Document the settings vocabulary and its traps

Records how to add a setting -- one schema entry -- and the failure
modes found building the pages. Every one of them fails silently rather
than loudly, which is why they are worth writing down: a wrong readAs
makes successful writes look rejected, hyprpaper accepts an all-outputs
wallpaper request and ignores it, and a copy of the Quickshell config
shares the live shell's ID so an "isolated" harness can kill the running
desktop.

Also documents the two generated configurations and why they are
generated: ~/.config/hypr is a symlink into this repository, so writing
there at runtime would commit machine state to a tracked file.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BRvzt4H8XXLPVH5MyYdk9L
This commit is contained in:
Gabriel Brown
2026-08-18 01:15:53 -04:00
parent 634a9ebe07
commit bac68d2bfb
3 changed files with 217 additions and 0 deletions
+47
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@@ -44,6 +44,30 @@ Validate any change without leaving your session:
Hyprland --verify-config
```
## Generated configuration
Two ecosystem tools cannot read the shared settings file, and their configs live
in this directory — which is a symlink into the Panama repository, so writing to
them at runtime would put machine state into a tracked file. Both are therefore
generated elsewhere:
| Tool | Generated to | Pointed there by |
|---|---|---|
| `hypridle` | `$XDG_STATE_HOME/panama/hypridle.conf` | a systemd user drop-in installed by `panama-idle install` |
| `hyprpaper` | not generated — the wallpaper is applied over IPC and re-applied at shell start | — |
`quickshell/scripts/panama-idle` regenerates the hypridle config from the
settings store and restarts the daemon. `hypridle.conf` in this directory
remains the shipped default and is what runs when the drop-in is not installed;
Panama Settings shows which of the two states you are in rather than presenting
controls that quietly do nothing.
Remove the drop-in and go back to the shipped config with:
```sh
~/.config/quickshell/scripts/panama-idle remove
```
## Settings: one file, both sides
`~/.config/panama/settings.json` is shared with the Quickshell side. The
@@ -67,6 +91,29 @@ wrong-typed settings file costs you your customisations and nothing else;
`tests/hypr/prefs-fallback-contract.sh` pins that, including that Hyprland still
accepts the config in each of those states.
### Adding a keybind: use `bind`, not `hl.bind`
Every bind in `keybinds.lua` goes through a local `bind()` wrapper that
substitutes the chord from a stored override, so shortcuts can be moved from
Panama Settings without editing this file.
```lua
bind(mod .. " + Q", hl.dsp.window.close(), { description = "Close window" })
```
Only the **chord** is ever taken from settings — the action is always the Lua
value written here. A stored override can therefore move a shortcut but can
never make one do something else, which is what makes reading overrides from a
file the user can edit safe.
Overrides are keyed by the **shipped chord**, not the description. Descriptions
are not unique: "Calculator" is both `SUPER + C` and the `XF86Calculator`
hardware key, and keying by description moved both onto the same new chord,
silently costing the hardware key.
An override whose value is not a plausible chord is ignored in favour of the
shipped one, so a hand-edited `settings.json` cannot cost you a keymap.
### Keybind descriptions are required
Every `hl.bind` must pass a `description`. Hyprland reports Lua-defined binds