Write the manual for the person using the desktop

docs/ is engineering artifacts -- design specs, plans, an upstream
ledger -- and none of it is written for the person who has to live
here. Five chapters that are: coming from another desktop, the
keyboard, windows and workspaces, when something breaks, and making it
yours.

Rendered inside Settings rather than opened in a browser, so a chapter
that says "the Displays page reverts after fifteen seconds" is one
click from the Displays page. Qt's markdown renderer does the work;
one chapter per Text, because Text has an implicit texture size limit
and a document long enough to hit it goes blank rather than
complaining.

The chapters live beside the shell in manual/ rather than at the
repository root, which departs from the plan. The reason is the path:
the shell finds them through Quickshell.shellDir, which is correct
wherever the repository is, whereas walking upward out of the shell
directory is only correct by accident. The contract fails that pattern
if it comes back.

The contract also pins the set both ways -- every chapter listed
exists, every chapter that exists is listed -- because a renamed file
shows an error card where a chapter should be, which reads as a broken
manual rather than as a moved file.
This commit is contained in:
Gabriel Brown
2026-08-22 01:11:46 -04:00
parent 9202697734
commit 202b5b89ac
14 changed files with 459 additions and 2 deletions
@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
# When something breaks
## Start here
Run **Check System Health** from the launcher, or open Settings and go to
System Health. It reports what is actually running rather than what was
installed, and it can repair several things itself.
From a terminal, the same check is `panama doctor`.
## The shell is gone
If the bar and dock disappear, the Quickshell process died. **Restart Shell**
from the launcher brings it back. If the launcher is also gone, press
`Super + Shift + R` for the fallback launcher, which depends on nothing but
itself and exists for exactly this.
From a terminal: `qs -d` starts the shell again.
## A shortcut stopped working
Check `Super + /` first: if the shortcut shows a different chord than you
expect, something rebound it. The Shortcuts settings page can reset any bind,
or all of them at once.
If the whole keymap is missing from that list, the compositor config failed
to load. `Hyprland --verify-config` says why without touching your session.
## The screen resolution is wrong
Settings has a Displays page. Every change there reverts itself after fifteen
seconds unless you confirm it, so a mode your monitor cannot show cannot
strand you. If you are already stranded, `hyprctl monitors` from a terminal
shows what is applied.
## Something asked for a password and I do not know why
Panama's password prompt names the action that asked. If it was started by an
agent or a script through `panama-sudo`, it also shows a stated reason,
labelled as an unverified claim, beside the real action.
If you did not expect it at all, cancel. Nothing that needs privileges is
harmed by being refused.
## After an update, something is not right
`panama migrate` applies repairs this machine has not had yet. It is safe to
run at any time and does nothing when there is nothing to do.
If an update went badly, the Snapshots settings page can roll the system back
where btrfs snapshots are configured.
## Reporting it
`panama doctor` produces a redacted summary suitable for pasting into an
issue. It deliberately omits tokens, hostnames and account details.