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
@@ -285,3 +285,64 @@ can run in parallel with it.
Nothing here is committed yet; `main` has 20+ uncommitted paths from prior work
that should get a restore point before Stage 1 begins.
---
## Stage 5 — Replace GNOME Settings for what Panama owns
Not in the original plan. Added after the settings vocabulary made new pages
cheap enough that the limiting factor stopped being effort and started being
scope. Built jointly with the codex agent, which took default applications, the
page migrations, and the remaining hardcoded values.
- [x] **Wallpaper** — thumbnail grid, applied over hyprpaper IPC.
- [x] **Power & Lock** — screen blank, lock, suspend, lock-before-sleep.
- [x] **Date & Time** — timezone and network time via `timedatectl`.
- [x] **Accessibility** — pointer size, text scale, motion, contrast.
- [x] **Search that indexes settings**, not page names.
- [x] **Editable Dock** — reorder, unpin, add.
- [x] **Settings snapshots** — save, list, restore.
- [x] **Rebindable shortcuts.**
- [ ] Displays: resolution, refresh rate, scale, rotation.
- [ ] Per-application notification rules.
- [ ] Window rules (float/tile/workspace) as a page.
**Landed.** Each of these turned up something the compositor or its tools do
differently than documented, and in every case the failure mode was silence
rather than an error:
* **hyprpaper 0.8 ignores the "all outputs" form.** `<empty>,<path>` is accepted
and does nothing, so a wallpaper set that way appears to succeed and never
changes. Its IPC is also much smaller than older versions suggest — `preload`,
`listloaded`, `unload`, and `reload` all answer "invalid hyprpaper request".
* **`cursor:inactive_timeout` is answered as `float`, not `int`.** A wrong
`readAs` does not fail loudly; it makes every write to that key look rejected,
and the user sees an error for a change that worked.
* **Snapshot filenames collided at one-second resolution.** A save followed
promptly by a restore produced the same name twice, and the restore's own
safety snapshot overwrote the file it was about to read. Found by the
contract, which restores immediately after saving.
* **Keying bind overrides by description moved every bind sharing one.**
Rebinding `SUPER+C` also dragged `XF86Calculator` onto the same chord.
Descriptions are not unique; chords are.
* **The GNOME delegation allow-list named a panel that does not exist.**
`users` is not in `gnome-control-center --list`, so that button opened
nothing.
* **A copy of the Quickshell config shares the live shell's ID.** Quickshell
derives it from content rather than path, so an "isolated" harness built by
copying the config directory can kill or drive the running desktop. This took
the live shell down twice during development. Harnesses pointing at a single
distinct `.qml` file are unaffected.
Two configurations are now generated rather than edited, because `~/.config/hypr`
is a symlink into this repository and writing there at runtime would put machine
state into a tracked file: hypridle's config, into `XDG_STATE_HOME` with a
systemd drop-in pointing at it, and the wallpaper, which is applied over IPC and
re-applied at shell start instead of being written into `hyprpaper.conf`.
The schema gained a `json` type for structured values — the dock's pinned list
and the keybind overrides — so they live in the one settings file and are
covered by the one reset, rather than each growing a preference store of its
own. `restoreDefaults()` spans every store Panama owns, including the Home
accessory arrangement, which it reaches through that service's existing public
aliases rather than an API added for the purpose.