Users can be typing in the docked terminal when they hide the panel or promote it into a tab. The old component-owned lifecycle treated those UI moves as terminal teardown and spawned a fresh shell afterward.
This moves terminal ownership into a small runtime registry keyed by panel or tab identity, keeps docked terminals mounted while hidden, and transfers the runtime id to the terminal tab when promoted. Closing the owning tab or session still releases the PTY.
Constraint: Keep native PTY behavior unchanged and fix this in the desktop React lifecycle layer.
Rejected: Persist terminal tabs through localStorage | runtime PTYs are process-local and should not be restored after app restart.
Confidence: high
Scope-risk: moderate
Directive: Do not tie terminal process lifetime to panel visibility; only explicit owning-surface close/restart should destroy it.
Tested: cd desktop && bun run test -- src/pages/TerminalSettings.test.tsx src/pages/ActiveSession.test.tsx src/components/layout/ContentRouter.test.tsx src/stores/tabStore.test.ts
Tested: bun run check:desktop
Not-tested: Manual Tauri window PTY smoke.
Desktop terminal access should behave like an IDE: active project sessions open a bottom panel in the session working directory while keeping a full terminal tab available for dedicated use. The panel has constrained resizing and cleanup so session tab state remains isolated, and terminal guidance points users to the bundled claude-haha command for extension setup.
Constraint: Desktop bundles the user-facing CLI as claude-haha while claude-sidecar remains internal
Rejected: Always opening a standalone terminal tab | loses the current project context and diverges from common IDE behavior
Rejected: Exposing claude-sidecar in terminal guidance | it is an internal launcher, not the supportable user command
Confidence: high
Scope-risk: moderate
Directive: Keep bottom terminals keyed by session id and pass session workDir/projectPath into spawned terminals
Tested: bun run check:desktop
Tested: git diff --check
Tested: Computer Use E2E against built macOS app during implementation
Not-tested: bun run quality:pr is blocked by existing branch policy requiring allow-cli-core-change approval
