitySettings()` toggles the same class live on save. Solo (detached) windows hide it via `body.solo-mode`.
**Response-viewer (eye) button** (header) is likewise **hidden by default** — enable under App Settings → Header & Panels → Header buttons → **Response Viewer** (`showResponseViewer`). Works for Claude AND Codex sessions (#152): Codex last-responses are located via a 4-layer rollout resolution under `CODEX_HOME` (history pin → originator match → resume-UUID → cwd fallback with other-pane exclusion), with injected-context filtering and event/legacy dedup — tests in `test/routes/session-routes-codex-last-response.test.ts`.

⚠️ **A Claude pane's conversation is identified by the pane's own Enter, never by "newest entry for this cwd".** `~/.claude/history.jsonl` records every submitted prompt as `{project, sessionId, timestamp}`, and `/clear` moves the pane to a fresh `<uuid>.jsonl` that nothing on the PTY announces — so the viewer has to re-derive the live conversation. Keying that off `project` alone was the bug: a cwd is shared with every other Codeman tab on it, with tabs long since closed, and with any plain `claude` the user runs in their own terminal, so the eye followed whichever of those conversations was typed into last and showed a stranger's transcript. `resolveActiveClaudeSessionIdFromHistory()` instead credits an entry to a pane only when it lands within `CLAUDE_SUBMIT_MATCH_MS` of that pane's `Session.lastSubmitAt` **and** no other pane on the same cwd submitted closer — the same last-submit correlation the Codex locator uses. With no correlated entry the pane keeps the id it has: a viewer one turn behind beats a viewer showing someone else's conversation.

⚠️ **A first-hand conversation id outranks every correlation, and the correlation must never run when one exists.** `UserPromptSubmit` and `Stop` hook payloads carry `session_id` — the pane's LIVE conversation, reported from inside the CLI process — and reach Codeman addressed by that pane's own `$CODEMAN_SESSION_ID`. That binding is a fact: it never consults `workingDir`, so it cannot be claimed by a sibling pane on the same folder, by a closed tab, or by a bare `claude` in the user's terminal. `Session.claudeSessionIdIsFirstHand` gates `resolveActiveClaudeSessionIdFromHistory()` at its first line, so the number of prompts eligible for cwd-based guessing goes DOWN, never up. There is no TTL: if hooks stop arriving the last hook-supplied id is kept forever rather than falling back to guessing, which is the same rule as the paragraph below. ⚠️ **This is also the only fix for a pane driven by attaching to its tmux session directly.** `lastSubmitAt` was bumped only by `Session.write()`/`writeViaMux()`, i.e. input that flows through Codeman, so such a pane's anchor stayed 0 and the resolver returned at `if (!submitAt)` for the pane's entire life. The hook stamps it too (`markPromptSubmitted()`), so it finally means "a prompt was submitted". ⚠️ **Only a first-hand adoption may extend `Session.claudeSessionChain`** — a correlated guess writing into the pane's permanent record is precisely the bug the paragraph above describes, made durable. The chain is persisted because `/clear` is otherwise unrecoverable: once the pane moves on, the predecessor id exists nowhere else. Its tail re-pins the conversation on a RESTORED mux attach, where the launch id is a lie (the CLI never stopped and may have `/clear`ed before the restart); a NEW pane has an empty chain and keeps the launch id unchanged. ⚠️ **The hook's stdout must stay discarded, using curl's own `-o /dev/null`** (`curlCmdSilent`): Claude Code injects a `UserPromptSubmit` hook's stdout into the model's context — the CLI's own hook reference says "Exit code 0 - stdout shown to Claude" — so an undiscarded curl pastes Codeman's `{"success":true,…}` envelope into the user's own prompt on every turn. ⚠️ **A trailing `>/dev/null` does NOT work and looks like it does**: `curlCmd` already ends `… 2>/dev/null || true`, and in `pipeline || true >/dev/null` the shell binds the redirection to `true`, which never runs on the success path. An `endsWith('>/dev/null')` assertion passes on exactly that broken form, so the test asserts the `-o` flag instead. The other events feed SSE, where their stdout is harmless — hence a separate builder rather than a change to `curlCmd`. Tests: `test/hooks-config.test.ts`, `test/routes/hook-event-routes.test.ts`, `test/routes/session-routes-claude-last-response.test.ts`.

⚠️ **`Session.lastSubmitAt` is persisted state, not a runtime counter.** `start()` reassigns `_claudeSessionId = resumeSessionId || id` on every launch — including the re-attach path for a mux session that survived the restart — so a recovered pane always points the viewer at its *launch* conversation, even when the CLI moved on via `/clear` hours earlier. The submit anchor is the only thing that can correct that without user input, so it round-trips through `SessionState.lastSubmitAt` and is restored in `restoreMuxSessions()`. Drop it from `toState()` and recovered panes silently show the pre-`/clear` transcript until the user types again. Restoring a *stale* anchor is safe: the resolver's staleness guard rejects any candidate transcript older than the one the pane is currently on, which is exactly the shape of a respawn into a fresh conversation.

⚠️ **The Claude viewer emits one message per model message and groups them with `turn`; it never concatenates them.** A Claude transcript is an append-only event log, so one logical exchange spans many rows: tool-result rows, meta/image/skill rows, compact summaries, task/team notifications, sidechains, replayed assistant snapshots. Rendering a card per *row* was the original bug (#169) — but the fix overshot to one card per *human turn*, which fused up to 74 distinct model messages into a single card and reported it as one message. One assistant row IS one whole model message: measured across a real `~/.claude/projects` (CLI 2.1.220-2.1.251) no assistant row carries more than one content block and no `message.id` carries more than one text block, so there was never anything to reassemble, and no adjacent pair of assistant rows continues a table, a list, or an open code fence. Each row is therefore its own message carrying `{kind, label, role, text, timestamp, turn}`; the frontend renders a same-role run inside one `turn` as badge-less continuation segments (`.rv-msg-cont`), which is what keeps a p90 of 11 messages per turn from reading as card spam. ⚠️ **A prompt typed while Claude is working is recorded ONLY as an `attachment/queued_command` row** — the CLI never re-emits it as a `user` row — so reading only `user` rows lost 162 of 353 user cards on that corpus AND lost the turn boundary each one carries, which is what let an assistant run fuse in the first place. Take it only when `attachment.origin.kind === 'human'` and `commandMode === 'prompt'`; the CLI's own queue entries (`commandMode: 'task-notification'`) carry no `origin` key at all. The shape is not a documented CLI contract, so every field check must fail closed. ⚠️ **`data.text` (no `?context=full`) is frozen on the last assistant row and must never be derived from `messages.at(-1)`** — agent pollers hash it (`skills/codeman/preamble.sh`), and the last message can be the user's own queued prompt. The BRIEF view therefore does not render `text`: it asks for `?context=turn`, which returns the assistant messages of the last ANSWERED turn (`selectLastAnsweredTurn()` in `src/web/response-viewer-transcript.ts`: the highest `turn` that has an assistant row, so a prompt queued after the answer does not blank the view), and renders them with the same numeric-`turn` continuation gate as the full view. `text` alone was the final row of a median-3-row turn — a "Done." tail with the substance in the rows before it. Readers that emit no `turn` (Codex, the pane parser, an older server) return `text` only, and the brief view falls back to one card for them. Replayed assistant snapshots are still deduped, and the tool/task/skill/compact/team metadata filtering is unchanged. Related: a recovered `restored-<uuid8>` tmux placeholder carries a **stale cwd**, so transcript lookup by working directory finds nothing; it rebinds to the matching top-level Claude transcript UUID instead when that match is unambiguous. Tests: `test/routes/session-routes-claude-last-response.test.ts`, `test/response-viewer-turn-segments.test.ts`. Purely client-side (no `renderIndexHtml` step): the template ships with `btn-response-viewer-header--hidden` and `applyHeaderVisibilitySettings()` (settings-ui.js) toggles it after settings load. Hiding must go through that marker class — the base rule is `display:inline-flex !important`, so an inline style can't override it. `showResponseViewer` is in the `displayKeys` per-device set (settings-ui.js), so it does NOT sync across devices.
**File Viewer button** (header, 1.4.1) is **shown by default on desktop** since `211f3c0` (post-1.8.0): toggle under App Settings → Header & Panels → Header buttons → File Viewer (`showFileViewerButton`, in the per-device `displayKeys` set, fallback default `true`). Purely client-side like the response viewer: the template now ships the button VISIBLE (no `--hidden` class) and `applyHeaderVisibilitySettings()` toggles the `btn-file-viewer--hidden` marker class after settings load; phones still hide it via mobile.css. The button toggles the file-browser panel open/closed without opening the settings modal (`panels-ui.js`). The same commit set the **default desktop header** to WS/CPU/MEM + File Viewer + gear: the token-count chip (`showTokenCount`, no settings-UI toggle) and the lifecycle-log button (`showLifecycleLog`) both default **OFF** now (templates ship them hidden; stored prefs still honored). The plan-usage chip default is unchanged (opt-in, see Plan-usage chip). The **Cron toolbar button** joined the same opt-in pattern in 1.6.0: template ships `btn-cron--hidden`, `applyHeaderVisibilitySettings()` toggles it via the per-device `showCronButton` setting (default OFF, App Settings → Header & Panels → Scheduling); cron jobs themselves are unaffected.

### Session list layout (header strip vs. left sidebar)

**The session list can render as the horizontal header strip (default) or as a collapsible left sidebar** — App Settings → Layout → Tabs → **Session List Layout** (`sessionListLayout: 'header' | 'sidebar'`, in the per-device `displayKeys` set, so it never syncs across devices; also in `SettingsUpdateSchema`, which is `.strict()` — without that entry the server 400s the ENTIRE settings PUT and every unrelated setting silently stops persisting). ⚠️ **There is exactly ONE `#sessionTabs` element and `applySessionListLayout()` RE-PARENTS it** between `#sessionTabsHost` (in `<header>`) and `#sessionSidebarList` (in the `<aside>`, a flex sibling of `.terminal-wrap` so the terminal shrinks and `terminal-ui.js`'s `ResizeObserver` refits xterm on its own). It must never be cloned or rebuilt: `app.$(id)` caches elements by id and NEVER invalidates, and `settings-ui.js` / `webview-tabs.js` resolve the same id independently, so a rebuilt container leaves every consumer writing into a detached orphan — silently, with no error. Everything else is CSS keyed off `html[data-session-list]` / `html[data-sidebar]`, both written by a pre-paint script in `<head>` so the loading skeleton already matches. Consequences: the renderers, drag/keyboard handlers, web tabs (`data-webview-id` rows stay in the same list, keeping the shared Alt+N numbering and the single-active-tab invariant) and the generated gesture bundle (`TAB_SELECTOR`/`DOCK_SELECTOR` match on class names that are unchanged) all need **zero** edits.

⚠️ Collapsed means **different things per viewport**: at 1024px and up the sidebar keeps a 44px icon rail so the ambient signal (status dot, task/subagent/ultracode badges) survives — the Alt+N number, the name/folder and the `sh`/`oc`/`cx`/`gm` mode chip do NOT, because 44px minus paddings and borders is ~34px of content box and the chip lives inside `.tab-info`; below 1024px `mobile.css` turns the sidebar into an off-canvas overlay where collapsed == drawer closed (mirrored into an `.open` class plus `inert`/`aria-hidden`, since `translateX(-100%)` alone leaves every row in the Tab order), it defaults to CLOSED when the user has made no choice, and picking a session or web tab dismisses it. ⚠️ **That 1024px breakpoint is the only handheld test the sidebar may use** (`_isSessionSidebarOverlay()`, mirrored in the pre-paint script): `MobileDetection.getDeviceType()` calls everything from 768px up `'desktop'`, so using it gave 768-1023px the overlay CSS with docked-sidebar logic — drawer opening itself on load, immune to selection and Escape. The toggle chord (default Alt+B) also needs its gate in `terminal-ui.js`'s `attachCustomKeyEventHandler`, or `preventDefault()` in the capture handler still lets xterm write ESC b into the live PTY (same trap as COD-153). The sidebar filter only applies while its input is on screen — `applySidebarFilter()` strips the class in the header strip, the collapsed rail and the closed drawer, because a filter with no reachable control hides sessions permanently. Collapse state lives in its OWN `codeman-sidebar-collapsed` key, **not** in the settings blob — `saveAppSettings()` rebuilds that blob from DOM controls, so a key without a control is wiped on every Save. Solo (`/session/:id`) windows never get a sidebar (three guards: `getSessionListLayout()`, the pre-paint script, and `body.solo-mode`), because `#sessionTabs` parked in a `display:none` subtree measures 0/0 for tab overflow and inline rename. The sidebar CSS block sits at the END of `styles.css`, **after** the `html:not([data-skin="og"])` nesting block, and is layout-only — any colour on `.session-tab` there would render correctly on the `og` skin only. Same for the `mobile.css` block: it must stay at the end of the file or the earlier compact-strip rules clip the list to a 36px sliver. Two surfaces DEFER to the sidebar rather than adapt: **lineage arcs are skipped** in sidebar layout (`_appendLineageConnectionLines` early-returns — `computeLineagePath()`'s whole geometry hangs a U-bridge from the horizontal STRIP's bottom edge, so against a vertical list every arc would loop to the foot of the sidebar; a sideways lineage shape needs its own visual tuning, it is not a by-product of re-parenting), and the **desktop home tab rail** (`shouldShowHomeSessions()`) stays hidden while the sidebar is active, because both dock the session list flush left and the rail would render the same list next to it, z-ordered UNDER it. The subagent/ultracode connectors DO adapt (`_tabAnchor()`/`_tabConnectorPath()` in app.js: right-edge anchor, horizontal bezier), and the lineage strip-scroll listener redraws them on the sidebar's vertical scroll. `_scrollActiveTabIntoView()` owns active-row reveal on BOTH axes: sidebar mode branches to `scrollIntoView({block:'nearest'})` because the horizontal `computeTabScrollLeft` math no-ops against a vertical scroller, and `_fullRenderSessionTabs()` restores `scrollTop` alongside the #257 `scrollLeft` restore or ambient rebuilds yank a mid-scroll sidebar back to the top. Tests: `test/session-list-layout.test.ts`.

### Gesture control: the setting

**Gesture control** (the camera hand-tracking overlay) is **opt-in, default OFF**, under App Settings → Terminal & Input → Scrolling & rendering (`gestureControlEnabled`). `CODEMAN_GESTURE=1` makes the feature _available_ on the instance (CSP widening + `/gesture/` assets) and sets `window.__codemanGestureAvailable` (the Input section only shows when set); the overlay bundle is injected by `renderIndexHtml` **only when the setting is enabled**, so that method is `async` and reads `settings.json` via `readSettings(true)` — the `true` forces a **fresh** read (bypassing the 2s `_settingsCache`), because a post-save reload happens within that TTL and the cached value would otherwise render the pre-toggle state. Toggling the setting reloads the page (the bundle is render-injected).

### Gesture control: the source package

**Gesture-control source lives in-repo** at `packages/gesture-control/` (workspace package `codeman-gesture-control`, was the standalone `Ark0N/codeman-gesture-control` repo). The transport-agnostic core is `src/gesture/*` (MediaPipe GestureRecognizer → One-Euro-filtered cursor → pinch state machine); `src/codeman/entry.ts` is the Codeman _consumer_ that maps grab/drag/drop onto real `.session-tab`/toolbar buttons and is the bundle entry. **Edit there, then run `npm run build:gesture`** (`scripts/build-gesture-bundle.mjs` → esbuild bundles `entry.ts`, MediaPipe JS included, into `src/web/public/gesture/gesture-codeman.js`) and **commit the regenerated bundle** — the committed bundle is what dev/`tsx` serves (no bundler at runtime), and `scripts/build.mjs` reruns the same step so prod always reflects current source. The MediaPipe **wasm + model** are NOT bundled — loaded at runtime from same-origin `/gesture/wasm` + `/gesture/gesture_recognizer.task`, fetched by `scripts/fetch-gesture-assets.mjs` (gitignored, see Gotchas). `entry.ts` mounts `window.__codemanGesture = new GestureBridge()` idempotently at module-eval. A standalone vite playground (`npm run dev` in the package — fake tabs, no Codeman) lets you iterate on gesture _feel_ in isolation. ⚠️ Keep `MP_VERSION` in `fetch-gesture-assets.mjs` in sync with `@mediapipe/tasks-vision` in `packages/gesture-control/package.json`.

### Theme skins

**Theme skins** (App Settings → Appearance → Theme): the `skin` setting selects a palette via a `data-skin` attribute on `<html>`. Dark values: `daylight-blue` (default), `daylight-green`, `og` (OG Codeman). Light values: `paper-gray`, `solarized-light`, `catppuccin-latte`, `rose-pine-dawn`. CSS lives under `[data-skin="…"]` blocks in `styles.css`. To avoid a flash-of-wrong-theme, an **inline pre-paint script** in `index.html` (`<head>`) reads `localStorage['codeman:skin']` and sets `data-skin` before first paint; `settings-ui.js` `applySkin()` applies it live on save (sets `html[data-skin]` + `window.__codemanSkin`, syncs the standalone `codeman:skin` key with the settings blob, updates the `<meta name="theme-color">` from the resolved `--bg-dark`, and calls terminal-ui.js `applyTerminalSkin()` to re-theme live terminals). `skin` is a **per-device/client-only** setting — it's destructured OUT of the server payload (settings-ui.js, alongside `localEchoEnabled`/`cjkInputEnabled`/`extendedKeyboardBar`), so it does NOT sync across devices.

**Adding a skin means touching four places, and each one fails silently on its own**: (1) the `html[data-skin="…"]` token block in `styles.css`; (2) the xterm ANSI palette in `CODEMAN_XTERM_THEMES` (terminal-ui.js) — a missing entry falls back to `daylight-blue`, so the terminal simply stays the wrong color; (3) the pre-paint allowlist array in `index.html` — a skin missing there is coerced to `daylight-blue` on every reload, which reads as "my theme keeps resetting"; (4) the `<select>` in App Settings → Appearance → Theme. `test/skin-themes.test.ts` is the static four-way guard.

**Light skins carry three extra obligations.** `color-scheme: light` on the `html[data-skin]` block, or the UA renders native `<select>` popups, date pickers and scrollbars as dark widgets on a light page. xterm `minimumContrastRatio: 4.5` (set at construction in terminal-ui.js **and** panels-ui.js for teammate terminals, and re-applied in `applyTerminalSkin()`), because CLIs emit colors chosen for dark backgrounds; dark skins keep `1` to avoid the per-cell contrast work. And `applyTerminalSkin()` must call `this._localEchoOverlay?.refreshFont()` — the zero-lag overlay **caches** the terminal fg/bg at construction, so without the refresh typed-but-not-yet-flushed text keeps the previous theme's dark backing after a live skin switch.

**Shared surface tokens, not literals.** Elevated/floating surfaces resolve through `--floating-bg`, `--control-bg{,-hover}`, `--control-border{,-hover}`, `--banner-bg-a/b`, `--modal-backdrop` and `--elevated-shadow`, so modals, the command palette, dropdowns, subagent/ultracode windows, file previews and the mobile sheets follow the skin instead of hardcoded near-black rgba. ⚠️ Every skin that wants its own elevated look must override these — a skin that omits `--floating-bg` silently inherits the `:root` value, which is how the OG skin's near-black modals drifted slate. `styles.css` also defines **compatibility aliases** (`--bg-primary/secondary/tertiary`, `--text-primary/secondary`, `--border-color`, `--accent-color`, `--success`, `--error`, `--danger`, `--font-mono`, `--shadow-lg`) that forward to the canonical tokens; panels written against those names previously resolved to *nothing* (invalid at computed-value time), so the aliases are load-bearing, not cosmetic.

### Custom branding and UI language

**Custom branding + UI language** (App Settings → Appearance → Identity): `displayName` is schema-validated (trimmed, 1–40 chars), server-synced, and changes user-facing browser branding/window titles only — NEVER rename npm package/CLI/API/storage/CSS/protocol identifiers. `language` is a per-device `en`/`zh-CN` display key, stripped from the server payload. `i18n.js` keeps English as the canonical source/fallback, observes newly inserted application DOM for dynamic copy, preserves source strings so live EN↔ZH switching is reversible, and skips terminal/response/file/session-name/user-content surfaces. User display names flow through `textContent`/attribute APIs and the server title's HTML escaper, never `innerHTML`.

### Foldable settings identity

**Foldable settings identity**: responsive layout remains width-driven through `MobileDetection.getDeviceType()`, but the localStorage namespace/defaults use `MobileDetection.isHandheldDevice()` so an Android foldable keeps `codeman-app-settings-mobile` after unfolding past the desktop breakpoint. The stable handheld check prefers explicit phone/tablet/desktop UA tokens, then `navigator.userAgentData.mobile`; Android WebView is covered by the `Mobile` UA fallback. Do not switch per-device settings namespaces from instantaneous viewport width — a posture-triggered WebView reload would lose opt-in UI such as `showResponseViewer` and `extendedKeyboardBar`. Regression profile: `OPPO Find N5 (unfolded)` in `test/mobile/devices.ts`.

## Security layers

### Layer-by-layer detail

| Layer             | Details                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        |
| ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Auth**          | Optional HTTP Basic via `CODEMAN_USERNAME` (defaults to `admin`) / `CODEMAN_PASSWORD` env vars. Active only when `CODEMAN_PASSWORD` is set (`middleware/auth.ts`)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              |
| **Network bind**  | Defaults to `127.0.0.1` (loopback). A non-loopback bind (`--host`/`CODEMAN_HOST`) without `CODEMAN_PASSWORD` **starts but warns loudly** (0.9.0; was fail-closed in COD-29/#107). `--allow-unauthenticated-network` / `CODEMAN_ALLOW_UNAUTHENTICATED_NETWORK=1` acknowledges the warning. Classifier: `network-auth-policy.ts`                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 |
| **Host guard**    | Always-on Host-header allowlist blocks DNS rebinding (RCE on the default no-auth loopback install). Allows loopback, any IP literal, the bind host, `*.ts.net`/`*.trycloudflare.com`/`*.cfargotunnel.com`, the active managed tunnel, and `CODEMAN_ALLOWED_HOSTS`. ⚠️ **Custom reverse-proxy domains are rejected** unless added via `CODEMAN_ALLOWED_HOSTS=host,.suffix`. `registerHostGuard` in `server.ts`; policy in `network-auth-policy.ts` (`buildHostPolicy`/`isAllowedRequestHost`/`isAllowedRequestOrigin`)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          |
| **CSRF / Origin** | Always-on cross-site Origin guard rejects state-changing requests from foreign origins (covers self-update, session create/input, settings/tunnel toggles). **A missing Origin is allowed** so curl/CLI and Claude Code hooks keep working. The global body parser keeps `text/plain` RAW (no auto-JSON-parse, which had enabled simple-request CSRF); `/api/crash-diag` self-parses. WebSocket upgrade validates Origin+Host (anti-CSWSH) in `ws-routes.ts`. Added in `c669518` (closes 2026-06-09 review CRITICALs)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          |
| **QR Auth**       | Single-use 6-char tokens (60s TTL) for tunnel login. See `docs/qr-auth-plan.md`                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                |
| **Sessions**      | 24h cookie (`codeman_session`), auto-extend, device context audit                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              |
| **Rate limit**    | 10 failed auth/IP → 429 (15min decay). QR has separate limiter                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 |
| **Hook bypass**   | `/api/hook-event` (and `/api/status-telemetry`, the statusLine exporter) skip Basic auth (localhost-only, schema-validated). When auth is active (`CODEMAN_PASSWORD` set), the loopback bypass requires the per-instance `X-Codeman-Hook-Secret` header **unconditionally** — COD-54 introduced it tunnel-gated; COD-91 (PR #127) made it always-on because Codeman can't detect a user's own loopback reverse proxy (own cloudflared/`tailscale serve`/nginx → 127.0.0.1), closing that residual plain-bypass gap. Hook curls cat the secret file at exec time via `$CODEMAN_HOOK_SECRET_FILE` (session env, `config/hook-secret.ts`); a missing/wrong secret gets 401 and rate-limits in a dedicated bucket (never locks out login). Tunnel enable **refuses** without `CODEMAN_PASSWORD` unless exposure is acknowledged — via `CODEMAN_ALLOW_UNAUTHENTICATED_NETWORK=1` (env, COD-55) **or** the per-request `acknowledgeUnauthTunnel:true` action field (1.1.9): the welcome/settings tunnel toggle pops a security confirm dialog and, on confirm, resends with that flag (server logs a loud warning on every passwordless tunnel start; curl/API stay refused without password/env/flag). The flag is an action field, never persisted |
| **Env vars**      | `CODEMAN_MUX` (managed session), `CODEMAN_API_URL` (auto-set for hooks), `CODEMAN_ALLOWED_HOSTS` (extra Host/Origin allowlist entries for reverse proxies, comma-separated; bare `.suffix` matches subdomains), `CODEMAN_DOCKER_BRIDGE_HOOKS`=1 (opt-in hooks-only listener on the docker bridge gateway so in-container hooks reach a loopback-bound server; bind IP from `CODEMAN_DOCKER_BRIDGE_HOST` or auto-detect)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        |
| **Validation**    | Zod schemas, Unicode-aware path allowlist regex, env prefix allowlist (`CLAUDE_CODE_*`/`OPENCODE_*`/`CODEX_*`/`GEMINI_*`/`GOOGLE_*`/`ANTIGRAVITY_*`/`PI_*`)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           |
| **Headers**       | CORS localhost-only, CSP, X-Frame-Options, HSTS if HTTPS                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       |

## Performance and limits

### Buffers, uploads, and terminal history

Target: 20 sessions, 50 agent windows at 60fps. Limits in `src/config/`: terminal 32MB (see below), text 1MB, messages 1000, max agents 500, max sessions 50, max SSE clients 100. **Terminal history** (`src/config/terminal-history.ts`, COD-80): tmux history-limit 100k lines, PTY buffer 32MB max / 24MB trim (env `CODEMAN_MAX_TERMINAL_BUFFER`/`CODEMAN_TRIM_TERMINAL_TO`; the env-derived trim is clamped ≤75% of max — trim ≥ max would disable `BufferAccumulator` trimming entirely = unbounded memory); browser xterm scrollback stays a separate hardcoded 50k (`DEFAULT_SCROLLBACK` in constants.js — 100k/tab is a mobile-memory hazard). tmux <3.7 allocates history at pane creation, so `createSession()` sets the global default in the same command queue immediately before `new-session`; tmux 3.7+ instead creates the session and targets only that pane, because changing the global option can resize and trim unrelated live panes. A settings change resizes tracked panes only on 3.7+ and otherwise affects future panes; no version can recover lines already evicted. Settings keys `terminalScrollbackLines`/`terminalBufferMaxBytes`/`terminalBufferTrimBytes` are schema-validated but inert (only `tmuxHistoryLimit` is wired); `buffer-limits.ts` re-exports the defaults. Text/message limits are env-overridable too (`CODEMAN_MAX_TEXT_OUTPUT`/`CODEMAN_TRIM_TEXT_TO`/`CODEMAN_MAX_MESSAGES`). **Image upload** (`image-input.js` / `config/buffer-limits.ts`): up to `_maxBatchImages` 20 images/batch (bounded concurrency 3), per-file `MAX_PASTE_IMAGE_BYTES` 50MB (env `CODEMAN_MAX_PASTE_IMAGE_BYTES`); the mobile camera-roll picker auto-downscales to fit before upload. **HEIC paste uploads** (#151): converted server-side to JPEG in a `worker_threads` worker (`web/heic-jpeg-worker.ts`, resourceLimits + 30s timeout) gated by `runWithConversionLimit()`; detection is magic-byte based (covers Android/MIUI HEIFs mislabeled as JPEG); headers declaring > 64MP are rejected 415 BEFORE decode (decompression-bomb guard). Deps: `heic-decode` + `jpeg-js`. Use `LRUMap` for bounded caches, `StaleExpirationMap` for TTL cleanup. Anti-flicker pipeline: `docs/terminal-anti-flicker.md`.

## Local packages and build artifacts

### xterm-zerolag-input is single-source

**`xterm-zerolag-input` is single-source — edit the package, then rebuild the bundles** — BOTH echo addons live ONLY in `packages/xterm-zerolag-input/src/` (also published to npm as a standalone library — see README "Published Packages") and are bundled into TWO **gitignored** vendor files with DIFFERENT entry points: `vendor/xterm-zerolag-input.js` (buffer overlay, entry `zerolag-input-addon.ts`, `window.LocalEchoOverlay` alias) and `vendor/xterm-predictive-echo.js` (codex write-through, entry `predictive-echo-addon.ts`, `window.PredictiveEchoOverlay` alias) — dev by `scripts/postinstall.js` (reruns on `npm install`), prod by `scripts/build.mjs`. The separate entries are DELIBERATE: adding exports to the package's `index.ts` cannot change the zerolag bundle's bytes, which is what keeps predictive-echo changes structurally unable to regress buffer mode (verified sha256-identical at introduction). `app.js`/terminal-ui.js only **consume** the addons via `new LocalEchoOverlay(terminal)` / `new PredictiveEchoOverlay(terminal)` — there is NO inline copy to keep in sync. **Never hand-edit `app.js` for overlay behavior or commit the gitignored vendor bundles.** A public-API break in the package still warrants a separate `xterm-zerolag-input` version bump in the changeset. Always test on mobile after touching it. See `docs/local-echo-overlay-plan.md` (buffer mode) and `docs/predictive-echo-plan.md` (predict mode).

### node-pty's macOS spawn-helper must be executable

**node-pty ships its macOS `spawn-helper` non-executable, which breaks every session start on macOS** (issues #6 and #204, fixed properly in 1.9.8). `node-pty@1.1.0` publishes `prebuilds/darwin-<arch>/spawn-helper` with mode **0644**. On macOS node-pty launches every PTY through that helper (`argv[0] = helper_path` → `pty_posix_spawn()` in `src/unix/pty.cc`, guarded by `#if defined(__APPLE__)`), so a helper without `+x` makes `posix_spawnp` fail EACCES and node-pty throws `Error: posix_spawnp failed.`, surfaced by Codeman as "Failed to start Claude: …". It is **macOS-exclusive twice over**: `spawn-helper` is an `OS=="mac"` gyp target, and node-pty ships prebuilds for darwin + win32 only, so Linux always compiles from source (node-gyp emits an executable helper) and can never reproduce it. That asymmetry is why it kept coming back: a Linux dev box shows nothing wrong.

⚠️ **Look in `prebuilds/<platform>-<arch>/`, not just `build/Release/`.** node-pty's loader (`lib/utils.js`) tries `build/Release`, `build/Debug`, then `prebuilds/<platform>-<arch>`, and `unixTerminal.js` derives `helperPath` from **whichever directory the native module loaded out of**. The 0.15 fix only chmodded `build/Release/spawn-helper`, which on macOS does not exist at all (the prebuild is used, so node-gyp never runs), and it resolved the path off `require.resolve('node-pty')` (= `<pkg>/lib/index.js`), producing `<pkg>/lib/build/Release/spawn-helper`, so it was a no-op on every platform.

The repair is a **chmod, not a rebuild**: the prebuilt binary is fine. `scripts/fix-node-pty.mjs` (also `npm run fix:node-pty`) chmods every helper it finds, then **proves** the result by actually opening a PTY, because a `require()` alone passes on a broken install (the helper is only touched at spawn time). Only if that probe still fails does it rebuild from source, and it backs `prebuilds/` up first: node-pty's install script `rmSync`s the whole prebuilds tree the moment `npm_config_build_from_source` is set and only *then* shells out to node-gyp, so on a Mac without Xcode command line tools an unconditional rebuild leaves the install with neither a prebuilt nor a compiled binary. ⚠️ Do not reinstate a blind rebuild in `postinstall` for that reason (it also cost 30-120s on every install).

`src/utils/node-pty-repair.ts` is the runtime safety net for installs that are already broken: all four `pty.spawn()` calls in `session.ts` go through `spawnPtyWithHelperRepair()`, which chmods and retries **once** on a `posix_spawnp`/`spawn-helper` error and rethrows anything else untouched, so the user never sees a dead session. A second failure rethrows with the `npm run fix:node-pty` hint attached instead of a bare "posix_spawnp failed". The repair is attempted at most once per process (no chmod storms).

## Tooling traps

### Headless screenshot capture

**Headless screenshots: `deviceScaleFactor` MUST be 1, and write unique filenames** — `scripts/capture-real-overview.mjs` (drives a live session in headless Chromium → overview PNG). Two traps, both observed 2026-06-14: **(1) DSF=2 doubles the console font.** xterm's WebGL renderer draws terminal glyphs at ~2× their nominal size under `deviceScaleFactor: 2`, while STILL reporting nominal cell dims (`terminal.cols`/`_renderService.dimensions.css.cell` say 8px/187cols — they lie), so it's invisible to any internal measurement and only the pixels reveal it. The HTML chrome (header/toolbar) is unaffected → ONLY the console font looks comically large. Default to **DSF=1** (script does); the image is 1× res but the font is true-to-browser. **(2) Stable filenames → stale renders.** Overwriting a fixed path (`claude-overview.png`) in place leaves OS image viewers (eog/feh) — and any HTTP client behind a long/`immutable` cache — showing the OLD render; the user reads it as "the fix didn't work". The script now mints a timestamped `claude-overview-<ts>.png` per run. ⚠️ This was a LOCAL image-viewer cache, NOT a Codeman serving bug: `file-routes` previews send `Cache-Control: no-cache` and `/api/screenshots/:name` sends none. The one real Codeman-side footgun: `server.ts` serves non-content-hashed static assets `public, max-age=31536000, immutable`, and `cacheBustAssets()` only rewrites `.js`/`.css` refs — a stable-named **image** referenced from public/ would go stale on overwrite. Reflect the per-device UI to match a real device when capturing: seed `localStorage` `codeman:skin`, `codeman-font-size`, and the desktop `codeman-app-settings` blob (the plan-usage chip is a per-device display key deleted from the server payload — a fresh browser hides it unless seeded; close side panels for a full-width terminal).