GNOME Online Accounts is a daemon plus a D-Bus API, and the daemon
already runs in this session -- gvfs activates it, and all four accounts
on this machine work without gnome-shell involved anywhere. Only the
PANEL was GNOME's. The accounts themselves are ordinary D-Bus objects
that anything may read and modify.
So everything except the initial sign-in is now native: the account
list, per-service toggles for mail, calendar, contacts, files, photos,
music and chat, and removal. That is the whole Online Accounts panel
apart from one OAuth handshake.
Signing in is the exception, and only for OAuth providers. The daemon's
AddAccount takes credentials as an argument -- it stores them, it does
not obtain them -- and the code that runs Google's OAuth exchange lives
in libgoa-backend, which Fedora ships without a GIR binding, so it is
reachable from C only. Reimplementing it would mean our own Google
client credentials. That step is handed to GNOME's panel and the page
says so, because a hand-off the user does not expect reads as a bug.
Password-based providers (Nextcloud, IMAP, WebDAV) could be added
natively later; their credential keys are known now.
Accounts needing re-authentication are surfaced first, which turned up
something immediately: both Google accounts on this machine report
attention_needed, meaning their tokens have expired and they have
stopped syncing. GOA has known that all along and nothing outside its
own panel ever said so.
Every write re-reads the account list rather than assuming it landed.
GOA can refuse, and a toggle that springs back is the honest outcome.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BRvzt4H8XXLPVH5MyYdk9L
More GNOME Settings parity.
Region & Language is new. The locale is localectl's, and Panama stores no
copy of it -- there is exactly one system locale, so a preference here
would be a second source of truth that drifts the moment anything else
changes it. Codes are resolved against iso-codes into "Portuguese
(Brazil)" the way GNOME does, with the code kept visible because it is
what actually gets written and someone choosing between two Spanish
variants needs to see it. Changing it is privileged and only applies to
programs started afterwards, so the page says a sign-out is needed
rather than claiming the new language is in use.
The service is called SystemLocale, not Locale: QML has a built-in
Locale value type that silently shadows a singleton of that name, and
every binding then reads properties off the wrong thing. The page
rendered empty with nothing but "cannot read property of undefined" to
explain it.
About now answers what GNOME's About answers -- model, processor,
memory, disk, OS, kernel, windowing system -- where before it listed
only Panama's own component versions. Graphics is joined from
GraphicsDevices rather than read again, because two readouts of the same
hardware are two things that can disagree. Placeholder DMI strings
("To Be Filled By O.E.M.") are filtered out, and unreadable facts are
omitted rather than shown as "Unknown".
The Fedora hand-off card was one row listing five subjects that opened
the network panel regardless. Naming a panel and then not opening it
reads as a broken button rather than a deliberate hand-off. Each subject
now opens the panel that owns it, and openGnomePanel takes an optional
subpage so "Users" reaches System's users page the way GNOME's own
desktop entry does, instead of dropping the user on System's front page.
Printers and online accounts are not repeated here; they stay with the
network hardware on Network & Devices.
One bug this surfaced, caught by the hyprland write contract: the Lua
config key and the hyprctl option name genuinely differ for tap to
click. hl.config wants input.touchpad.tap_to_click; getoption answers to
input:touchpad:tap-to-click. Either spelling used for both fails -- a
hyphen is not a Lua identifier, and the underscored name is not a known
option -- which is what the schema's two separate fields are for.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BRvzt4H8XXLPVH5MyYdk9L
Continuing towards GNOME Settings parity. GNOME's Privacy panel covers
screen lock, camera and microphone access, file history, trash, and
device security; Panama had no equivalent page at all, despite already
tracking camera and microphone use for the bar indicator.
Device security is a new read-only readout: Secure Boot, TPM, disk
encryption, SELinux mode, and the firewall. None of these is a
preference -- they are set in firmware, at install time, or by system
policy, and a switch offering to change them would either fail or do
something far-reaching from a control that looks like every other
control. What it answers is "is this machine set up the way I think it
is", which otherwise takes five commands and root. Facts that cannot be
determined report Unknown rather than guessing, because a security
readout that quietly says "fine" when it failed to look is worse than
no readout.
File history and trash retention are deliberately NOT offered as
switches. They are GNOME preferences enforced by gsd-housekeeping, which
does not run in a Hyprland session -- verified, it is not running here.
Toggling them would store a preference, change nothing, and give no sign
of it. They are delegated to GNOME Settings by name instead.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BRvzt4H8XXLPVH5MyYdk9L
Working towards parity with GNOME Settings, which splits pointing
devices into their own panel. Panama had pointer speed and focus-follows
buried under a page called "Input & Shortcuts", and had nothing at all
for scroll direction, acceleration profile, scroll speed, left-handed
buttons, or any touchpad setting -- all of which could only be changed
by editing hypr/input.lua by hand, which is the thing this app exists to
stop.
Every new mapping was read back off the running compositor rather than
assumed, and two were not what they look like: touchpad drag lock is an
int with three states, not a switch, and scroll factors are floats even
at their default of exactly 1. Getting either wrong makes every write to
that setting look rejected. The shape contract now covers 35 mapped
options, up from 23.
The touchpad card renders only when a touchpad is attached, which is
what InputDevices is for. On a desktop it would be worse than useless:
every switch on it would appear to work, because the preference is
stored and Hyprland accepts an option for a device class it has no
member of, so the settings would silently affect nothing.
Keyboard layout was read-only text, justified by a note saying changes
needed a compositor reload. That is not true in 0.56.2 -- setting
input:kb_variant through hl.config re-keymaps attached keyboards
immediately, verified by watching active_keymap on a real keyboard
change to "English (US, intl., with dead keys)" and back. So layout,
variant, and options are now real controls, joined by a TextEntryRow
that commits on Enter or focus loss rather than per keystroke, since
half a layout name is a valid string meaning something else.
Rejected input is shown as rejected rather than sanitised: these strings
are serialised into an hl.config payload, where stripping an unexpected
character would turn a typo into a different working setting.
Verified each new pointer option applies and reverts against the live
compositor. Schema, search, commit/reset, and system contracts pass.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BRvzt4H8XXLPVH5MyYdk9L
Wires the schema entries and routing the codex agent needs for default
applications, weather, vitals refresh, notification timing, and capture,
so its pages can be written against keys that already exist.
Capture directories and encoder arguments are enums rather than free
text. Both are handed to a recorder process, and a settings page has no
reason to expose an arbitrary string there.
ApplicationsPage.qml is a placeholder so the page id can be routed,
registered, and searchable before the real page lands. It is owned by
the other agent and expected to be replaced wholesale.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BRvzt4H8XXLPVH5MyYdk9L
Continues the settings expansion toward replacing GNOME Settings for
everything Panama actually owns.
Wallpaper. A thumbnail grid rather than a path field: the value of this
setting is the picture, so typing a path to something you cannot see is
the worst version of it. Two things about hyprpaper 0.8 shaped this. Its
IPC is much smaller than older documentation suggests -- preload,
listloaded, unload, and reload all answer "invalid hyprpaper request",
so setting is a single call with no preload. And the "<empty>,<path>"
form that used to mean every output is silently ignored, so a wallpaper
set that way appears to succeed and never changes; outputs are walked
explicitly instead. hyprpaper.conf lives in the repo through the
~/.config/hypr symlink and so cannot hold machine state, which is why
the choice lives in the shared settings store and is re-applied at
startup.
Power & Lock. hypridle has no IPC for reconfiguration and its config is
hyprlang rather than the shared JSON, so scripts/panama-idle generates a
config from the settings store and restarts the daemon. The generated
file lives under XDG_STATE_HOME for the same symlink reason, with a
systemd drop-in pointing hypridle at it. Management is a real state and
the page says which one you are in rather than showing sliders that
quietly do nothing. Zero means never for all three timers, which a naive
template would render as "immediately".
Date & Time. Deliberately not stored in Panama's settings: the timezone
and network time belong to the machine and are shared with sessions that
never see this file. Storing a copy would create a second answer to a
question the system already answers. Reads and writes timedatectl
directly; a cancelled polkit prompt surfaces as an error rather than as
a value that appears to have been accepted.
Accessibility. Pointer size and text scale have to agree across three
consumers with no shared configuration -- the compositor, GTK, and the
shell -- so the store is the source of truth and the values are pushed
outward to gsettings and hyprctl setcursor.
Search now indexes the schema instead of the twelve page labels. "gaps",
"wallpaper", and "screenshot" previously found nothing on an app that
has all three, which is the clearest way a settings app feels smaller
than it is. Shortcuts are indexed by what they do. A contract asserts
every non-internal schema label is reachable, so a new setting cannot be
added in an undiscoverable state.
The GNOME delegation allow-list was widened to the panel names
gnome-control-center actually reports; the previous list contained
"users", which is not one of them and so opened nothing.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BRvzt4H8XXLPVH5MyYdk9L
Panama had grown into three configuration surfaces that only agreed because
they had been typed to agree: looks.lua hardcoded values, DesktopPreferences
independently defaulted the same values, and SystemSettings replayed them at
startup. Nothing kept them in sync, and the Lua side read no shared state at
all. This lands the first three stages of docs/superpowers/plans/2026-08-17-panama-cohesion.md.
Fix silently failing Hyprland writes. On a Lua-configured Hyprland, hyprctl
keyword refuses the write, prints the refusal to stdout, and still exits 0, so
the HDR, VRR, and direct-scanout toggles persisted their value and reported
success while the compositor never changed. Writes now go through hyprctl eval,
which has the same hazard on syntax and runtime errors, so success is defined
as reading the value back and finding it equal. The existing contract passed
throughout the outage because it re-applied the values already in place; the
new one flips each value to something it does not hold.
Derive preferences from a schema. Every setting used to be restated four times
-- a property alias, a JSON adapter property, a change handler, and a line in
reset -- where omitting any one failed silently. PreferenceSchema.qml is now
the single source, and persistence, validation, reset, and the Hyprland mapping
all derive from it. Unknown keys on disk survive a write so a rollback does not
discard a newer build's settings, and a corrupt file falls back to shipped
defaults. The store moved to ~/.config/panama/settings.json, migrating from the
old state directory without deleting it.
Share that file with Hyprland. prefs.lua reads it at config time with every
shipped literal kept as the fallback, so the config still stands alone. The Lua
is the default, the JSON is the truth, and Settings is the editor. The
compositor-adjustable surface goes from 3 keys to 23.
Also fixes two test-hygiene bugs found by running the suite end to end for the
first time: settings-pages-contract could see the window settings-window-contract
leaves behind, and the new write contract was persisting its deliberately-wrong
values into the user's real store.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BRvzt4H8XXLPVH5MyYdk9L
Gabriel Brown