Message action controls stay visible through focus-within for keyboard navigation, but pointer clicks left the copy/fork buttons focused after the mouse moved away. Release pointer focus on message actions so hover controls return to their quiet state while keeping Tab focus behavior intact.
Constraint: Message actions use focus-within for keyboard accessibility and should not remove that path.
Rejected: Remove focus-within reveal | would regress keyboard users who tab to copy or fork.
Confidence: high
Scope-risk: narrow
Directive: Keep pointer-only blur scoped to message action controls; do not remove focus-within without a replacement keyboard affordance.
Tested: cd desktop && bun run test src/components/chat/MessageList.test.tsx --run
Tested: bun run check:desktop
Not-tested: Live Tauri manual hover smoke
Related: #642
Message rows should stay visually quiet until the user needs copy or fork controls. The action row now appears on message hover/focus, uses icon-sized controls, and shows the message timestamp beside the actions with locale-aware recent and historical formats.
Constraint: Desktop chat actions already own copy and fork affordances, so the change keeps that surface instead of adding a separate always-visible timestamp row.
Rejected: Keep text-labeled Copy buttons | the row remained too visually heavy for every message.
Confidence: high
Scope-risk: narrow
Directive: Keep copy, fork, and timestamp as one hover/focus metadata row unless the message layout is redesigned as a whole.
Tested: bun run check:desktop
Not-tested: Live Tauri native packaging
The session view exposed copy affordances in a way that implied the
whole conversation would be copied, while user prompts had no copy
path at all. This changes copy to a per-message footer action so the
scope is explicit for both prompts and assistant replies, and reuses
the shared clipboard helper instead of maintaining a second copy path.
Constraint: The worktree contains unrelated in-progress changes that must stay uncommitted
Rejected: Keep a floating action above each message | it interrupted reading order and still looked session-scoped
Confidence: high
Scope-risk: narrow
Reversibility: clean
Directive: Keep copy affordances attached to individual message blocks so the copied scope stays obvious
Tested: bun run test src/components/chat/MessageList.test.tsx; bun run lint
Not-tested: Manual desktop visual QA across dense multi-message sessions
The desktop app now keeps the composer stable while turns are active,
reduces low-signal tool noise in the transcript, restores project context
under the composer after session creation, and relies on the CLI's own
permission requests instead of injecting broader desktop-side Bash asks.
This also brings in the supporting desktop app source tree and the server
routes/session metadata needed for git info, filesystem browsing, session
resume, slash commands, and SDK-backed permission bridging so the UI can
operate as a coherent feature instead of a partial patch.
Constraint: Desktop transcript needs to stay usable during long multi-tool sessions without hiding file-change diffs
Constraint: Permission prompts must mirror CLI behavior closely enough that read-only commands do not get desktop-only prompts
Rejected: Keep rendering Read/Bash bodies inline | too noisy and unlike the intended transcript model
Rejected: Commit only the touched desktop files | would leave the newly introduced desktop app incomplete in git history
Confidence: medium
Scope-risk: broad
Reversibility: messy
Directive: Treat non-writing tools as summary-first transcript events; do not re-expand them by default without validating the UX against long sessions
Tested: cd desktop && bun run lint
Tested: cd desktop && bun run test -- --run
Tested: bun test src/server/__tests__/conversations.test.ts
Not-tested: Manual visual regression against the exact screenshots in a live desktop session
Not-tested: Full root TypeScript check (repository still has unrelated extracted-native parse failures)
