Write down where all of this came from

Section G, the closeout.

UPSTREAM-INSPIRATION gains the second and largest borrowing round: what
was taken from omarchy, end-4, caelestia, ML4W and HyDE, what was
rebuilt rather than transplanted, and -- the part that matters more --
what was declined and why. Wallpaper-derived colour is declined on
identity, because dynamic colour is how rices end up looking like each
other. Audio visualisers are declined because a continuously repainting
equaliser is the GPU-pegging animation this project avoids. Patching
application internals to theme them is declined because the maintenance
is unbounded and lands on whoever is holding the desktop that day.

DESKTOP-PARITY gains a Portable machines section, which it has never
had, because until yesterday Panama was a desktop configuration in the
code as well as on the machine. Nine rows, one of them honest about not
having run on hardware with a lid. The remaining-gaps list gains the
four things now known to be missing rather than the one.

The README stops describing a desktop from before yesterday: migrations
in the install flow, the welcome and cheatsheet and manual, and laptops
working with every surface hiding itself where the hardware is absent.

The plan records its own outcome per section, including the two places
the work departed from it: D2's template renderer deferred once D1
removed the duplication it existed to fix, and E1 inverted after using
it for an afternoon.
This commit is contained in:
Gabriel Brown
2026-08-22 07:48:24 -04:00
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@@ -18,6 +18,96 @@ Panama is its own desktop experience, but it should learn from strong open-sourc
No Omarchy user-facing layout or styling was transplanted. Panama keeps its GNOME-derived information architecture, Prism material, Tokyo Night Moon palette, app model, and established interaction choices.
### Second round, 2026-08-22
A survey of omarchy, end-4/dots-hyprland, caelestia, DankMaterialShell,
noctalia, HyDE, ML4W, JaKooLit and hyprdots, read against Panama's own feature
inventory. This is the largest borrowing round the project has had, and what
follows is what was taken, what was rebuilt rather than transplanted, and what
was declined.
**Omarchy** ([basecamp/omarchy](https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy), MIT,
reviewed at `f32ebbdb`).
- `bin/omarchy-migrate` and `migrations/`: the idea that an installed machine
needs a way to catch up, because installing only ever adds. Panama rebuilt it
as `bin/panama-migrate` with the same shape -- commit-timestamp filenames so
glob order is chronological, one marker file per migration written only on
success -- and the same reasoning appears in the existing
`config/Migrations.qml`, which already did this for the settings file.
Panama's runner stops at the first failure rather than continuing, and root
work goes through `panama-sudo` so the password prompt names the repair.
- `bin/omarchy-launch-or-focus`: focusing a window rather than opening a second
one. Panama inverted the default after using it: the plain application keys
keep opening a new window, and `SUPER+ALT` is the go-to chord. On a tiling
desktop a second terminal beside the first is the normal case, not an edge
one, and making that the awkward path was a worse trade than the parity.
- `bin/omarchy-webapp-install`: a site as an application. Rebuilt as
`bin/panama-webapp`, following the desktop's own default browser rather than
naming one, and refusing a browser that cannot do app mode instead of opening
an ordinary window and pretending.
- `bin/omarchy-hw-*`: small exit-code hardware predicates. Rebuilt as one
`bin/panama-hw` with subcommands, including reading sysfs vendor IDs rather
than `lspci`, which wakes a runtime-suspended GPU.
- `bin/omarchy-hyprland-monitor-clamshell`: the definition that clamshell is a
closed lid *and* an external monitor. Panama took the definition and rejected
the mechanism: rather than a logind drop-in plus a watcher of its own, it
holds a `handle-lid-switch` inhibitor, so a failure returns logind's default
instead of leaving a lid that does nothing.
- `manual/`: user documentation as numbered prose chapters, and specifically a
"coming from Mac or Windows" chapter. Panama's `config/dot/quickshell/manual/`
renders inside Settings rather than opening a browser.
- Nautilus context-menu extensions: rebuilt against Panama's existing
`panama-kdeconnect` rather than adding a second way to talk to a phone.
**end-4/dots-hyprland** ([repo](https://github.com/end-4/dots-hyprland)) and
**omarchy**: a keybind cheatsheet on one keypress, read from the live keymap
rather than a written-down copy. Panama's version groups by categories the
compositor config declares, written to a manifest at config load, because
Hyprland reports Lua binds as `__lua` with a bytecode offset and nothing can
ride along into `hyprctl binds`.
**ML4W** ([dotfiles-welcome](https://github.com/mylinuxforwork/dotfiles-welcome)):
a first-run welcome that teaches the handful of keys that matter and stays
reachable afterwards. Panama's reads the chords from the live keymap so it
cannot teach keys the machine does not have.
**HyDE** ([wallbash templates](https://github.com/HyDE-Project/HyDE)) and
omarchy's `default/themed/`: colour values as data consumed by templates rather
than restated per consumer. Panama took the principle and not the template
engine: `config/palette.json` is now the single source for everything outside
QML, which removed six hand-synced copies of the eight accents. A per-app
template renderer was considered and deferred, because the concrete pain it
would solve is gone and porting six working generators is risk without a
waiting beneficiary.
**caelestia** ([caelestia-dots/shell](https://github.com/caelestia-dots/shell)):
lightweight system toasts as a category distinct from the OSD and the
notification centre. Panama already had this as `StatusEvents`, so what was
taken was the observation that a charger belongs in it; the layer itself needed
no work.
**DankMaterialShell** ([repo](https://github.com/AvengeMedia/DankMaterialShell)):
surfacing agent usage in the bar, and a plugin registry with a lockfile. The
first is planned; the second remains deferred, see below.
### Declined, and why
- **Wallpaper-derived dynamic colour** (HyDE wallbash, matugen). The headline
feature of this whole genre, and declined on identity: Tokyo Night Moon is a
deliberate choice, and dynamic colour is how rices end up looking like each
other. Reconsider as one more theme profile, never as the default.
- **A per-app template engine for theming.** See above.
- **Audio visualisers.** A continuously repainting equaliser is exactly the
GPU-pegging animation this project avoids on high-refresh displays.
- **Theming applications by patching their internals** (Spotify, Discord).
Breaks on every application update; the maintenance is unbounded and falls on
whoever is holding the desktop that day.
- **A plugin host.** Still premature, for the reason already recorded below.
User hooks are the thirty-line version and are the next thing to build.
- **Package channels and pacman hooks.** Arch-specific, and blocking
`dnf upgrade` on a Fedora workstation would be hostile.
### Candidates still under evaluation
- A plugin boundary for optional bar widgets and services once Panama has enough third-party modules to justify one.