feat(desktop): pop the composer out into a draggable floating window by OutThisLife · Pull Request #49488 · NousResearch/hermes-agent

OutThisLife · 2026-06-20T06:35:55Z

Summary

Lets you pop the desktop composer out of its docked slot into a compact, draggable floating window — entirely gesture-driven, no chrome/buttons.

Peel out: drag the docked composer upward off the dock → it detaches and follows the cursor in one motion.
Redock: drag it toward the bottom-center dock zone and release. A bottom radial glow ramps up with proximity (continuous, peaks at the zone) to signal the drop target. Dock trigger is tight/center-only so the bottom corners stay free to park in.
Double-click the grab area toggles dock/float.
Floating composer: compact one-sentence width, grows upward as text wraps, anchored to its bottom-right corner. Move it via the 5px transparent grab platform around it (cursor-grab, diagonal ///// hatch on hover). The docked composer gets the same transparent grab margin (width compensated so the surface doesn't shift).
Persistence: popped state + last position survive reloads; undocking restores the last spot. State is shared, but secondary windows (Ctrl+Shift+N, subagent windows) always start docked and can't pop out.
Floating-mode model pill collapses to a chevron-only square.
Composer focus now shifts the border ~15% toward foreground (lighten/darken by mode) instead of changing the fill; input is cursor-text.

Implementation notes

New store/composer-popout.ts (persisted atoms + clamped position) and composer/hooks/use-popout-drag.ts (the gesture state machine).
Drag is rAF-coalesced and only persists to localStorage on release (never per move).
Floating composer zeroes its measured thread-clearance vars so the thread reclaims the space.

Note: the codicon/worktree Vite server.fs.allow fix is intentionally not included here — it's already covered by #40735.

Test plan

Drag docked composer up → peels into a float; drag to bottom-center → redocks (glow intensifies near zone).
Double-click grab area toggles dock/float; undock restores last position.
Park in bottom-left/right corners without it snapping back.
Reload → popped state + position restored.
Ctrl+Shift+N / subagent window → composer starts docked, can't pop out.
Typing grows the floating box upward; + aligns to first line; model pill is chevron-only.
Light + dark mode; macOS + Windows pointer drag.

Gesture-driven: drag the docked composer up to peel it out, drag it back to the bottom-center dock zone (radial glow ramps with proximity) to redock, and double-click the grab area to toggle. Floating composer is compact, grows upward as it wraps, and can be moved by its 5px transparent grab platform (diagonal hatch on hover). Position + popped state persist; secondary windows always start docked. rAF-coalesced drag, persisted only on release.

github-actions · 2026-06-20T06:36:47Z

🔎 Lint report: `bb/composer-popout` vs `origin/main`

ruff

Total: 0 on HEAD, 0 on base (➖ 0)

🆕 New issues: none

✅ Fixed issues: none

Unchanged: 0 pre-existing issues carried over.

ty (type checker)

Total: 11225 on HEAD, 11225 on base (➖ 0)

🆕 New issues: none

✅ Fixed issues: none

Unchanged: 5885 pre-existing issues carried over.

Diagnostics are surfaced as warnings — this check never fails the build.

…ip editing - Peel-off undock drops the floating composer under the cursor (centered horizontally, preserving the vertical grab offset) instead of snapping to the docked corner. - Unify the / · @ · ? completion drawer and the attach (+) menu onto one shared glassy panel primitive (composerPanelCard): smallest theme font, hairline border, nous shadow; floats off the composer, inset from the left. - Directive chips: Backspace removes the chip + its auto-inserted trailing space atomically (no orphaned space), and a phantom trailing block left by contenteditable no longer falsely expands the composer to two rows. - Model picker: scroll area capped at max(150px, 30dvh); footer rows aligned (matching icons, dropped a redundant margin). - Composer focus shifts the border ~15% toward foreground (no fill change); input is cursor-text; trimmed control icon/button sizes.

…ound (#51728) The desktop composer threw an uncaught "Composer is not available" at startup and the input went unresponsive (#49903). assistant-ui's composer mutators (setText/send/…) throw when the thread's composer core isn't bound yet; the read path is null-safe but the writes are not. ChatBar pushes draft text via aui.composer().setText() from mount-time effects (draft restore, clearDraft, external inserts), and the v0.17.0 popout refactor (#49488) widened the unbound window by moving the composer out of the contain wrapper into a sibling of the thread — so the throw surfaced as an uncaught error that wedged the input. Wrap every composer mutation in a setComposerText helper that swallows the unbound-core throw. The contentEditable DOM + draftRef already hold the text and the draft-editor sync re-applies it once the core attaches, so the draft is never lost — only the premature state push is skipped.

…ound (NousResearch#51728) The desktop composer threw an uncaught "Composer is not available" at startup and the input went unresponsive (NousResearch#49903). assistant-ui's composer mutators (setText/send/…) throw when the thread's composer core isn't bound yet; the read path is null-safe but the writes are not. ChatBar pushes draft text via aui.composer().setText() from mount-time effects (draft restore, clearDraft, external inserts), and the v0.17.0 popout refactor (NousResearch#49488) widened the unbound window by moving the composer out of the contain wrapper into a sibling of the thread — so the throw surfaced as an uncaught error that wedged the input. Wrap every composer mutation in a setComposerText helper that swallows the unbound-core throw. The contentEditable DOM + draftRef already hold the text and the draft-editor sync re-applies it once the core attaches, so the draft is never lost — only the premature state push is skipped.

…ousResearch#49488) * feat(desktop): pop the composer out into a draggable floating window Gesture-driven: drag the docked composer up to peel it out, drag it back to the bottom-center dock zone (radial glow ramps with proximity) to redock, and double-click the grab area to toggle. Floating composer is compact, grows upward as it wraps, and can be moved by its 5px transparent grab platform (diagonal hatch on hover). Position + popped state persist; secondary windows always start docked. rAF-coalesced drag, persisted only on release. * fix(desktop): keep floating composer radius consistent with docked * fix(desktop): composer popout polish — peel-off placement, panels, chip editing - Peel-off undock drops the floating composer under the cursor (centered horizontally, preserving the vertical grab offset) instead of snapping to the docked corner. - Unify the / · @ · ? completion drawer and the attach (+) menu onto one shared glassy panel primitive (composerPanelCard): smallest theme font, hairline border, nous shadow; floats off the composer, inset from the left. - Directive chips: Backspace removes the chip + its auto-inserted trailing space atomically (no orphaned space), and a phantom trailing block left by contenteditable no longer falsely expands the composer to two rows. - Model picker: scroll area capped at max(150px, 30dvh); footer rows aligned (matching icons, dropped a redundant margin). - Composer focus shifts the border ~15% toward foreground (no fill change); input is cursor-text; trimmed control icon/button sizes.