Chief: an iMessage-style home agent for cmux

AU
16d ago
+10946-7399

Summary

Chief adds a native Home workspace and movable pane conversations backed by the selected Claude Code or Codex harness. Each Chief pane owns an iMessage-style conversation list beside its transcript, with a header button to hide or show that list. Selecting or creating a conversation replaces the transcript inside the same pane. The workspace sidebar keeps its normal navigation and visibility preference.

The list and transcript occupy separate clipped frames, including during conversation replacement and narrow splits. Home remains protected; ordinary Chief panes can move between workspaces and the right Dock. Session restore preserves the selected conversation. Migration removes only untouched conversation-only workspace rows generated by earlier Home builds; renamed, pinned, split, and mixed-content workspaces remain.

Chief includes approvals, tool and Cloud cards, memory, attachments, and settings for the harness, model, effort, and avatar. Permission bypass is off by default, requires explicit confirmation, and applies to new turns. Cloud displays and agent computer-use support are included in this branch; remote agents still need their own account sign-in.

Dogfood

Current commit: 9d39b12f18ed91889bbb745f4b49428792a5e753. Home is one house-and-Home button in the ordinary list layout, without a group disclosure, pin control, or conversation rows in the workspace sidebar. Both native and SwiftUI sidebar renderers use the same projection and navigation action. Customized children of the old Home group remain visible as normal workspace rows.

The updated fleet build completed on exact commit 9d39b12f18ed91889bbb745f4b49428792a5e753, tag issue-21063-simple-home-button, job aeafaa04dc0de0e139b7f299, artifact sha256:a269c3c984a0265a90e1044de619da87db7fe80739a82ce2d3a2f05245668002. The shared HQ publisher rejected the artifact's valid internal framework symlinks, so the unchanged artifact was extracted and launched locally for the native check; no user app was touched.

Click Home, choose a conversation, hide and show its list, then split a terminal beside Chief. Switch to another workspace and return with Home. The message list and workspace sidebar should toggle independently, and Home must leave the workspace rows below it clear.

Dogfood-tours: chief-pane-sidebar-tour, chief-home-tour-light

Validation

  • All 17 static checks passed. Localization reused existing labels and passed 11 catalogs with all nine required macOS locales.
  • The transcript overlap regression was committed before the repair at 3b38f9f87a97: red run executed one test and failed because the replacement transcript started at x=0 and intersected the list ending at x=320.
  • The Home-row regression was committed before the repair at f2895368c57: red run, pending.
  • Chief pane, workspace-group, and numbered navigation suites on the current commit are pending.
  • Home-button and pane-sidebar screenshot tour on the current commit is pending.
  • The earlier native suite on 2d6119950ffa compiled but its runner failed to install tmux because Homebrew directories were not writable; no tests ran. Current runs use the root runner pool.
  • The final tagged app passed the native Home socket regression. Its capture shows a single house-and-Home button with workspace rows clear below it, and Chief remains an in-pane conversation list beside the transcript. Final Home capture.
  • Earlier focused package runs passed 181 CmuxChief tests and 58 MessagesLab Chief tests. They have not been repeated for this app-only layout follow-up.

Changelog

Added: Chief Home and pane conversations with a collapsible message list, local agent harnesses, approvals, memory, settings, and Cloud displays.

Summary by CodeRabbit

  • New Features

    • Chief conversations now open in a dedicated Home workspace with an integrated conversation list and transcript.
    • Added sidebar Home navigation, conversation selection, compose actions, and list visibility controls.
    • Added first-run introductory content for Chief’s coding, terminal, and cloud-machine capabilities.
    • Improved tool discovery using the login shell’s PATH and added workspace/surface context to Chief sessions.
    • Added clearer cloud computer-use guidance and approval-rule saving per home.

  • Bug Fixes

    • Fixed duplicate transcript rows, orphaned cells, and workspace restoration issues.
    • Improved media export cancellation and reliability.
    • Improved timing stability and Chief Home session behavior.