GNOME's Search panel configures which applications provide results in
gnome-shell's overview and which folders are indexed. gnome-shell does
not run here, so reimplementing those switches would store preferences
that change nothing. Under Panama searching is the launcher's job and
Vicinae carries its own preferences, so the Applications page says where
search lives and how to rebind the keys that open it, rather than
offering settings that would be inert or duplicated.
The nav contract is the more useful half. Adding a settings page means
editing four files, and missing any one of them fails quietly in a
different way: no sidebar row, a row that silently shows Home, a deep
link that redirects to Home, or -- worst -- a missing qmldir entry,
which makes the page "not a type" and takes the entire settings window
down with it. Nothing at runtime cross-checks the four. Having just
added four pages by hand, this checks them statically, and also fails on
a page file that exists but is unreachable.
Verified it catches a missing qmldir registration and a missing
allow-list entry.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BRvzt4H8XXLPVH5MyYdk9L
Gabriel Brown
0fd59c59e3