# Post-0.1.0 usability backlog

Status: **open, expandable by design.** This document is not a fixed release
plan. It collects items found by actually using qtmaildir after 0.1.0, and it
grows as more turn up. Nothing here is scheduled; picking what ships in a given
release is a separate decision.

Source: usage notes taken while running the app, 2026-08-03.

**Numbers here are this document's own.** The user's own notes were numbered
independently and the two sequences drifted apart once items were split: what
those notes called 12 is item 13 here, and item 14 here (the tag column) was
never in them at all. Items 15 to 17 come from a later pass over the same
notes. Cite these numbers, not the notes', and do not renumber to reconcile.

**The notes are the upstream source and they keep growing.** The user adds to
them while using the app, so this document goes stale on its own. Items 28 to 35
came from one such pass on 2026-08-04 and included two defects that had gone
unrecorded here for a while. Items 39 to 45 came from the 2026-08-05 pass, which
found one more defect (41, a message body silently dropped by the MIME walk) and
one item that cannot be planned at all until the user says where the thing it
manages lives (44). Compare the two at the start of a session; the procedure is
in `CLAUDE.md`.

Numbering is stable. New items append with the next free number and never
renumber, so a note referring to "item 7" keeps meaning the same thing. An item
that is dropped stays in the table marked `dropped` with a one-line reason.

**Items 20 and 53 are both on master since 2026-08-10**, as the card list. Item
20's original presentation, the one the user rejected on sight, is preserved on
the branch `item-20-message-rows` at 029a50e and was never merged; the branch
`card-list` carries the work that was. Any file or line reference in item 20's
entry below points at that PARKED branch, not at master, where the same lines
are unrelated. Item 53 records why the first attempt was rejected and is worth
reading before changing the thread pane again.

## Theme

0.1.0 was built to a spec written by someone who lives in neomutt. The result
is a keyboard-driven reader with almost no visible affordances. The notes below
are, with few exceptions, one complaint restated in several forms: **the app
does not tell the user what it can do, and it does not remember what the user
told it.** Two clusters follow from that:

- **Persistence.** Splitter position, font size, window geometry, and the
  account selection all reset on restart. Each is small on its own and
  aggravating every single launch.
- **Discoverability.** Shortcuts are the only route to most actions, and there
  is no menu bar, no toolbar, and no way to see the key bindings from inside
  the app.

Both clusters are cheap to fix. Neither was an oversight in design so much as a
consequence of specifying the app as "a GUI counterpart to neomutt" and then
taking that too literally.

## Status table

| # | Item | Cluster | Size | Status |
|---|------|---------|------|--------|
| 1 | Splitter/column widths do not survive restart | persistence | S | **done** |
| 2 | No way to see full message details (From/To/Cc/Subject) | information | M | **done** |
| 3 | Too few clickable affordances, shortcuts are the only route | discoverability | M | **done** |
| 4 | Message-pane font size does not survive restart | persistence | S | **done** |
| 5 | Thread list is cramped, poor readability | presentation | S | **done** |
| 6 | Opened message stays unread | behavior | S | **done** |
| 7 | HTML view should be default for HTML messages | behavior | XS | **done** (already worked) |
| 8 | No buttons or menu entries for archive, undo, etc | discoverability | M | **done** |
| 9 | No in-app view of configured shortcuts | discoverability | S | **done** |
| 10 | Reaching an account's inbox takes two steps | workflow | S | **postponed** (partly done) |
| 11 | Icon, `.desktop` file, SlackBuild | packaging | M | **done** |
| 12 | Message pane is light-theme only | presentation | S | **done** |
| 13 | No visual feedback that an action stuck | feedback | S | **done** |
| 14 | Tag column unreadable, tags need another home | presentation | M | **done** |
| 15 | Attachments are parsed but unreachable from the UI | information | M | **done** |
| 16 | Delete on an already-deleted thread should undelete | behavior | S | **done** |
| 17 | No completion for tags in the query bar | workflow | M | **done** |
| 18 | No visual cue that there are unsynced edits | feedback | S | **done** |
| 19 | No prompt to sync on exit when edits are pending | behavior | S | **done** |
| 20 | Thread view does not match the user's mental model | presentation | L | **done** 2026-08-10, as the card list; see 53 |
| 21 | Default shortcuts are not sensible enough | discoverability | S | open |
| 22 | Translatability audit and i18n wiring | correctness | M | open |
| 23 | No way to save a search query from the UI | workflow | M | open |
| 24 | No right-click actions on the thread list | discoverability | S | **done** |
| 25 | No select-all, and bulk actions are undiscoverable | workflow | S | **done** |
| 26 | No way to add or remove an arbitrary tag from the UI | workflow | S | **done** |
| 27 | The UI cannot see a sync it did not start | feedback | S | **done** |
| 28 | Re-adding `unread` counts 2 unsynced changes, not 0 | correctness | S | **done** |
| 29 | Sync button stays enabled during a background sync | feedback | XS | **done** |
| 30 | The blank right pane is wasted space | presentation | M | **done** |
| 31 | The quit prompt has no highlighted default button | discoverability | XS | **done** |
| 32 | Esc does not blank the right pane | workflow | XS | **done** |
| 33 | Status bar messages never expire | feedback | S | **done** |
| 34 | No overview of the Maildir itself | information | M | **done** |
| 35 | No refresh of the thread list after a sync | workflow | M | **done** 2026-08-10; the list now follows a sync on its own |
| 36 | `test_mainwindow` cannot reach the worker | testing | S | open, on demand |
| 37 | The worker stalls on a tag edit made during a background sync | correctness | S | **done** |
| 38 | `test_mainwindow` fails when a real sync holds the lock | testing | XS | **done** |
| 39 | Thread list cannot be sorted by clicking a column header | workflow | S | **dropped** 2026-08-10; the card list has no column headers to click, and 0.13.0 shipped a sort dropdown instead |
| 40 | No live filter over the current view | workflow | M | open |
| 41 | A message whose HTML body carries a `Content-Id` renders blank | correctness | S | **done** |
| 42 | "Syncing..." says nothing about what is being synced | feedback | S | **done** |
| 43 | No "Mark all read" for the current view | workflow | S | **done** |
| 44 | No way to manage the filters applied at sync time | workflow | ? | open, unspecified |
| 45 | Two Sync buttons, and only one of them works properly | correctness | S | **done** |
| 46 | `uiStateSurvivesARestart` fails under the offscreen platform | testing | XS | **done** |
| 47 | The query bar looks unfinished, and cannot be cleared by mouse | presentation | XS | **done** |
| 48 | Removing a tag suggests every tag, not the thread's own | workflow | XS | **done** |
| 49 | Sync runs every account regardless of what changed | workflow | M | **done** |
| 50 | Esc blanks the pane but leaves the row selected | workflow | XS | **done** |
| 51 | Clicking a subject scrolls the list sideways | presentation | XS | **done** 2026-08-10; a card is viewport width, so there is nowhere to scroll |
| 52 | `test_querycompleter` fails under Wayland, passes offscreen | testing | XS | **done** |
| 53 | Message rows still read as a table, not as a conversation | presentation | M | **done** 2026-08-10, merged to master as the card list |
| 54 | A cron sync carries the edits but the count still says pending | correctness | S | **done** |
| 55 | In a narrow window the message pane is invisible | presentation | XS | **done** |
| 56 | No action carries an icon, so the toolbar reserves space for nothing | presentation | S | **done** |
| 57 | "Flag" would read better as "Important" or "Starred" | presentation | XS | **done** |
| 58 | `message_zoom` documents a 0.5 to 3.0 range and enforces none of it | correctness | XS | **done** |
| 59 | Archive and Mark all read shipped with the same icon | presentation | XS | **done** |
| 60 | Next thread dead-ends on the last reply of an expanded thread | defect | XS | **done**; already fixed by 5487d58, see below |
| 61 | `test_mainwindow` fails intermittently, about 1 run in 20 | testing | S | open; predates the card list, reproduced on f72dba9 |
| 62 | No config option for the date format on a card | presentation | XS | open |
| 63 | No way to see sent mail, and no filter for it | workflow | S | open |

Sizes are rough: XS under an hour, S a sitting, M a session.

---

## 1. Splitter and column widths do not survive restart

**Observed:** resizing the thread list pane, or a column inside it, is undone by
the next launch.

**Cause:** `MainWindow::buildUi()` (`src/mainwindow.cpp:195`) builds the
`QSplitter` fresh every launch, sets a stretch factor, and never saves state.
`resize(1200, 800)` at `src/mainwindow.cpp:206` hardcodes window size too. There
is no `QSettings` window-state read or write anywhere in the class.

**Approach:** one `saveState`/`restoreState` pair in
`MainWindow`, driven from a `QSettings` object separate from the hand-written
config file.

- Save on `closeEvent`, restore at the end of `buildUi()`.
- Persist: `QMainWindow::saveGeometry()`, `QMainWindow::saveState()`,
  `QSplitter::saveState()`, `QHeaderView::saveState()` for the thread list.
- Restore must be a no-op when the stored blob is absent or rejected, falling
  back to the current hardcoded defaults. `restoreGeometry()` returns `false`
  in that case; do not assume it succeeded.

**Where the state file goes.** The hand-edited config lives at
`~/.config/qtmaildir/qtmaildir.conf` and is the user's to own. Machine-written
window blobs must not land in it: a base64 `QByteArray` appearing in a file the
user edits by hand is hostile, and rewriting that file on exit risks clobbering
comments and formatting QSettings does not preserve. Use a **separate**
`QSettings` instance for UI state, at
`~/.local/state/qtmaildir/uistate.conf` or the `QStandardPaths` equivalent, and
keep `Config` untouched.

**Confirmed by the user, 2026-08-03.** This decision covers items 1, 4, and 10
as well. Establish it once, in whichever lands first.

**Verification:** manual. Resize both the window and the splitter, restart,
confirm both held. Then delete the state file and confirm the app still starts
with the 1200x800 default rather than a zero-size window.

### Outcome (done)

Built as described. `MainWindow::uiStatePath()` establishes the state file the
plan calls for, so items 4 and 10 inherit it. Two things worth recording:

- **`QStandardPaths::StateLocation` is the wrong enum here.** It appends both
  the organization and the application name, and this app sets both to
  `qtmaildir`, so it yields `~/.local/state/qtmaildir/qtmaildir/`. The path is
  built from `GenericStateLocation` plus an explicit `/qtmaildir`, the same
  shape as `Config::defaultPath()`. A test pins the component count.
- **`restoreUiState()` runs after `buildMenus()`, not at the end of
  `buildUi()`** as the plan proposed. `QMainWindow::restoreState()` matches
  toolbars by object name, so a toolbar that does not exist yet has its
  position silently dropped.

Every restore is guarded on a non-empty blob, so absent state leaves the
`buildUi()` defaults rather than producing a zero-size window.

## 2. No way to see full message details

**Observed:** From, To, Cc, Subject and the rest are not visible for the
selected message.

**Cause:** partially true rather than wholly. `MessageView::updateHeader()`
(`src/messageview.cpp:219`) shows only the thread subject and a message count.
Per-message From and Date *are* rendered inside the HTML body as `.msg-header`
(`src/htmlbuilder.cpp:241`), styled at 9pt grey, which is easy to miss and does
not include To or Cc at all.

**Check before building:** does `MimeParser` already extract To and Cc into the
message struct, or does `src/types.h` / `MimeParser`'s output need extending
first? If the fields are not parsed, that is the real first task and it is
larger than the UI work.

**Answered, 2026-08-04: they are already parsed.** `MimeParser::parse()` fills
both (`src/mimeparser.cpp:344-345`, into `ParsedMessage::to` and `::cc`,
declared at `src/mimeparser.h:105`). The larger task the check warned about
does not exist.

They are parsed and then **dropped at the renderer**: `HtmlBuilder` interpolates
only `from`, `subject` and `date` (`src/htmlbuilder.cpp:216`, `:244-245`), and
`to`/`cc` appear nowhere in it, in `messageview.cpp`, or in `mainwindow.cpp`.
So this is UI work only, as the item's own two-part approach assumes.

**Approach, two parts:**

- Widen the persistent header at the top of the message pane to show the
  selected message's From, To, Cc, Date and Subject. This is the note's stated
  preference ("should appear on top in right pane").
- Add a shortcut and menu entry for a full raw-header dialog, for the cases the
  summary omits (Message-Id, List-Id, Received chain). Read-only, selectable
  text, no rendering.

Both, not one: the header widget answers "who is this from" at a glance, the
dialog answers "what actually happened to this message". They are different
questions.

### Decided (user, 2026-08-04): the header adapts to the item count

The pane shows a thread, not a message, so From/To/Cc are per-message while the
header is one strip. Rather than pick a message arbitrarily, the header shows
only what it can say honestly:

- **One message in the thread:** From, To, Cc, Subject. The natural spot, and
  every field is unambiguous.
- **N messages:** Subject and the thread count. Nothing more.
- **Everything else** lives in the popup, reached by a **button on the right of
  the header** plus a keyboard shortcut.

**No recipient line on a thread (user, 2026-08-04).** An earlier draft of this
decision put To on the thread header too, which forced a choice between the
union of recipients and their intersection: once the user has replied, message
1 is To: them and message 2 is To: the other party, so the intersection is
frequently empty and the union is really a participants list wearing the wrong
label. The user's call was that this is overcomplicating, and it is: the
per-message detail is what the popup is for.

The thread header therefore keeps showing exactly what it shows today, subject
and count (`MessageView::updateHeader()`, `src/messageview.cpp:259`), and only
the single-message case gains fields.

**Consequence: no address parsing is needed.** `ParsedMessage::to` and `::cc`
are raw header strings (`src/mimeparser.h:104-105`), and with no union or dedup
to compute they can be displayed as they stand. Splitting them into address
lists, which would have needed GMime's `internet_address_list_parse` to survive
a display name containing a comma, is not part of this item.

**Deferred, not rejected (user, 2026-08-04): a participants line for threads.**
The union-of-recipients idea is worth revisiting as its own pass, where it can
be designed as a participants list rather than smuggled in under a "To:" label
that misdescribes it. It needs the address parsing above, so it is a genuine
piece of work rather than a display tweak. Build this item as specced first.

**Noted for later, not now:** the user's mental model of the thread view
differs from what was built. That is a separate refactor and should not be
folded into this item.

**Constraint:** header values are untrusted input. The existing header label is
`Qt::RichText` (`src/messageview.cpp:104`), so every value must be
`toHtmlEscaped()` before interpolation, exactly as `updateHeader()` already
does. A `From` display name containing markup must never be able to inject into
the label. The raw-header dialog should use `Qt::PlainText` and sidestep the
question entirely.

### Outcome (done)

Built as decided. `MessageView::updateHeader()` branches on the item count: one
message shows From, To and Cc under the subject, several show the subject and
the count exactly as before. `showDetailsDialog()` lists every message's
Subject, From, To, Cc, Date and Message-Id, numbered when there is more than
one, in a read-only `QPlainTextEdit`. A `Details...` button sits to the right of
the header, and `message_details` binds it to `Ctrl+Shift+D` (shifted because
`Ctrl+D` is delete, and the destructive binding keeps the key it had).

- **Rendered and inspected**, not only asserted: both header shapes were grabbed
  to PNG and looked at. The single-message case shows three rows under the
  subject, the thread case shows the count and no recipients.
- **An empty Cc omits its row** rather than printing a label with nothing after
  it, which reads as a rendering fault.
- **A test caught a latent flaw in an older test.** `attachmentButtonLabels()`
  identified attachment buttons by excluding the one other button's label, so
  the new details button was counted as an attachment the moment it existed.
  It now finds the bar by object name and looks only at its children, which is
  what it should have done: an exclusion list silently adopts every button
  added later.

**No address parsing was needed**, as the decision above anticipated. The header
prints `ParsedMessage::to` and `::cc` as they stand.

## 3, 8, 9. Discoverability: menu bar, toolbar, shortcut reference

Grouped because they are one piece of work. Item 3 is the complaint, items 8
and 9 are two of its symptoms.

**Observed:** for a GUI app there is almost nothing to click; every action needs
a memorized key. Archive and undo have no buttons. There is no way to see the
configured bindings without opening a terminal.

**Cause:** `MainWindow` has no `menuBar()` and no `QToolBar`. Actions are not
`QAction`s at all: `registerActions()` (`src/mainwindow.cpp:209`) fills a
`QHash<QString, std::function<void()>>` consumed by an `eventFilter`. Nothing in
that structure can appear in a menu, because a menu needs `QAction` objects.

**Approach: convert the action registry to `QAction`s.** This is the core of the
work and everything else follows from it.

- Each entry becomes a `QAction` with text, an object name matching the current
  action key, and a shortcut set from `KeyMap`.
- `MainWindow::registeredActionNames()` and the `KeyMap::knownActions()` drift
  test (already noted in `mainwindow.h` as hand-maintained) must keep working.
  If the conversion lets both lists derive from one source, that test becomes
  unnecessary, which is a real win. Check whether it can.
- The `eventFilter` route may become redundant once shortcuts live on the
  `QAction`s. Removing it is the goal, but verify: the filter may be handling
  focus cases (keys while the query line edit has focus) that `QAction`
  shortcuts resolve differently. Do not delete it on the assumption that
  `QAction` covers everything.
- Menu bar: File (Sync, Quit), Edit (Undo, Redo), Message (Archive, Delete,
  Spam, Toggle unread, Toggle HTML, Load remote content), View (font size, see
  item 4), Help (Shortcuts, About).
- Toolbar: the frequent subset only. Sync, Archive, Delete, Undo. A toolbar
  holding every action is as unreadable as no toolbar.
- Shortcut reference (item 9): a dialog listing action, description, and current
  binding, generated from the same `QAction` list. Generated, never hand-written
  in parallel, or it drifts the way the two action lists already do.

**Constraint:** undo must stay unconfirmed. `CLAUDE.md` is explicit that tag
mutations get undo instead of confirmation dialogs. Adding menu entries must not
smuggle in a "Are you sure?" for Delete.

**Verification:** the existing keymap test must still pass unchanged, proving
user bindings survive the conversion. That is the load-bearing check here.

### Outcome (done)

Built as described: menu bar, toolbar, and a generated shortcut reference.
Four things the plan did not anticipate, all verified by probe rather than
assumed:

- **The event filter was removable, but not for the stated reason.** The plan
  worried that `QAction` shortcuts might lose to `QAbstractItemView`'s
  type-to-search. They do not: shortcut dispatch runs before the focused
  widget sees the key. The filter is gone, and the thread view no longer
  needs its own.
- **Qt already solves the query-bar case.** A plain-letter shortcut is
  suppressed while an editable widget has focus, so the `hasFocus()` guard
  was unnecessary. Removing it also fixed `Ctrl+Q`, which the old filter
  swallowed while typing a query.
- **Three default bindings had never worked.** `N`, `F` and `G` stored the
  unshifted key, which no keystroke emits, so `toggle_unread`, `flag` and
  `sync` were dead in 0.1.0. Fixed in `KeyMap::normalizeSequence()` and
  committed separately from the menu work.
- **The drift test did become unnecessary**, as the plan hoped.
  `registeredActionNames()` is now derived from the `QAction`s, and
  `defaultBindings()` is the single source for the defaults. The two tests
  that pinned the hand-maintained lists together were replaced by ones that
  check a configured binding actually reaches its action.

Defaults moved to modifier shortcuts, since a single letter cannot be a menu
accelerator without claiming that letter window-wide. Existing `[keys]`
entries are unaffected.

## 4. Message-pane font size does not survive restart

**Observed:** described as "very annoying", more so than item 1.

**Confirmed by the user:** Ctrl+`+` / Ctrl+`-` do change the message pane font
size. It is only the persistence that is missing.

**Cause:** qtmaildir does not implement that zoom. There is no `setZoomFactor`,
no zoom action, and no `Ctrl+=`/`Ctrl+-` binding anywhere in `src/`; grep finds
nothing. The behavior comes from `QWebEngineView`, which handles zoom keys
natively in Chromium. `htmlbuilder.cpp:26` separately hardcodes
`font-size: 10pt` as the document's base size, which the browser zoom then
scales.

This changes the shape of the work. There is no application-side value to save,
because the application never learns the zoom changed: Chromium handles the key
and adjusts the factor without telling anyone. Persistence therefore requires
taking ownership of zoom first, rather than hooking a save onto something that
already exists.

**Approach:**

- Add explicit zoom in, zoom out and reset actions calling
  `QWebEngineView::setZoomFactor()`, tracking the current factor in
  `MessageView`. Use `setZoomFactor` rather than rewriting the CSS: it scales
  the rendered document uniformly, needs no re-render, and does not disturb
  `HtmlBuilder`'s output or its tests.
- Bind them to the same Ctrl+`+` / Ctrl+`-` the user already has in their
  fingers, so the change is invisible except that it now sticks. Verify the
  application binding actually takes precedence over Chromium's built-in
  handling; if the web view swallows the key first, the action never fires and
  the factor silently diverges from what is on screen. This is the one real
  risk in the item and is worth checking before building the rest.
- Persist the factor to the UI state file from item 1, and reapply it on every
  `setDocument()`. Do not assume zoom survives a load; `QWebEngineView` may
  reset it on navigation. Verify empirically.
- Config entry as the user suggested: a `[general]` key for the starting zoom,
  with the state file remembering runtime changes on top of it. The config value
  is the default for a fresh profile, the state file is what the user last had.
- Clamp to a sane range. An accidental 0.1 or 25.0 leaves the pane unusable and
  the user with no visible way back. Chromium's own limits are roughly 0.25 to
  5.0; match or tighten, never widen.
- Route the actions through item 3's `QAction` conversion so they appear in the
  View menu, which also makes the reset discoverable.

### Outcome (done)

Built as described, and both of the plan's stated risks turned out not to
exist. Probed rather than assumed:

- **The application `QAction` wins over Chromium's native zoom key.** The plan
  called this "the one real risk in the item". It is not one: the action fires
  and the web view's own handling never runs, so the tracked factor cannot
  diverge from what is on screen.
- **Zoom survives `setHtml()`.** The plan expected the view might reset it on
  navigation and asked for a reapply per render. Not needed; the web view keeps
  the factor, so it is the single source of truth and there is no second copy.
- **Do not test key reachability with synthetic input.** A probe using
  `QTest::keyClick()` reported `Ctrl++` as a dead binding, and a test was
  written asserting it. Both were wrong: `Ctrl++` is exactly what the `+` key
  emits on an Italian layout, confirmed against the real keyboard, and it is
  the shipped default. Whether a symbol needs Shift is a property of the
  layout, not of Qt, and `keyClick()` reproduces neither. The test now only
  checks that every default parses.
- `Ctrl+=` is a second binding for reset, skipped when `[keys]` gives `Ctrl+=`
  to something else. Ctrl+wheel zooms and Ctrl+middle-click resets, both
  filtered by ancestry from an application-level filter: the events land on an
  internal `QQuickWidget` the web view creates lazily, so a filter installed on
  the view itself never sees them.

**A pre-existing bug surfaced while adding the config key.** `[general]`
entries were read as `general/<key>`, which matches nothing: QSettings' INI
backend treats a section literally named `[general]` as its own fallback
section and strips the prefix. `notmuch_config` had therefore never worked.
Both keys are now read without the prefix; the file format the user writes is
unchanged. Regression test in `test_config`.

## 5. Thread list is cramped

**Observed:** rows are tightly packed, everything is uniform, the UI reads as
"stuffed".

**Approach:** presentation only, no model changes.

- Row height: give the `QTableView` vertical breathing room.
- Alternating row colors, or a subtle separator.
- Make unread threads visually distinct (bold), which is the one distinction
  that carries real information and currently does not exist.
- Consider dropping a column. Look at what `ThreadListModel` exposes and ask
  whether every column earns its width.

**Caution:** do not hardcode colors. The app should follow the desktop palette;
a hand-picked grey that looks right on a light theme is unreadable on a dark
one. Use `QPalette` roles. This applied to `HtmlBuilder`'s CSS too, which was
split out as item 12 and **done on 2026-08-07**: its colours now derive from
the palette, with the secondary ones blended rather than fixed. The same rule
governs whatever this item adds to the thread list, and item 12's test, which
asserts that no colour appears that the palette did not supply, is the pattern
to copy.

### Refined by the user, 2026-08-04

Two concrete sub-items, from using the list rather than looking at it:

- **"All items look unread (bold), maybe use regular for read items?"**
  **Resolved 2026-08-07. The cause was a misconfigured desktop font, not code.**

  The user's Qt font was set to **Bold in qt6ct**, so every row rendered bold
  and nothing could stand out. Bold in the model was working correctly the
  whole time. Correcting the qt6ct setting fixed the original complaint on its
  own.

  **Read this before trusting any measurement in this file.** Three wrong
  conclusions were reached before that came out, and the reasoning behind each
  is worth keeping, because the same mistakes are easy to repeat.

  1. Dismissed from thread counts (99 unread against 4220 read), which
     explained why two screenshots looked alike but said nothing about whether
     bold rendered.
  2. Dismissed again by a probe counting lit pixels. Antialiasing makes a bold
     and a regular glyph light a similar number, so the metric read "identical"
     regardless of the truth. **Text width is the honest measure**: with the
     font misconfigured both weights measured 277px, and once corrected they
     measured 277px against 306px.
  3. Concluded that Qt or fontconfig was broken, from a bare `QTableView` with
     a plain `QStandardItemModel` painting two rows identically. That test was
     correct and its conclusion was wrong: the baseline font was already bold,
     so `setBold(true)` genuinely changed nothing.

  **The dimming was kept anyway**, and stands on its own merits rather than on
  that mistaken diagnosis. `ThreadListModel::readColour()` dims READ rows
  toward the background while unread keeps the palette's text colour. With 99
  unread among 4220 read, dimming the bulk carries the list better than
  emphasising the few, and it is a second cue that survives a font setting like
  the one that caused this. Bold still applies on top.

  **A caution for anyone adding another `ForegroundRole` cue.** Qt resolves
  that role into the palette and then prefers it over `HighlightedText`, so a
  model-supplied colour wins on a SELECTED row too. The dim is blended against
  the unselected background, so it landed as grey on the selection highlight,
  near unreadable. `SubjectDelegate::initStyleOption` reverses that, and the
  delegate is installed view-wide rather than on the subject column alone so
  every column gets the same handling.

  **One test had to be rewritten when the font was corrected.**
  `aSelectedReadThreadIsNotDimmedIntoTheHighlight` originally compared a
  selected read row against a selected unread one and required them to paint
  identically. That only held because every row was bold; with bold working,
  the unread row differs legitimately. It now asserts the resolved palette
  rather than pixels, which is the property the fix actually changes.

- **A star column for flagged threads**, mirroring the paperclip column that
  already exists for attachments. `ThreadSummary` carries the tags and
  `flagged` is an ordinary notmuch tag, so this needs no new worker query, the
  same way item 15's paperclip did not. Keep it narrow: an icon column, no
  text. **Done 2026-08-07**, as `FlagColumn` beside `AttachmentColumn`, using
  the same glyph-with-ASCII-fallback pattern (`flagGlyph()`).

### Built 2026-08-07, and what the layout cost

The row is roughly doubled in height, with the tags shown as chips beneath the
subject, alternating row colours, and the star column above.

**The tag strip is painted by the VIEW, not by a delegate**, which is why
`ThreadListView` exists at all. A delegate is handed one cell's rectangle and
cannot paint outside its column, so a strip drawn from the subject column's
delegate stops at that column's edge, losing the last tags of a well-tagged
thread, and starts at that column's left edge, which puts it under the subject
rather than under the row. The user asked for it under the whole row:

```
[ date ][ from ][ subject ...................... ]
    [ pill ][ pill ][ pill ]
```

**Which tags appear.** Everything except `inbox`, `unread`, `flagged`,
`attachment` and the account tag, since the row already shows those as
structure, dimming, the star, the paperclip and the chip. Sorted, because
notmuch's order is not guaranteed stable and a row whose chips reordered
between repaints would flicker.

**Six defects were introduced and fixed while building this**, every one of
them a consequence of the same thing: a `QTableView` paints PER CELL, and a
row-wide strip is not a cell. Worth listing, because each is easy to
reintroduce.

1. `SubjectDelegate` was installed view-wide to spread the selection fix
   across every column. It reads `AccountLabelRole`, which belongs to the row,
   so every column drew the account chip. Split into `RowStyleDelegate` (the
   selection fix, every column) and `SubjectDelegate` (chip, subject column
   only), with a `Q_ASSERT` guarding the latter.
2. Row height was returned from `sizeHint`, which does nothing: a table takes
   ONE height per row, so a hint from a single column applies only if the view
   happens to ask that column. Set on the vertical header instead.
3. The strip used `viewportMargins().left()`, which is 0, so it painted from
   the viewport edge across the marker columns. It compiled because the method
   is protected and the call was inside the subclass.
4. The text band and the strip were measured with one font, so the pills rode
   up over the date and sender.
5. Alternating colours and the selection are painted per cell, so the strip's
   band showed the bare viewport background as a stripe across every other
   row. The view now fills that band itself, and must honour three cases: the
   model's own `BackgroundRole` first (a deleted thread's fill would otherwise
   be cut in half), then the selection, then the alternating colour.
6. That fill spanned the full width, and the marker glyphs are centred in the
   full row height, so its top edge cut the paperclip and star at their
   midpoint. The band starts at the date column now.

**A note on verifying any of this.** Several rendering probes written during
this work returned results that were confidently wrong: counting "lit" pixels
cannot tell bold from regular, since antialiasing lights a similar number
either way, and `viewport()->render()` returned a blank image more than once.
Text width distinguishes weights; a strict pixel diff distinguishes renders;
an ink count distinguishes nothing. Two versions of the strip's own test passed
under mutation before one was written that matched the exact chip colours the
model supplies.

## 6. Opened message stays unread

**Observed:** opening a message leaves it tagged unread; the user expects it to
become read.

**Decision (user, 2026-08-03): mark read after a 2 second delay, configurable.**

**Approach:**

- A `QTimer` started in `onThreadSelected()` (`src/mainwindow.cpp:373`), fired
  once, removing the `unread` tag from the displayed thread.
- The timer **must** be restarted, not stacked, when the selection changes.
  Arrowing quickly down a list must not mark ten threads read; only the one
  still selected when the timer fires.
- **Decided (user, 2026-08-03): the automatic mark-read does NOT go on the undo
  stack.** The tag change routes through `sendThreadTagChange()` directly,
  bypassing the `ThreadTagCommand` push, exactly as an explicit non-undoable
  mutation would. Rationale: a manual toggle-unread action already exists
  (`toggle_unread`, `src/mainwindow.cpp:242`), so a user who wants the message
  back as unread has a direct route and does not need undo for it. Leaving a
  message read after undoing an unrelated archive is acceptable; hijacking
  Ctrl+Z to undo an action the user never took is not.
- Consequence to keep in mind: `applyTags` is the funnel for all mutations per
  `CLAUDE.md`, and that stays true. What changes is only whether the inverse is
  pushed onto the `QUndoStack`, which is a `MainWindow` decision made above the
  worker. Do not add a second write path to the worker for this.
- Config key in `[general]`, e.g. `mark_read_delay_ms`, default `2000`, with `0`
  meaning "immediately" and a negative value meaning "never". Document all
  three in the README.
- Interaction with item 3's toggle-unread action: if the user explicitly marks a
  message unread, the timer must not immediately re-mark it read. Cancel the
  pending timer on any manual unread toggle.

**Verification:** unit-testable against the throwaway notmuch database the
`NotmuchWorker` tests already build, but the timer logic itself is UI-side and
easier to check by hand. At minimum, verify the rapid-arrow case manually.

### Outcome (done)

Built as specced, including every decision recorded above: a 2000 ms default,
`mark_read_delay_ms` in `[general]`, the automatic change kept off the undo
stack via `sendThreadTagChange()`, and an explicit `toggle_unread` cancelling
any pending timer.

**The rapid-arrow case is unit-tested, not left to hand-checking.** The plan
expected it to need a database and a person; it needs neither. `ThreadListModel`
takes threads directly through `appendBatch()`, so a test builds three unread
rows, arrows through them, and asserts one timer stays armed. The timer carries
an object name so the test observes it through `findChild` rather than the
window exposing it.

**The three tests were verified by breaking the code**, since a passing test
proves nothing until it has been seen to fail:

- Removing the already-read check arms a timer for a read thread, caught.
- Creating a fresh timer per selection instead of restarting one, which is
  precisely the stacking the plan warns about, fails two of the three.

**Two guards the plan did not call for**, both from asking what happens when
the timer outlives its thread. `scheduleMarkRead()` refuses to arm for a thread
that is not unread, so a read thread never schedules a write that would change
nothing. `markCurrentThreadRead()` re-checks that the thread it was armed for
is still selected AND still unread before writing, so a timer that survives a
selection change or a manual toggle does nothing rather than tagging the wrong
thread.

## 7. HTML view should be default for HTML messages

**Verify before doing anything.** `MessageView::m_preferHtml` is already
initialized to `true` (`src/messageview.h`), and `clear()` resets it to `true`
(`src/messageview.cpp:164`). HTML should already be preferred where a message
offers it.

Possible explanations for the observation:

- The messages in question are `multipart/alternative` and `HtmlBuilder`'s
  `PreferHtml` mode is not selecting the HTML part correctly.
- The HTML renders, but with remote content blocked it looks like plain text.
- `m_preferHtml` is being reset between messages by a `clear()` the user did not
  intend to trigger.

Reproduce first with a specific message, then decide. If it turns out to work
correctly, the item becomes a documentation gap rather than a bug, and the
user-preference key mentioned in the note (`prefer_html`, `[general]`) is still
worth adding for people who want plain text by default.

**Do not**, in the course of this, relax anything in the web view security
section of `CLAUDE.md`. Preferring HTML is orthogonal to remote content, which
stays blocked and per-render.

### Outcome (done, 2026-08-04): nothing was broken

**Verified by the user against real mail: HTML messages do open as HTML.** The
item was raised on an observation that could not be reproduced afterwards, and
the code was already correct: `m_preferHtml` initialises to `true` and `clear()`
resets it to `true`, so every thread starts in `PreferHtml`.

No code changed. Recorded as done rather than dropped, since the behaviour the
item asked for is the behaviour that ships.

The `prefer_html` config key the item floated for people who want plain text by
default was **not** added: nobody has asked for it, and `toggle_html`
(`Ctrl+H`) already switches a thread by hand. Add it if someone wants the
default flipped, not before.

## 10. Reaching an account's inbox takes two steps

**Observed:** select account from the dropdown, then click inbox or unread.

**Approach:** cheapest useful fix first.

- Persist the selected account across restarts (uses item 1's state file). If
  the user reads one account 90% of the time, this alone removes most of the
  friction.
- Then: per-account entries in a menu, or saved queries that carry their own
  account scope, so one action gets there. `Account::scopedQuery()` already
  exists in `Config`, so the composition is available; it is a UI question, not
  a query question.

Do not build a full account sidebar for this. Persisting the selection may
resolve the complaint entirely, and it is a fraction of the work. Reassess after.

### Partly done

**The startup query is now chosen by name**, not by sort order. `[queries]` is
read through `childKeys()`, which sorts alphabetically, so the old
`savedQueries().first()` opened whichever entry happened to sort first, which
is why the app came up on Inbox. `[general] startup_query` names the entry,
defaults to `Unread`, and falls back to the first saved query when the name
matches nothing. Only a name the user wrote is worth a warning: the built-in
default naming a query they never created is not something they got wrong.

Neither half of item 10 proper is done: the account selection still resets on
restart, and reaching an account's inbox is still two steps.

### Postponed (user, 2026-08-04)

**The user does not intend to go this route as of now.** Postponed rather than
dropped: the complaint was real, and the cheap fix the item proposes (persist
the account selection across restarts) is still the right first move if it is
picked up again. Nothing here is invalidated, it is simply not wanted yet.

Only the startup-query half shipped, in 0.3.0. Do not propose the remaining
work unprompted.

## 11. Icon, `.desktop` file, SlackBuild

Packaging, independent of everything above, and can proceed in parallel.

- **Icon:** an SVG plus rendered PNGs at the standard hicolor sizes. Needs a
  design decision, not just code.
- **`.desktop` file:** `Categories=Network;Email;`, `Terminal=false`,
  `MimeType=x-scheme-handler/mailto;` only if a `mailto:` handler is actually
  implemented, which it is not in 0.1.0. Do not claim the MIME type until it
  works; a desktop entry that registers as the mail handler and then does
  nothing is worse than not registering.
- **CMake install rules:** icon into `share/icons/hicolor/<size>/apps/`, desktop
  file into `share/applications/`. Neither exists yet.
- **SlackBuild:** per the global workflow, sources are authored here and the
  user builds. Deliverables are `qtmaildir.SlackBuild`, `.info`, `README`,
  `slack-desc`, plus an nvchecker stanza. Depends on a tagged release existing
  to point `DOWNLOAD` at, so it follows a tag rather than leading it.

---

## 12. Message pane is light-theme only

**Split from item 5**, which recorded the rule against hardcoded colours.
Listed in the deferred table until it was picked up on 2026-08-07.

**Observed:** the user runs a dark desktop (`color-scheme: prefer-dark`), and
plain-text mail rendered as black on white inside a dark window.

**Cause (verified in code):** `kStyle` in `src/htmlbuilder.cpp` hardcoded
`#bbb`, `#555`, `#000`, `#666`, `#ddd` and `#4a6f8a`, and set **no background
at all**, so the web view's own default showed through whatever the desktop
was.

**Approach as built.** A `HtmlBuilder::Palette` struct passed into
`build`/`buildThread`, derived from a `QPalette` by `paletteFrom()`. Passed in
rather than read from `qApp` inside the builder, so the stylesheet can be
tested against a known palette with no running application.

- **`Base` and `Text`, not `Window` and `WindowText`.** The pane is a content
  surface like a text edit, and on many themes `Base` differs from `Window`.
- **The derived colours are blends, not fixed greys.** This is the part that
  makes it work both ways round: a `#555` chosen to read as "subtle" on white
  is nearly invisible on `#2b2b2b`. `dim` and `border` are mixes of text and
  background, so they land at the right contrast whichever way the theme goes.
- The quote colour keeps its hue, since "this is quoted" is carried by being a
  different colour rather than a dimmer one, but it is pulled toward the
  background so it stays readable rather than glowing on dark.

Measured on the user's actual theme: background `#2b2b2b`, text `#dedede`, dim
`#969696`, border `#585858`, quote `#6490b0`.

**Scope, and it is asserted in a test so it cannot drift.** A message that
brings its own HTML brings its own colours, and those are left alone.
Rewriting a sender's styling would break layouts that depend on it, and a
newsletter that sets a white background is entitled to stay white. This item
themes the plain-text render and the chrome around messages, nothing else. So
HTML-heavy mail will still look light, correctly.

**`MessageView` passes its own widget palette**, not the application's: a style
sheet or a themed parent can give the pane different colours from `qApp`. It
also re-renders on `QEvent::PaletteChange`, because the document's colours are
baked into its stylesheet at build time and it does not restyle itself the way
a widget does; without that, switching the desktop theme would leave the open
thread on the old palette until the next selection.

**Verification.** The load-bearing test asserts the **negative**: no hex colour
appears in the `<style>` block that the palette did not supply. A test that
only checks the palette's colours are present passes with a leftover literal
still in place, and a single leftover literal is the entire defect. Confirmed
by mutation: putting one hardcoded colour back fails it.

## 13. No visual feedback that an action stuck

**Observed:** selecting a thread and hitting Delete changed nothing on screen.
No way to tell whether the thread was really going to be deleted on the next
sync, which is bad UX for every tag action, not only delete.

**Cause:** not a missing update. `ThreadListModel::applyTagChange()` already
added the tag and emitted `dataChanged` across the whole row, so the Tags
column did change. But `SubjectColumn` was set to `QHeaderView::Stretch` while
`TagsColumn` came after it, so Subject absorbed all free width and pushed Tags
out of view. The feedback existed in the one column that could not be seen.

**Approach:** two changes, since the cause was two things.

- Column order is now Tags, Date, From, Subject. Subject stretches and is
  last, so nothing sits to its right to be pushed out. The other three size
  to their contents.
- A thread tagged `deleted` or `spam` styles its entire row: muted dark red
  (`#8b2c2c`) or orange (`#a85c18`) fill, white text, struck through. Applied
  through `Qt::BackgroundRole`, `Qt::ForegroundRole` and `Qt::FontRole` for
  every column, so no cue depends on a single column staying visible.

Strike-through rides along with the fill deliberately: it survives a theme
that overrides background colours, a colourblind reader, and a screenshot.
Bold for unread still composes with it.

**Decisions:** no status-bar or toast changes, the existing `tagSelected()`
message stays as it is. Archive removes `inbox` and adds nothing, so an
archived thread gets no row styling; whether it should disappear from an inbox
query is deliberately left open rather than guessed at.

**Verification:** four model tests covering the colours, the strike-through,
that styling spans every column, and that undo restores a plain row. Rendered
and inspected: normal, unread, deleted, spam, and deleted-plus-unread rows.

---

## 14. Tag column unreadable

**Observed:** with tags spelled out per row the column ran to 500 pixels of
mostly repeated text (a 33-character account tag followed by "attachment
flagged inbox passed replied"), dominated by the account prefix, and consumed
most of the list's width.

**Cause:** presentation, not data. 96 tags in this database, many hierarchical
(`shopping/amazon`, `mailing-list/SBo`), rendered as a joined string.

**Approach:** the column is gone. Tags now render as coloured chips in two
places, split by taxonomy:

- The **account tag** says which mailbox a thread came from. It draws as a chip
  in front of the subject, coloured and labelled from its own `[account.<key>]`
  stanza via new `color` and `label` keys. `label` is display-only; the notmuch
  tag is never renamed.
- **Functional tags** say what state a thread is in. They fill a single row
  under the message pane, with overflow collapsing into a `+N` chip whose
  tooltip lists the hidden ones. A single row keeps the message area from
  shifting between threads with different tag counts.

Colours resolve exact tag first, then top-level prefix, so one `shopping` entry
covers the hierarchy without listing all 96. Unconfigured tags fall back to a
hash of the name, stable so a chip never changes colour as the list scrolls.

**Defect found while building:** QSettings treats `/` in a key as a group
separator, so `shopping/amazon` becomes a nested key that `childKeys()` never
returns. Reading `[tagcolors]` with `childKeys()` silently dropped every
hierarchical tag, and each fell through to its prefix colour. Fixed by reading
`allKeys()`, with a regression test. The same gotcha is already documented in
`CLAUDE.md` for `[account.work]` section names.

**Deferred:** clicking a chip to search that tag. Display only for now.

## 15. Attachments are parsed but unreachable from the UI

**Observed, 2026-08-03, with a screenshot.** A thread known to carry
attachments shows the `attachment` chip and a body that refers to them, but
there is no way to download or open one. The user also has no way to tell a
message has an attachment before opening it.

**Cause: the attachment bar is an empty placeholder.**
`MessageView` creates `m_attachmentBar` and gives it a layout
(`src/messageview.cpp:130`), adds it to the pane (`:142`), and then **nothing
ever puts anything in it**. `m_attachmentBar` appears nowhere else in the
codebase, and neither `render()` nor `showThread()` reads
`ParsedMessage::attachments`. The bar has never displayed an attachment.

This is a gap in the UI only. The backend is complete and already hardened:
`MimeParser` fills `attachments`, and `Attachment` has `safeFilename()`,
`saveTo()` and `isPathInsideDirectory()` with the path-traversal guard
`CLAUDE.md` describes. None of that work needs redoing; it needs calling.

**Approach, two independent pieces.**

- *Populate the bar.* For each attachment on each rendered message, one button
  showing the safe filename and the size. Clicking saves, through a
  `QFileDialog` for the target directory, then `Attachment::saveTo()`. Report
  the written path in the status bar, since a silent save is the same UX
  failure as item 13.
- *A paperclip column in the thread list*, so an attachment is visible before
  opening. `ThreadSummary` already carries the thread's tags and notmuch
  applies `attachment`, so the column can be driven from the existing tag data
  with **no new worker query**. Keep it narrow: an icon column, no text.

**Constraints.**

- **Filenames are untrusted.** Display `safeFilename()`, never the raw
  `filename`, and never interpolate either into rich text without escaping.
  The save path must go through `saveTo()`, which is where the boundary check
  lives.
- **Do not add "open in default application" in the same change.** That means
  handing a file from a stranger to `xdg-open`, which is a materially
  different security decision from writing it to a directory the user picked.
  If it is wanted, it is its own item with its own reasoning.
- A thread renders as one document, so the bar must make clear which message
  an attachment belongs to once a thread has several. Grouping by message, or
  a per-message row inside the HTML, are both plausible; decide when building.

**Verification:** a message with a known attachment saves a byte-identical
file. A message with an attachment named `../../etc/passwd` writes inside the
chosen directory under a sanitised name and nowhere else.

### Outcome (done)

Both halves built. The paperclip column needed no new worker query, as the
plan expected: notmuch applies the `attachment` tag itself, so
`ThreadSummary::hasAttachment()` reads what is already there.

**The bar holds ONE button, not one per file.** The plan's "one button showing
the filename and size" was built first and was wrong: a thread with sixteen
attachments made the bar as wide as the window, pushed the splitter over, and
left the thread list a few pixels wide. It is now `Attachments (N)...` opening
a dialog that lists message number, filename and size with a `Save...` each,
plus `Save all...` when there is more than one. No filename reaches the bar,
so no filename length can resize anything.

**`Save all` writes into a new subdirectory** named `<date> <subject>`, inside
a parent the user picks. Chosen over zipping: Qt ships no zip API, so a real
`.zip` meant either a new build dependency (quazip, libzip) or shelling to
`/usr/bin/zip` at runtime, and the actual requirement was "do not drop sixteen
files loose among hundreds of others". The picker's title names the subfolder
before the user commits to a location.

**Two defects found only by using it, both silent:**

- **`saveTo()` overwrites, which destroyed six of sixteen files.** Several
  messages in one thread commonly attach the same filename; each write landed
  on the previous one and every one reported success, so the status line said
  16 while the directory held 10. `saveWithoutOverwriting()` now backs the
  batch path, appending " (2)" before the extension and keeping a compound
  extension whole. `saveTo()` still overwrites, which is right for a single
  save the user just chose a location for.
- **`Qt::RFC2822Date` rejects a date carrying a timezone comment.** A header
  ending `+0200 (CEST)` is legal per RFC 5322 and common in real mail, and Qt
  refuses the whole string rather than the comment, so every such message lost
  its date prefix. Comments are stripped before parsing.

**The subject is untrusted and becomes a directory name.**
`attachmentFolderName()` lives beside the other guards in `mimeparser.cpp`,
strips separators, control characters and leading dots, caps length at 120,
and falls back to a generated name. Its test drives `../../etc`,
`/etc/passwd`, `..`, `.hidden`, a backslash and a null byte, then asserts each
result still resolves inside the parent through `isPathInsideDirectory()`.

**Deferred, as the plan required:** opening an attachment in its default
application. That hands a stranger's file to `xdg-open` and is a separate
decision from writing it to a directory the user chose.

## 16. Delete on an already-deleted thread should undelete

**Observed:** hitting Delete twice on the same message is a natural way to
express "no, put it back", but the second press does nothing visible because
adding a tag that is already present is a no-op.

**Approach:** make `delete` a toggle, the way `toggle_unread` already is.
Deleting a thread that already carries `deleted` removes it instead.

**Constraints.**

- **A multi-row selection must not split.** If some selected threads are
  deleted and others are not, toggling each independently leaves the selection
  in two states from one keystroke, which is worse than either outcome. Decide
  one direction for the whole selection: the natural rule is "if every
  selected thread is already deleted, undelete them all; otherwise delete them
  all."
- Undo already covers the mistake case, so this is a convenience, not a safety
  fix. It must not grow a confirmation dialog.
- The same question applies to `spam` and `flag`. Do not change those in this
  item; note whether the answer generalises once `delete` is built.

### Outcome (done)

Built as specced, including the all-or-nothing rule: undelete only when every
selected thread already carries `deleted`, otherwise delete the whole selection.
A test covers the mixed case and passed before the change, since the old
always-delete behaviour satisfies it; it is there to stop a later "improvement"
from toggling per row.

**It generalises to `spam` and `flag`, and they were still left alone.** The
same shape would work, but neither has been asked for, and `flag` in particular
is already reachable both ways through the tag dialog.

## 17. No completion for tags in the query bar

**Observed:** typing a query means remembering the exact tag name, including
hierarchy (`shopping/amazon`).

**Approach:** a `QCompleter` on the query bar, offering tag names after
`tag:`.

**Cause of the work being larger than it looks:** there is **no way to list
tags today**. `NotmuchWorker` has no all-tags call, so this needs a new
worker request and result signal, following the existing generation-counter
pattern. `notmuch_database_get_all_tags()` is the underlying call.

**Constraints.**

- The tag list must be fetched on the worker thread like everything else. No
  `notmuch_*` pointer crosses the thread boundary; the result is a
  `QStringList`.
- Refresh after a sync, since a sync can introduce tags. Do not refetch per
  keystroke.
- Completion should trigger on the `tag:` prefix specifically rather than on
  every word, or it will offer tag names where a `from:` value belongs.

---

## 18. No visual cue that there are unsynced edits

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** tagging changes the notmuch index immediately,
but nothing in the UI says those changes have not reached the mail store. The
user cannot tell, at a glance, whether quitting now would leave work stranded.

**Cause: nothing tracks it, and the obvious candidate cannot.** `MainWindow`
holds a `QUndoStack` (`src/mainwindow.h:142`) which looks like a record of
pending edits, but it is **cleared on every query**
(`src/mainwindow.cpp:805`, in the query-start path) because undo entries refer
to rows the new result set is about to discard. Tag a thread, then run any
query, and the stack is empty while the database change is still unsynced. The
same clear happens on a failed write (`:902`).

So `QUndoStack::isClean()` is **not** usable as the signal here, and neither is
`canUndo()`. This needs its own counter, one that only a successful sync
resets.

**Approach:**

- Count confirmed mutations, incremented where `tagsApplied` is handled (the
  same place that already clears `m_pendingChange`), and reset to zero on
  `MailSync::finished(true, ...)`. A count, not a bool, so the indicator can
  say how many.
- Show it in the status bar, next to the existing sync status rather than as a
  new widget competing with it. Wording should name the unit the user thinks
  in: threads or messages changed, not "mutations".
- Nothing modal, nothing blocking. This item is the passive cue only; the
  question of interrupting the user belongs to item 19.

**Constraints:**

- **A failed sync must not clear the count.** `finished(false, ...)` means the
  edits are still unsynced, and clearing there would assert the opposite.
- The count must survive a query, which is the whole reason it cannot ride on
  the undo stack. Do not tie its lifetime to the model.
- An external `notmuch new` from the user's cron can sync changes without the
  app knowing. The count is therefore a lower bound on confidence, not a
  guarantee, and the wording should not promise more than it knows.

**Verification:** tag a thread, run an unrelated query, confirm the cue
survives. Then sync and confirm it clears. Then make the sync fail and confirm
it does not.

### Outcome (done)

Built as specced. `m_pendingEdits` counts confirmed mutations, incremented in
`onTagsApplied()` and reset only by `onSyncFinished(true, ...)`. The count is
shown as a permanent status-bar widget, hidden entirely at zero.

**Counted where a write is confirmed, not where one is sent.** An optimistic
update the worker later rejects must not leave the indicator claiming an edit
that never landed, so the increment sits in the `tagsApplied` handler.

That handler was a lambda; it is now a named slot, which is both better
structure and what lets a test drive it. An earlier draft tried to reach the
worker with `findChild` to emit the real signal: the worker is deliberately
parentless because it moves to its own thread, so that cannot work, and
contorting the test to reach it was the wrong instinct. What matters is the
counter's behaviour, not the signal's origin.

**Both tests were verified by breaking the code.** Clearing the count on any
sync outcome is caught, and so is clearing it where the undo stack is cleared,
which is the naive design this item exists to avoid.

## 19. No prompt to sync on exit when edits are pending

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** quitting with unsynced edits is silent. The
user asked for a blocking prompt offering to sync first, and suggested a
`sync_on_exit` config option.

**Depends on item 18.** Both need the same "are there pending edits" counter,
and 18 establishes it. Build 18 first; this is the interruption layer on top.

**Cause:** `MainWindow::closeEvent()` (`src/mainwindow.cpp:145`) saves UI state
and accepts unconditionally. It never consults sync state, and cannot today,
for the reason item 18 documents.

**Approach:**

- On close with a non-zero pending count, a modal question: sync now, quit
  without syncing, or cancel. Three options, not two: a user who hit Quit by
  mistake needs a way back that is not "sync".
- `[general] sync_on_exit`, as the user suggested. Sensible values are `ask`
  (default, the prompt above), `always` (sync without asking), and `never`
  (quit silently, today's behavior). A bare true/false cannot express all
  three.
- Choosing to sync means the window must stay alive until `MailSync::finished`
  arrives, since killing the process mid-sync is exactly the data loss the
  prompt exists to prevent. Ignore the close event, show progress, and close on
  the finished signal.

**Constraints:**

- **This is not a destructive-action confirmation** and does not contradict
  `CLAUDE.md`'s rule against those. That rule is about tag mutations, which
  keep undo instead of a dialog. This asks about *losing* work at a point where
  undo no longer helps, which is the opposite situation.
- A sync that fails on exit must not silently discard the user's choice. Report
  it and leave the window open rather than quitting as if it had worked.
- Quitting must remain possible when the sync command is not configured at all.
  `MailSync::isAvailable()` is already false in that case, so the prompt should
  degrade to a plain warning with no sync option rather than offering one that
  cannot run.

**Verification:** by hand. Tag, quit, take each of the three branches. Then set
each `sync_on_exit` value and confirm the behavior matches. Then quit with a
deliberately broken sync command and confirm the app neither hangs nor lies.

### Outcome (done)

Built as specced, with the user confirming the three-value key over their
original on/off idea. `closeEvent()` consults the count, and a sync started for
exit holds the window open until `finished` arrives rather than being killed
mid-run.

**A failed exit-sync does not quit.** It restores the window, shows the log and
says what happened. Quitting there would discard the user's choice silently,
which is the exact failure the prompt exists to prevent.

**With no sync command configured the prompt degrades** to a warning offering
Discard or Cancel, rather than offering a sync that cannot run.
`MailSync::isAvailable()` is already false in that case.

**Testing a modal needs care, and the first attempt was wrong.** A test that
sends a close event hangs forever if an unexpected dialog opens, because the
modal spins its own event loop. The first version appeared to pass in 19
seconds; it had actually opened a real dialog on the user's screen, and the
user dismissed it. `CloseProbe` now polls for `activeModalWidget()`, closes it,
and records that one appeared, turning "a dialog opened" into an assertion
instead of a hang or a prompt for whoever is watching.

**One mutation test was a dud and is worth recording.** Removing the `Never`
guard from `closeEvent` did NOT make the test fail, because the branches below
match only `Ask` and `Always`, so `Never` fell through to closing anyway. The
guard is redundant belt-and-braces rather than load-bearing. Confirming the
probe really detects a prompt needed the config mutated to `ask` instead, which
does fail it.

## 20. Thread view does not match the user's mental model

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04), in passing while deciding item 2:** "My view for
the thread visualization was different than what was built, but that's ground
for a small refactor later."

**Specified 2026-08-08.** The user described the model with three Thunderbird
screenshots and four decisions. It is **not a message-pane redesign**: the
change is in the LEFT pane. A thread occupies one row carrying an "N replies"
affordance; expanding it reveals the replies as rows in the same list, indented
by reply depth; clicking one opens that single message in the reading pane. The
unit of selection stops being the thread and becomes the message, which is the
substance of the item and the source of its risk.

**Decisions taken (user, 2026-08-08), each closing an option that the
screenshots alone did not settle:**

1. **The root row IS the thread's first message**, not a thread-level summary
   row. Expanding reveals only the REPLIES, so a thread of 7 shows 1 root and 6
   children, matching "6 risposte" in the screenshot.
2. **A true reply tree, indented by depth**, not a flat chronological list of
   replies. notmuch supplies the structure via `notmuch_message_get_replies`.
   Deep chains indenting off-screen and malformed `References` headers producing
   misleading trees are accepted costs, to be capped in the view rather than
   flattened in the model.
3. **Action scope follows the selected row.** A message row acts on that
   message, a thread root acts on the whole thread.
4. **No confirmation dialog**, per this project's standing rule; the scope is
   made visible instead, in the status bar, BEFORE the action ("1 thread
   selected (7 messages)") and AFTER it ("Deleted 7 messages (whole thread)").
   The hazard this design introduces is not destruction, since `deleted` is a
   tag and every mutation is already invertible on the undo stack. It is
   **ambiguity**: with two kinds of row selectable, a keypress alone no longer
   says whether it hit one message or seven. Naming the scope removes the
   ambiguity where it exists, which a dialog on every correct action would not.
   The user asked for a warning popup, was shown the rule in `CLAUDE.md`, and
   chose this instead.

**Improvement the user named but deferred:** moving from one message to the next
within a thread without returning to the list. An addition on top, not part of
this item.

**No longer deferred, 2026-08-09.** Folded into the card-list spec, because it
turned out to be a defect repair rather than an addition: `next_thread` is
`selectRow(current.row() + 1)`, and in a tree that names a sibling, so from the
last reply of an expanded thread the action does nothing at all. Up/Down get the
behaviour for free from `QTreeView`'s own navigation, and Alt+Up/Down keep the
thread-to-thread jump.

**What exists today**, as the starting point: a thread is
one HTML document in one web view, messages stacked in chronological order,
each with a small grey `.msg-header` carrying From and Date
(`src/htmlbuilder.cpp:241`). Messages that did not match the query render as
stubs (`MessageRef::matched`, `src/types.h:63`). It is deliberately flat:
`CLAUDE.md` records that reply structure is available from notmuch but is not
drawn as an indented tree.

The single-document design is not incidental and constrains any redesign: a
`QWebEngineView` per message would spawn a Chromium render process each, which
is why the thread is one document and why `cid:` references are namespaced per
message. A refactor that splits messages into separate views has to answer that
cost first.

**What the codebase does not have yet**, verified 2026-08-08 rather than
assumed:

| Needed | Status today |
|---|---|
| Per-message From / Subject / Date | Absent. `MessageRef` (`src/types.h:54`) carries only id, path, tags, matched |
| Reply parent, for indentation | Not carried at all. notmuch has it, the worker never asks |
| A tree-capable left pane | `ThreadListModel` is a `QAbstractTableModel`; `ThreadListView` is a `QTableView` |
| Loading ONE message into the pane | Absent. The worker exposes `loadThread` only |
| An expand affordance on the row | Nothing |

**The two loads bearing the risk.**

*The view port.* `ThreadListView` exists because a delegate cannot paint outside
its column, so the tag strip is painted across the full row width in
`paintEvent`. That code is written against a table. Mitigating fact, checked
rather than hoped: every geometry call it uses (`rowAt`,
`rowViewportPosition`, `rowHeight`, `columnViewportPosition`) exists on
`QTreeView` with the same semantics, so this is a port, not a rewrite. What does
NOT carry over is `isRowSelected(int)`, and the strip must not paint under
child rows the way it does under thread roots.

*The selection semantics.* Every action path today assumes a selected row is a
thread: `applyTagsToThreads` resolves `thread:a or thread:b`, and the undo stack
and pending-edit map are thread-scoped throughout. Mitigating fact: they all
funnel through `m_model->threadAt(current.row())`, so the row-to-thread mapping
is centralised rather than smeared across call sites.

**Size: L.** Larger than anything else in this backlog, and the first item to
warrant a feature branch (`item-20-message-rows`, 2026-08-08). It is a left-pane
model and view replacement plus a selection-scope change, not a refactor.

**Built 2026-08-08 across ten tasks, on the branch `item-20-message-rows`, and
rejected on sight.** All four decisions were implemented: message rows in the
left pane, the root row as the thread's first message, replies indented by
depth, action scope following the selected row kind and named in the status bar.
15 test binaries green, 65 tests in `test_mainwindow` alone, ten mutation checks.

**That branch was never merged and is kept at 029a50e as the record of the
rejected presentation.** What reached master on 2026-08-10 is the card list,
built on top of it: the model, the reply walk and `MessageNode` survived intact,
and the five-column grid they were drawn into did not. Read item 53 for the
diagnosis.

**The user's verdict on the result: not convinced it fits.** Recorded here
rather than in a commit message, because the item shipped working and the
reservation is about the DESIGN, not about a defect. See item 53, which carries
the diagnosis. Do not treat item 20 as a success story to build on without
reading it.

**A cheaper alternative was offered and declined.** Collapsible `<details>`
blocks per message inside the existing single-document message pane would have
delivered per-message inspection at size S, touching only `htmlbuilder.cpp` and
neither fragile area, but gives no message rows in the list and no reply-tree
indentation. The user chose the full model deliberately.

## 21. Default shortcuts are not sensible enough

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** "improve the default shortcuts to some sensed
defaults."

**Unspecified in detail**, so ask which bindings feel wrong before proposing a
table. What is worth recording is the history, because the defaults have
already moved once and the reasons still constrain any second pass.

**Where the current defaults came from.** 0.1.0 used bare letters. They were
replaced in the 0.2.0 menu work for two reasons that have not gone away: a
single letter cannot be a menu accelerator without claiming that letter
window-wide, and a bare capital such as `N` parses to an unshifted `Key_N`,
which no keystroke emits, so `toggle_unread`, `flag` and `sync` were dead keys
that appeared to be bound. See `KeyMap::defaultBindings()` and
`normalizeSequence()`.

**Constraints on any new default.**

- **Do not test reachability with synthetic input.** `QTest::keyClick()` does
  not reproduce a keyboard layout: it reported `Ctrl++` as dead when it is
  exactly what the `+` key emits on the user's Italian layout. Verify against
  the real keyboard, as `CLAUDE.md` records.
- Every binding is overridable in `[keys]`, so this is about what a fresh
  install feels like, not about what is possible.
- `Return` is a special case already resolved: it belongs to `open_thread` but
  the query bar claims it back while focused, so a proposal that moves it must
  not resurrect that bug.

## 22. Translatability audit and i18n wiring

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** "a full check of the codebase and wiring up of
the i18n system."

**This is a debt `CLAUDE.md` already records.** The rule that every user-facing
string must be wrapped in `tr()` was added while building query completion, and
that file states plainly that "pre-existing code has not been audited against
this rule". This item is that audit, plus the loading machinery which does not
exist at all.

**Two halves, and they are different sizes.**

- *The audit.* Every user-visible string in `src/` checked for `tr()`, with the
  translation context correct: a string in a free function needs
  `Q_DECLARE_TR_FUNCTIONS`, since calling `QObject::tr()` compiles but files it
  under the wrong context. `lupdate` output is the evidence here, not reading.
- *The wiring.* Nothing loads a `.qm` file today: there is no `QTranslator` in
  `main.cpp`, no `.ts` files in the tree, and no CMake rule to build or install
  them. Until that exists, a translated string has nowhere to come from.

**Constraint:** query syntax is not user-facing text. notmuch keywords such as
`tag:` and `date:` are wire format and must never be translated, only the prose
describing them. The completion vocabulary is exactly this trap: the values are
literal, the descriptions are prose.

**Verification:** run `lupdate` and read the generated `.ts`. A string that
does not appear there is not translatable, whatever the source looks like.

## 23. No way to save a search query from the UI

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** saved queries live in the config file only.
There is no way to keep a query you have just written without editing
`qtmaildir.conf` by hand.

**Approach, and one real design question.**

- A "save this query" action that names the current query bar contents and adds
  it to `[queries]`.
- The user's own suggestion for presentation: **a few sensible ones as buttons,
  the rest behind a menu.** Today `SavedQueryBar` shows them all, which does not
  scale past a handful.

**The design question is where the write goes.** `qtmaildir.conf` is hand-edited
and owned by the user, and item 1 established the rule that machine-written
state belongs in `uistate.conf` instead, precisely because QSettings preserves
neither comments nor key order and would quietly reformat the file on write.
Saved queries are not machine state though: they are user intent, they belong
with the hand-written ones, and splitting them across two files so the UI can
avoid touching one would be worse than either option. Decide explicitly, and
say so in the README whichever way it goes.

**Relation to item 10.** Item 10 is postponed, but its second half proposed
exactly this: "saved queries that carry their own account scope, so one action
gets there". If saved queries gain an account scope here, item 10 may be
answered as a side effect rather than needing its own work.

## 24. No right-click actions on the thread list

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** "right click actions on the list (left pane)".

**Cause: there is no context menu anywhere in the application.** No
`contextMenuEvent` override and no `Qt::CustomContextMenu` policy in `src/`;
grep finds neither. Right-clicking a thread does nothing at all.

**Approach.** The actions already exist as `QAction`s from item 3, so this is
presentation rather than new behaviour: set `Qt::CustomContextMenu` on the
thread view and build the menu from `m_actions`, exactly as `buildMenus()`
already does. Nothing should be reachable from the context menu that is not
reachable from the menu bar, or the two drift.

**Constraints.**

- **Show the shortcut in the menu**, which a `QAction` does for free. The
  context menu is where a mouse user discovers the key for next time, and this
  backlog exists because the app did not teach its own bindings.
- The menu must act on the **selection**, not on the row under the cursor, or
  right-clicking inside a multi-row selection would silently act on one thread.
  Qt does not do this for you: right-clicking does not change the selection, so
  the row under the cursor and the selected rows can differ.
- Include the destructive entries (archive, delete, spam) without a
  confirmation dialog, per `CLAUDE.md`. Undo covers them.

## 25. No select-all, and bulk actions are undiscoverable

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** "bulk select/select all for defined actions?
tags, read/unread, archive, delete".

**Cause: half of this already works, and nothing says so.** The thread view is
already `QAbstractItemView::ExtendedSelection` (`src/mainwindow.cpp:408`), and
`tagSelected()` already acts on every `selectedRows()` entry, resolving them in
ONE combined query per `CLAUDE.md`. Ctrl+click and Shift+click therefore do
bulk tagging today.

What is genuinely missing is smaller than the item sounds:

- **No select-all action.** `selectAll` appears once in `src/`, on the query
  bar, not the thread list. There is no `Ctrl+A` for the list and no menu entry.
- **No indication that multi-select exists.** With no context menu (item 24) and
  no selection count anywhere, a user has no reason to think Ctrl+click will do
  anything useful.

**Approach.** Add a `select_all` action bound to `Ctrl+A`, scoped to the thread
list rather than the window, so it does not steal Ctrl+A from the query bar.
Then surface the selection size: the status bar already reports "%1: %n
thread(s)" after a tag action, and saying how many rows are selected before one
is the same idea a moment earlier.

**Constraint: verify what a large selection costs before encouraging one.**
Select-all over a 10k-thread query makes `tagSelected()` build a 10k-id list and
`applyTagsToThreads()` one enormous `thread:a or thread:b or ...` query. The
combined-query design is what makes this plausible at all, but "plausible" is
not "measured", and this item is the one that turns a rare accident into a
routine keystroke. Measure it against a real query before shipping the binding.

## 26. No way to add or remove an arbitrary tag from the UI

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04), as a question:** "as it is today, how do I add a
new tag to a message?" The answer is that you cannot. The only route is
`notmuch tag` in a terminal, or the companion `mailctl`.

**Cause: every tagging action writes a hardcoded tag name.** `registerActions()`
offers exactly five: `archive` (removes `inbox`), `delete` (adds `deleted`),
`spam` (adds `spam`, removes `inbox`), `flag` (adds `flagged`) and
`toggle_unread`. Nothing accepts a tag the user types. For an application whose
entire purpose is organising mail by tag, that is a conspicuous hole, and it is
the reason this item exists at all rather than being folded into item 25.

**The machinery is already complete.** `tagSelected(add, remove, description)`
takes arbitrary lists and is the single funnel every mutation already uses;
`applyTagsToThreads()` resolves a multi-row selection in one combined query;
undo works through `TagChange::inverted()`; and `QueryCompleter` already holds
every tag in the database, refreshed on the worker thread. This item is a
dialog and two actions, not new plumbing.

**Approach.**

- An `add_tag` action opening a small dialog with a line edit, and a `remove_tag`
  counterpart. Both act on the whole selection, like every other tag action.
- **Complete against the known tag list.** The completer's tag vocabulary is the
  same data, so offering it here costs nothing and prevents the obvious failure
  mode: typing `shoppping` and silently creating a new tag next to `shopping`.
  This is the strongest argument for the dialog over a free-text prompt.
- Removing should offer the tags actually present on the selection rather than
  every tag in the database, since removing a tag that is not there is a no-op
  the user cannot see.

**Constraints.**

- **A tag name is not free text.** notmuch accepts a lot, but a leading `-`, an
  embedded space or an empty string will produce confusing results or a failed
  write. Validate before sending, and say what was rejected.
- No confirmation dialog, per `CLAUDE.md`; undo covers a mistyped tag.
- A tag the user invents is new to the completer, and `onTagsApplied()` already
  refreshes the list when a mutation introduces an unknown tag, so that path is
  in place and should be relied on rather than duplicated.

### Outcome (done)

Built as the user chose: one **Edit tags** dialog on `Ctrl+T` rather than
separate add and remove actions, since filing something under a new tag while
dropping `inbox` is one thought.

`TagDialog` is pure UI in `qtmaildir_lib`. It is handed the vocabulary and the
selection's current tags and returns two lists; it contacts no worker and holds
no database handle, which is what lets fifteen tests run without a notmuch
database. Integration is one call to the existing `tagSelected()`, so undo, the
optimistic model update, the one-query multi-row resolution and the completer
refresh all come for free.

**Tri-state is the part that needed the tests.** With several threads selected a
tag can be on some, and `PartiallyChecked` means "leave alone" rather than
"apply to all". The opposite reading silently tags threads the user never
looked at. `m_fullyTagged` exists for the neighbouring case: a tag already on
every thread and left checked is not a change and must not be sent as one.

**Validation is a free function** so the rules are testable directly. It rejects
empty, a leading `-` (notmuch's CLI reads that as removal, so such a tag is a
trap), whitespace, and control characters. Nothing is applied until every name
passes, since a half-applied change is worse than none: the user cannot tell
which half landed.

**One test assumption was wrong and the code was right.** A case asserted that
`QStringLiteral("null\0byte")` truncates at the null and reads as Empty. It
does not; the literal is kept whole, so the null is caught as a control
character. The test was corrected, not the validator.

Rendered and inspected rather than only asserted.

## 27. The UI cannot see a sync it did not start

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04), as a question:** "will the status bar be aware of
cronjob fired syncs?" It is not. The progress bar and the busy state are driven
by `MailSync`'s own `QProcess`, so they know only about syncs this window
started. The user's cron timer fires every ten minutes and the application is
blind to it.

**The lock file is already the signal; no new file is needed.** `mailsync.sh`
does `exec 200>"$LOCKFILE"` and then `flock -n 200` on `/tmp/mbsync.lock`.
Another process can test whether that lock is held, without disturbing it, by
opening the same path on its own descriptor and attempting `flock(LOCK_EX |
LOCK_NB)`: the attempt fails exactly when someone holds it, and succeeds
otherwise, in which case the tester drops it again immediately.

This is better than the status file first proposed. A kernel lock **cannot go
stale**: it is released when the holding process dies, however it dies. A status
file written by the script survives a `kill -9` and would leave the UI claiming
a sync is running forever, which then needs a heartbeat and a staleness
timeout, none of which the lock needs.

**Decided (user, 2026-08-04): poll continuously, not only while quitting.** A
narrower version that polled only during the exit prompt was offered and
declined: the user wants the status bar informed at all times, not only at the
one moment it changes a decision.

**Approach.**

- A `syncLockHeld()` helper: `open()` the lock path, `flock(LOCK_EX|LOCK_NB)`,
  close. Held when the attempt fails with `EWOULDBLOCK`.
- A `QTimer` polling it. **One second is finer than this needs**; a sync runs
  for tens of seconds, so two seconds is plenty and halves a wakeup that never
  stops.
- When the lock is held and `MailSync` is NOT the holder, show the busy state
  with wording that says so: "Syncing (started elsewhere)". The existing
  `setSyncBusy()` covers the widgets; this adds a third state between "idle"
  and "we are syncing".
- On the exit path, this replaces a hedge with a fact. Today, quitting while
  cron syncs says the window "cannot see it finish". With the lock watched it
  can wait for the lock to clear and then quit, which is what the user actually
  wants to happen.

**Verify before building, both cheap and both the kind of assumption this
project has been bitten by twice:**

- **That the lock is observable at all.** `flock` semantics across processes,
  where the holder opened the file with `exec 200>`, are an assumption about
  Linux behaviour, not a certainty. A twenty-line probe settles it. Do not
  design on top of it unproven.
- **That polling it cannot disturb notmuch.** `mailsync.sh` runs `notmuch new`,
  and notmuch's write lock is process-exclusive. Touching `/tmp/mbsync.lock`
  should be unrelated, but the interaction is worth one look rather than an
  assumption.

**Constraints.**

- The lock path becomes a contract between the script and the application,
  where today the application knows nothing about it. It has to be documented
  on both sides, and the script cannot move or rename it casually afterwards.
- The poll must not run a query or touch the database. It reports what another
  process is doing; the existing `runCurrentQuery()` on a completed sync of our
  own already handles refreshing, and a cron sync that finishes will be picked
  up the next time the user runs a query.
- Do not report an externally-started sync as one this window can cancel. The
  Sync button should be disabled while the lock is held, since starting one
  would only produce the `EX_TEMPFAIL` skip.

### Outcome (done, 0.8.0)

Both probes the item demanded were run before any code, and one of them changed
the design. **The lock is observable, but only through `/proc/locks`**, and two
of the three plausible ways to read it are wrong:

- **`flock -n`, which this item proposed, is the one that must not be used.**
  It acquires in order to test, so polling every two seconds opens a window
  every two seconds in which a starting `mailsync.sh` is refused the lock and
  exits 75. It would cause the very skips the script reports. The item's own
  approach section specified this; it was wrong.
- `fcntl(F_OFD_GETLK)` never acquires and looks ideal, but reports UNLOCKED
  against a lock held by `flock(2)`: separate lock namespaces in the kernel,
  which cannot see each other. A silent false negative.
- `/proc/locks` is a pure read, matched by inode. It observes `flock(2)`
  correctly and takes no lock, which also answers the second probe: 200 reads
  left the lock table unchanged and the polling process holding nothing, so it
  cannot contend with the Xapian write lock `notmuch new` holds in the same run.

`SyncMonitor` keeps the parsing separate from the polling so the parsing is
testable, and reports **Unknown** rather than Idle where `/proc/locks` cannot be
read. "No sync is running" is the claim that would let the window quit, so it is
never guessed.

**It reports rather than refreshes**, which is narrower than the item implies.
`runCurrentQuery()` clears the undo stack, the selection and the message pane:
right for a query the user typed, hostile for one a cron timer fired six times
an hour. The status bar says a background sync finished and suggests pressing
Enter. See item 35 for the non-destructive refresh this defers.

**One constraint above was not built: the Sync button is still enabled while an
external sync holds the lock.** That is item 29, split out rather than left
buried here.

**A defect found by hand testing, after the feature was believed done.** A sync
this window started reported itself as a background one, a moment after it
finished. Ownership of a lock period was decided when the lock was RELEASED, by
asking `MailSync::isRunning()`, but the process exits before the next poll sees
the lock gone, so the answer was always "not ours". Ownership is now latched
when the lock appears, and handed back on exit 75, since a skip means the lock
was never ours.

**That fix has no regression test, deliberately recorded.** Reproducing it needs
`isRunning()` true at one transition and false at the next, which needs a
configured sync command and a live child process; that attempt left a process
running for the length of the suite and popped a dialog on the user's screen. It
was verified against a standalone model of both code paths instead. A real test
needs the notmuch fixture.

---

## 28. Re-adding `unread` counts 2 unsynced changes, not 0

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** open a thread, wait the two seconds for the
automatic mark-read, then press **Ctrl+U** to put `unread` back. The indicator
reads **2 unsynced changes**. The mail store is in exactly the state it started
in, so the honest answer is 0.

**Cause: the counter counts writes, not net state.** `onTagsApplied()` does a
bare `++m_pendingEdits` (`src/mainwindow.cpp:1293`) for every confirmed
mutation, and nothing ever decrements. The automatic mark-read is one confirmed
write, the manual toggle back is a second, so a round trip that cancels itself
out reads as two outstanding changes.

This is not specific to mark-read. Any add-then-remove of the same tag inflates
it the same way: archive then undo, flag then unflag. Mark-read is simply the
one path that fires without the user asking, which is why it surfaced here.

**The design question this item has to answer first.** "Unsynced changes" can
mean two different things and the fix depends on which:

- *Writes the index has taken that a sync has not carried over.* Two writes did
  happen, notmuch's database did change twice, and `notmuch new` will still
  visit those messages. On this reading 2 is correct and the wording is what is
  wrong.
- *Net difference between the index and the mail store.* On this reading the
  answer is 0 and the counter needs to track state, not events.

The user's expectation is clearly the second. Note that item 18 chose the first
deliberately: it counts at the point a write is **confirmed**, precisely so an
optimistic update the worker rejects is not counted. That reasoning stays valid;
what it did not consider is a write that undoes an earlier one.

**Approach, if net state is the answer.** Track the set of (thread, tag)
changes rather than a count, and collapse a pair that cancels. `TagChange`
already carries add and remove lists and already knows how to invert itself
(`TagChange::inverted()`, used by the undo stack), so the machinery for
recognising an inverse exists.

**Constraints.**

- **A sync must still reset it to zero**, and a failed sync must still not, per
  item 18. Whatever replaces the counter keeps both properties.
- The indicator is a lower bound on confidence, not a guarantee: an external
  `notmuch new` can carry changes across without this window knowing. Do not let
  a more precise counter imply more certainty than it has.
- Do not fix this by not counting the automatic mark-read. It is a real write to
  the index, and hiding it would make the count wrong in the other direction.

### Outcome (done)

**Decided by the user, 2026-08-04: net state.** "If I undo delete it's 0 edits,
not 2." The counter is replaced by a `QHash<QString, bool>` keyed
`"<messageId>\n<tag>"`, and a pair that reverts is **erased** rather than stored
with the new direction, so an edit and its inverse leave nothing behind and the
map cannot grow without bound over a long session of tagging and untagging.

**Keyed per (message, tag), not per message.** Removing `unread` and adding
`flagged` on one message are two independent changes; a per-message key would
have cancelled them against each other. A test pins this, and it passed before
the change, so it exists to stop a later simplification from over-netting.

**A change carrying no message ids still counts**, tracked in a separate
`m_unnettablePendingEdits`. It cannot be netted against anything, and dropping
it would understate the indicator, which is the direction that costs the user
work. This also keeps the older tests honest: they emit a `TagChange` with no
ids, and would otherwise have started reporting zero.

Both properties item 18 established survive: a successful sync clears everything,
a failed one clears nothing.

## 29. Sync button stays enabled during a background sync

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** while a cron sync runs, the Sync button is
still clickable. Pressing it starts a run that can only be refused.

**Cause: a constraint of item 27 that was specified and then not built.** That
item states plainly that "the Sync button should be disabled while the lock is
held, since starting one would only produce the `EX_TEMPFAIL` skip".
`setSyncBusy()` (`src/mainwindow.cpp:1357`) is the only thing that touches
`m_syncButton->setEnabled()`, and it is called only from this window's own sync
path. `onExternalSyncStateChanged()` shows the progress bar and writes the
status text but never touches the button.

**Approach.** Have the external handler drive the same enable/disable that
`setSyncBusy()` does, rather than duplicating the rule. The two paths already
share the progress bar; the button is the piece that was missed.

**Constraints.**

- **Re-enable on `Unknown`, not only on `Idle`.** Where `/proc/locks` cannot be
  read the monitor claims nothing, and a button left permanently disabled on a
  platform that cannot observe the lock is worse than one that occasionally
  offers a run that gets skipped.
- The button must not end up enabled during this window's own sync because the
  external handler ran last. Both paths write the same widget, so whichever
  fires second wins; make the rule a single function of both states rather than
  two independent assignments.
- Exit 75 handling stays. Disabling the button makes the skip rarer, not
  impossible: cron can take the lock between the poll and the click.

### Outcome (done)

`updateSyncControls()` is the single function the constraint called for, taking
`m_localSyncBusy` and `m_externalSyncBusy` and writing both the progress bar and
the button. Neither sync path touches those widgets directly any more.

**The external state is tracked as its own flag rather than read back from
`SyncMonitor`.** An earlier version called `m_syncMonitor->state()` inside the
update, which meant the handler received a state and then ignored it in favour
of re-reading the source. Acting on what you were told is both easier to follow
and testable without a live monitor.

Unknown clears the busy flag exactly as Idle does, per the constraint. Verified
by reverting that half: leaving it set on anything but Idle strands the button
disabled, and the test catches it.

## 30. The blank right pane is wasted space

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** with no thread selected the message pane is
empty. The user wants it to carry something useful, and named three things: the
application logo, tips and tricks, and messages about the current action, giving
"N messages selected" as the example.

**Assets exist.** The user has produced `assets/images/qtmaildir-light.png` and
`qtmaildir-dark.png` (924x540 each) for this item.

**Cause:** `MessageView::clear()` leaves the web view showing nothing. Since
0.8.0 the pane is also blanked deliberately whenever more than one thread is
selected, which makes this item more visible than it was: multi-select is now a
routine gesture that produces an empty pane every time.

**Approach.** A placeholder document rendered into the existing web view when
there is nothing to show, rather than a second widget stacked behind it.
`HtmlBuilder` already produces the pane's HTML and `MessageView` already knows
how to hand it a document, so the placeholder is a third document shape
alongside "one message" and "a thread".

**The selection-count half is the one with real value**, and it pairs with the
status-bar count added in 0.8.0. The pane already blanks on a multi-row
selection; saying "3 threads selected" there answers the question the blank
raises.

**Constraints.**

- **Two images, because the pane must follow the desktop theme.** Item 5 already
  records the rule against hardcoded colours, and a light-theme logo on a dark
  desktop is exactly that fault in image form. Pick by palette, not by guessing.
- **Do not load the logo over `file:`.** The web view runs with
  `LocalContentCanAccessFileUrls` false and an interceptor that blocks every
  request by default, per `CLAUDE.md`. The image has to arrive as a `data:` URI
  or through the existing `qtmaildir:` scheme handler, and the interceptor's
  document-URL exemption must still match exactly.
- Tips and tricks is the weakest of the three and should be built last, if at
  all. A tip nobody can dismiss becomes noise on the hundredth launch.
- The placeholder must not appear between a selection and its render, or every
  thread open flashes a logo first.

### Specified with the user 2026-08-07; fonts committed, pane not built

**The design source is the user's own HTML mockup**, not the PNGs recorded
above. Those were rendered *from* it. Both mockups are in the user's Downloads
as `qtMailDir Background {dark,light} Mockup.zip`, each holding
`qtmaildir-mockup-bg.html` and a `COLOR-REFERENCE.md` giving the complete brand
palette for both modes. Build from that HTML; do not trace the PNGs.

**Two things in the mockup cannot survive the port, by design.** Its
`@import` of Google Fonts is blocked by the interceptor, deliberately, and its
`fit()` script cannot run because JavaScript is off in this profile. The fonts
are dealt with (below); the scaling script is unnecessary, since CSS can centre
the block without it.

**Decided with the user:**

- **The brand palette wins over the desktop palette**, a deliberate exception
  to item 12's rule. A logo is brand rather than chrome. The dark or light set
  is chosen by the desktop theme, so it still flips correctly.
- **Layout is a header ROW, not the mockup's centred lockup**: icon on the
  left, wordmark on the right, with the glow and grid still centred behind as
  background. Helpers below the header.
- **No fixed vertical split.** The user first suggested 40/60; this pane is a
  splitter panel whose height varies enormously, so a ratio breaks at one
  extreme or the other. The block takes its natural height and is centred in
  whatever the pane gives.
- **The helpers are counts and sync state**, NOT the selected-thread count the
  section above proposes. The user rejected that: the status bar already says
  it. Instead: unread, flagged and inbox counts, each clickable to run that
  query, and a sync line that appears only when something needs attention
  (last sync failed, or edits waiting to sync). Nothing when all is well, so it
  cannot become wallpaper.
- **Footer**: copyright, version, and the website as a WORKING link. Clicking
  hands off to the desktop browser through the existing
  `NavigationTypeLinkClicked` path in `messageview.cpp`.
- **Tips and tricks stays dropped**, as the section above already argues.
- **The AI-assisted development notice does not go here.** It belongs in the
  README, per the user's global preference, and in the About dialog if wanted.

**Already done (commit "build: bundle the fonts…"):** Oxanium ExtraBold and
IBM Plex Sans Regular are in `assets/fonts/`, subset, with their OFL licences,
and the README records them. Nothing references them yet.

**Still to build:** `resources.qrc` entries;
`HtmlBuilder::buildPlaceholder(...)` porting the mockup's CSS with the fonts as
`@font-face` data URIs; `MessageView::showPlaceholder(...)`; and the four
`MessageView::clear()` call sites choosing between the placeholder and a blank
pane. The **helper counts are the largest piece**: three `notmuch count` calls
crossing to the worker, plus a refresh policy, since a count goes stale the
moment a tag is edited.

### Outcome (done 2026-08-07)

Built as specified, and confirmed against the running application in both
themes. Decisions taken while building, and three defects worth recording.

**The counts refresh when the pane is about to show**, chosen by the user over
refreshing on the tag-list triggers or only after a sync. `showPlaceholderPane()`
is the single route to a blank pane, so the numbers are fetched exactly when
they are about to be read and never in the background. A generation counter
discards a superseded reply, and `onCountsReady` repaints only while the
placeholder is still displayed, so a late answer cannot replace an opened
thread. Counts are of THREADS, matching what a click on the line produces.

**The helper lines are real links**, since JavaScript is off in this profile and
a count cannot be clickable any other way. They carry a `qtmaildir-query:` URL
caught in `acceptNavigationRequest`, and **the handler is gated on the
placeholder actually being displayed**. A message body is attacker-controlled
HTML and can carry the same URL; without the gate a link in a stranger's mail
could drive the thread list. The consequence would be mild (a query runs,
nothing mutates or is sent) but it is a boundary worth keeping shut.
`showThread`, `clear` and `showError` all close the gate, and a test asserts it.

**Sizes are clamped, not fixed and not fluid**, per the user's "a mix of both".
The pane is a splitter panel whose width runs from a couple of hundred pixels to
most of a screen. Measured: the wordmark renders 26px in a 300px pane and 57.6px
in a 900px one, with `bodyScrollW == clientW` at every width tested.

#### Three defects, all invisible

1. **Every CSS percentage was invalid, and the pane still looked plausible.**
   The stylesheet was built with `QString::arg` and `%%` for each percentage,
   but **`arg()` does not collapse `%%` into `%`**: the document reached the
   browser carrying `50%%`, and every declaration containing one was dropped.
   That silently disabled the grid mask, the glow and both radial gradients.
   The pane rendered, and the flat result read as "close but not like the
   mockup" rather than as a fault. Fixed by substituting **named tokens**
   (`@ACCENT@`, `@GRID@`) with `replace()`, which cannot collide with a percent
   sign. `placeholderStyleHasNoUnsubstitutedTokens` pins it.

2. **A geometry probe confirmed the layout while that bug was live.** It
   measured `.title`, `.content` and `.icon-tile`, none of which carry a
   percentage, so it reported everything correct. This is the failure mode
   `CLAUDE.md` already warns about, in a new costume: the probe found what it
   looked for and was trusted to report what it never checked. **A probe over a
   stylesheet must assert the properties that the suspected fault would break**,
   not the ones that happen to be convenient to measure.

3. **The font test passed against a broken build.** Pointing one `@font-face`
   at a nonexistent resource survived it: the other face alone satisfied both
   the `data:font/woff2` check and the document-size check. Rewritten to require
   both faces with a payload each, and verified by mutation.

#### The mockup's light values do not survive a real pane

Only the dark set ported cleanly. Rendered side by side, three light values
failed, all of them contrast rather than hue, because the mockup is a full-bleed
1920x1080 render and this is a pane against white:

- The grid at `#d9dfe8` on white is roughly a 2% luminance step and vanished
  outright, where `#182840` on `#060b10` reads clearly at the same opacity.
- The glow **subtracts** light on a light background instead of adding it, so
  14% washed most of the pane purple.
- The tile at `#f0f3f7` inside a `#d9dfe8` border did not separate from the
  background, leaving the icon floating.

`glowAlpha` and `gridOpacity` are therefore per-set rather than shared, and
`tileBorder` is its own colour rather than reusing `grid`. Landed at
`#b9c4d4` @ 45% for the grid, 6% for the glow, `#c7d0dd` for the tile border.
The dark set is unchanged.

**The mask and the glow are sized relative to the pane**, the one deliberate
departure from the mockup's numbers. Its `circle` (farthest-corner) mask
completes its fade inside a 1920x1080 frame; the same ratio in a ~990x650 pane
puts the fade past the corners, so the grid ran uniform to the edges.
`closest-side` pins it to the nearer edge, and the glow is `min(95%, 900px)`
rather than a flat 900px that was taller than a short pane.

**`resources.qrc` is now compiled into every test binary.** Library code reads
`:/fonts/` and a qrc inside the static library registers from a global
initialiser the linker drops, so without this a test would exercise only the
missing-resource fallback and pass against a broken build.

## 31. The quit prompt has no highlighted default button

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** "quit popup has no Predefined answer (there's
no highlighted button)."

**Needs a repro before any change: the code says otherwise.** The three-button
prompt sets one explicitly, `box.setDefaultButton(sync)`
(`src/mainwindow.cpp:191`), and the no-sync-command variant passes
`QMessageBox::Cancel` as its default argument (`:167`). Both should render a
highlighted button.

Possible explanations, in the order worth checking:

- The dialog the user saw was neither of those. There are five other
  `QMessageBox` calls in `MainWindow` (`:205`, `:224`, `:991`, `:1260`,
  `:1277`), and the two sync-failure ones appear on the exit path, so a failed
  exit-sync shows a second dialog immediately after the first.
- The default is set but the style draws no visible focus ring, which is a
  platform theme question rather than a code one.
- `setDefaultButton()` is being overridden by the button roles: a
  `DestructiveRole` button can take precedence in some styles.

**Approach: reproduce first, and record which dialog.** If it is one of the
sync-failure boxes, the fix is to give those an explicit default. If it is a
theme issue the item becomes a documentation note rather than a change.

**Constraint:** whatever default is chosen must be the safe one. On a prompt
about losing unsynced work, Enter must not fall on "Quit anyway".

### Outcome (done): the code was right, the theme draws nothing

Reproduced from a screenshot: it is the three-button `ask` prompt. Probed rather
than guessed, and Qt agrees the default is set. On that dialog `isDefault()` and
`hasFocus()` are both true on "Sync and quit", and `defaultButton()` returns it.

**The active style is `qt6ct-style`, which draws no visible default-button
decoration.** The GIMP dialog the user compared against is GTK drawing its own
focus ring, a different toolkit, so the two are not comparable and this was never
a qtmaildir bug.

Fixed by naming the default in the button text rather than restyling it.
Overriding a button's appearance means fighting the user's chosen theme, which
is a worse outcome than one word. The safe option was already the default, per
the constraint above, so no behaviour changed.

## 32. Esc does not blank the right pane

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** "Esc in the main window should blank the right
pane."

**Cause:** nothing binds Escape at window level. `Key_Escape` appears once in
`src/`, in `QueryCompleter` (`src/querycompleter.cpp:474`), where it dismisses
the completion popup. The main window has no handler.

**Approach.** A registered action like any other, so it reaches the menus, the
shortcut reference and `[keys]`, calling the same `MessageView::clear()` the
multi-select path already uses. `m_currentThreadId` must be cleared with it, or
a late-arriving `threadLoaded` will paint the thread straight back, which is the
race documented in `CLAUDE.md` and fixed in 0.8.0.

**Constraints.**

- **Escape must not be stolen from the completer.** A window-level shortcut
  outranks the focused widget, which is exactly how `Return` broke for the query
  bar and needed an event filter to claim back (item 21 records this). Verify
  the popup still dismisses before shipping.
- Blanking is a view change, not a mail change: it must not clear the selection,
  the query, or the undo stack.
- Decide what Escape does when the pane is already blank. Doing nothing is fine;
  clearing the selection as a second step would be surprising.

### Outcome (done)

A `clear_pane` action bound to `Esc`, registered like every other action so it
reaches the menus, the shortcut reference and `[keys]`. It clears
`m_currentThreadId` alongside the pane, and cancels any pending mark-read: a
thread blanked from view must not be marked read two seconds later.

**The completer keeps its Escape, verified by probe rather than by reading the
code.** A popup consumes the key before a window-level shortcut sees it: with
the popup open the popup's filter fires and the action does not, and with it
closed the action fires. This was the one real risk in the item, since `Return`
had already been lost to a window shortcut this way (item 21).

Blanking is a view change only: the selection, the query and the undo stack are
untouched, which a test pins.

## 33. Status bar messages never expire

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** "the status bar should return to default status
after showing a message for N seconds."

**Cause:** every message is written with a bare `m_statusLabel->setText()`,
eighteen call sites in `MainWindow`, and nothing ever clears one. Whatever was
written last stays until something else overwrites it, so a transient message
like "Sync complete" persists as though it described the current state.

**Approach.** Route transient messages through one helper that sets the text and
arms a single-shot timer to restore a default, rather than adding a timer per
call site. `QStatusBar::showMessage()` already implements exactly this with a
timeout argument, and the label is a custom widget added with `addWidget()`
rather than the status bar's own message area, so switching to it is worth
considering before writing a bespoke timer.

**The item's real question is what "default" means.** Candidates: the thread
count from the last query (`onQueryFinished` already writes this), or empty.
The count is more useful and is what the user already sees after a query
completes.

**Constraints.**

- **Not every message is transient.** The selection count added in 0.8.0
  describes current state and must persist while the selection does; expiring it
  would be a regression. Distinguish state from events rather than putting a
  timeout on everything.
- The 0.8.0 selection-count code already takes back only a message it wrote
  itself, comparing against `m_selectionMessage`. Any general mechanism should
  generalise that rather than defeat it.
- An error must not vanish before it is read. Sync failures already open the log
  pane, which does persist, but the status text should outlast a two-second
  timeout.

### Outcome (done)

`showTransientStatus()` sets the text and arms a 6 s single-shot timer that
restores the last query's thread count. Messages were classified rather than
blanket-timed, which is the whole substance of the item:

- **Events expire:** "Sync complete", "Nothing to undo", "Sync already
  running", the skip notice, the background-sync notice, and the per-action
  "Archive: 3 threads".
- **State persists:** "Searching...", "Syncing...", "Syncing before
  quitting...", "Background sync running...", the selection count, and
  **"Sync failed (exit N)"**, per the constraint that an error must not vanish
  before it is read.

**A test caught a real mistake while routing them.** Making the per-action
message transient armed the timer during `selectAll()`, because `tagSelected()`
runs on a selection that `onSelectionChanged()` had just described. The count is
state and must outlive any transient still counting down, so writing it now
cancels the timer.

`QStatusBar::showMessage()` was considered and not used: the label is added with
`addWidget()` alongside permanent widgets, so switching would mean reworking that
arrangement for the same behaviour.

## 34. No overview of the Maildir itself

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** wants "info on the maildir": total messages,
number of accounts, and possibly more.

**Cause:** nothing in the UI reports database-level facts. Every query returns a
thread count for that query (`onQueryFinished`), but there is no path that asks
notmuch about the database as a whole.

**Approach.** A dialog, reached from Help or File, showing what notmuch can
answer cheaply. `notmuch_database_get_all_tags()` is already wired for the
completer (item 17), so the tag count is free. A total message count needs a new
worker call.

**Constraints.**

- **This is a worker query like any other.** No `notmuch_*` pointer crosses the
  thread boundary; the result comes back as plain values, per `CLAUDE.md`.
- **The account count comes from config, not from notmuch.** notmuch does not
  model accounts at all, which is why per-account subdirectories are configured
  in the first place. Do not try to derive it from the database.
- Counting every message in a large database is not free. Measure before putting
  it somewhere that opens on every launch; a dialog the user asks for is the
  right shape, a status-bar field refreshed continuously is not.

### Revisited 2026-08-07, after item 30 shipped

The placeholder pane did not exist when this was written, and it now displays
database-level counts, so "where does this live" was worth asking again. **The
answer is unchanged: a dialog.** Recorded because the reasoning is not obvious
and would otherwise be re-litigated.

**Not on the placeholder**, even though the counts machinery is right there.
Item 30's own decision was that the pane carries counts the user ACTS on, each
one a link to the query it names, plus a sync line that appears only when
something needs attention, specifically so the pane cannot become wallpaper.
Total messages, account count and tag count are reference material read once,
not things to click. Putting them there dilutes exactly what that decision
protects.

**What did change is the cost, not the location.** This item claims a total
message count "needs a new worker call". It no longer does, quite:
`NotmuchWorker::requestCounts(QStringList, quint64)` already exists, crosses on
a queued connection and takes an arbitrary list of queries, so the dialog can
ask for whatever it wants in one round trip.

**One trap in reusing it.** `requestCounts` counts **threads**
(`notmuch_query_count_threads`), because item 30's pane says "N in inbox" beside
a list that shows threads. This item wants **messages**. Those differ by roughly
the reply depth of the database and the difference is not small. Reusing the
call as it stands would report a confidently wrong number under the right
label. Either add a second signal, or give the existing request a mode; do not
quietly reinterpret what it returns.

**Still true from the constraints above:** the account count comes from config,
never from notmuch, and the tag list is already fetched for the completer.

### Outcome (done 2026-08-07)

A dialog under Help, as decided. `requestDatabaseStats` answers messages,
threads and tags in one round trip; the account list comes from `Config`.

**A separate worker call, not a reuse of `requestCounts`**, exactly as the
revision above warned. That one counts THREADS to match the row count of a
query; this one counts MESSAGES, which is what a user means by "how much mail
is in here". The test asserts 4 messages in 3 threads against the fixture and
fails if they are ever made equal, so a later "simplification" that routes both
through one count cannot pass.

**Unknown is not zero.** Every field starts at -1, and a field notmuch could not
answer renders as "unknown". Printing 0 would say the Maildir is empty, which is
a claim, and telling someone their mail is gone is the worst available way to
report an index that failed to open. Verified by mutation: removing the guard
puts a literal `-1` on screen.

**The dialog opens before the answer arrives**, showing "Counting...". Counting
every message is not free on a large database, and a dialog that blocks first is
worse than one that fills in.

Two lifetime problems follow from that, both handled and both tested:

- The reply can arrive after the dialog is closed. The label is held in a
  `QPointer`, since `WA_DeleteOnClose` means a raw pointer dangles for exactly
  as long as the count takes, which is when the user is most likely to have
  given up and closed it. The test drains `DeferredDelete` before firing the
  late reply, because `close()` deletes through `deleteLater` and without the
  drain the case being tested is not the one that occurs.
- The dialog can be closed and reopened while a count runs, so a generation
  counter drops the older answer rather than filling in the newer dialog with
  numbers that predate the reopen.

## 35. No refresh of the thread list after a sync

**Observed (user, 2026-08-04):** "auto refresh list after sync."

**Cause: half of this works and the other half was deliberately not built.** A
sync this window starts already refreshes: `onSyncFinished()` calls
`runCurrentQuery()` on success. A background sync does not, and 0.8.0 chose that
on purpose, because `runCurrentQuery()` clears the undo stack
(`src/mainwindow.cpp`, the query-start path), the selection and the message
pane. Firing it when a cron timer finishes would discard undo history and close
the thread being read, up to six times an hour, with no action from the user.
The status bar suggests pressing Enter instead.

**So the work is a non-destructive refresh**, not a call to the existing one.
That is a real piece of work and is why this is its own item rather than a flag.

**Approach.** Re-run the query and reconcile the result against the current
model instead of clearing it: keep rows that are still present, add new ones,
remove the gone. The generation counter already distinguishes a stale result
from a current one, so the plumbing for a second concurrent query exists.

**Constraints.**

- **The undo stack is cleared on query for a real reason.** Its entries refer to
  rows the new result set discards, and a stale entry inverts into a model
  update that does nothing while the database change still happens, leaving undo
  half-applied. A refresh that keeps the stack has to keep those references
  valid, which is the hard part of this item and the reason it is sized M.
- The selected thread must stay selected and stay open if it survives the
  refresh. Losing your place is the failure this item exists to avoid.
- Scroll position likewise.
- A refresh must not re-trigger mark-read for the thread already on screen.

### Refined by the user, 2026-08-10: new mail never appears at all

The complaint is sharper than "the list is stale". Read every message in an
Unread view and the list empties. The cron sync then runs, `notmuch new` indexes
new mail, and **the new messages do not appear**, even though the view is empty,
nothing is selected, no thread is open and the undo stack has nothing in it. The
only way to see them is to re-run the query by hand.

**Cause, verified in code, and it is the deliberate choice above meeting its
worst case.** The app does observe the cron sync:
`MainWindow::onExternalSyncStateChanged()` (`src/mainwindow.cpp:2140`) is driven
by `SyncMonitor`'s lock polling and reaches `State::Idle` when the run ends. At
`src/mainwindow.cpp:2180-2192` it deliberately shows "Background sync completed.
Press Enter in the query bar to refresh." and calls nothing. The comment there
gives the reason: `runCurrentQuery()` clears the undo stack, the selection and
the message pane, which is hostile to fire six times an hour under a reader.

**Every one of those costs is zero in the case the user hit.** There is nothing
to clear: no undo entries, no selection, no open thread, and the scroll position
of an empty list is meaningless. So the guard is protecting state that does not
exist, and the result is an empty Unread view sitting in front of unread mail.

**This makes the item shippable in two stages, and the first is XS.** Refresh on
external sync completion when the refresh is provably free: the model is empty
**or** the undo stack is empty and nothing is selected. Fall back to the current
status-bar message otherwise. That fixes the reported case immediately without
needing the reconciling refresh, which stays as the M-sized second stage for the
case where the user does have state worth keeping.

**Constraint on the cheap stage.** "Nothing selected" must be read from the
selection model, not from `currentRowChanged` state, per `CLAUDE.md`. And the
condition has to be re-checked at the moment the sync ends rather than when it
started, since the user may have selected a row during the run.

### Outcome (done, 2026-08-10)

**35a was superseded before it shipped, by the user's own answer to it.** Asked
whether new mail would accumulate into a POPULATED view, the answer was no, and
the requirement was restated in full: "changes should be applied automatically,
without the user needing to refresh the view, whether it's empty or populated",
new mail appearing at the top as it is fetched, and the message being read not
disappearing. So the conditional refresh was removed rather than kept beside the
reconciling one, and `externalRefreshIsFree()` no longer exists. The "press
Enter in the query bar to refresh" message is gone with it: a refresh that
changes nothing is invisible, and one that brings mail announces itself by the
mail appearing.

**The undo constraint this item was sized around turned out not to exist.** The
text above calls keeping the undo stack "the hard part" and the reason this is
M-sized. It is not hard, because no undo entry was ever keyed on a row:
`ThreadTagCommand` stores THREAD ids and `MessageTagCommand` stores MESSAGE ids
(`src/mainwindow.h`), both re-sending through `sendThreadTagChange()` /
`sendMessageTagChange()`, and `ThreadListModel::applyTagChange()` looks its
target up by id and does nothing when the row is absent. An entry therefore
already survives its rows leaving the view. `runCurrentQuery()` clears the stack
because a query the USER typed means "show me something else", not because the
entries would corrupt anything.

**What was built.**

- `ThreadListModel::reconcile()` diffs a result against the current rows by
  thread id: arrivals inserted, departures removed, survivors keeping their row,
  their persistent index and their loaded replies. Order comes from the result,
  never from a rule of the model's own, so the sort the user selected is
  respected: newest-first puts new mail at the top, oldest-first at the bottom.
- `MainWindow::refreshCurrentQuery()` re-runs `m_lastQuery` under its own
  generation, accumulates every batch, and reconciles ONCE at the end. Batch by
  batch would be wrong in a way that looks right: reconcile decides removals
  from what the result lacks, so the first batch would delete every row after it
  and the next would put some back.
- `onExternalSyncStateChanged()` calls it unconditionally on `Idle`.
- A stale-thread notice in `MessageView`, shaped like the remote-content bar as
  the user asked, with recovery that runs `thread:<id>`, expands it and
  re-selects the message that was on screen.

**Four defects found by the tests, three of them real.**

1. **The first test crashed the constructor.** `SyncMonitor::start()` polls
   SYNCHRONOUSLY (`src/syncmonitor.cpp:52`), so on an idle lock file it emits
   `stateChanged(Idle)` from inside `buildUi()`, while the view, the model and
   the worker are all still null. The old code survived only because reporting
   to the status bar touches nothing built later; the first handler to
   dereference a widget segfaults before the window exists.
2. **A downward-move branch that could never run.** `reconcile()` walks the
   result front to back, so rows ahead of the target are already final and a
   misplaced survivor is always pulled FORWARD. The branch was written with the
   usual `beginMoveRows` +1 adjustment and two mutation tests passed against it
   being wrong, which is the signal that a probe is not measuring what it
   claims. Deleted, with `Q_ASSERT(row > target)` recording the invariant.
3. **A user query hijacked by a pending recovery.** Recovery spans two queued
   round-trips, so a query typed in the middle of one found its target in the
   new result and moved the selection there. `runCurrentQuery()` now abandons a
   pending recovery, and `recoverStaleThread()` sets its target after calling
   it.
4. **The stale notice never fired for the reader deepest in a thread.**
   Selecting a message row CLEARS `m_currentThreadId` and sets
   `m_currentMessageId` instead, so a notice keyed on the thread alone was
   silent for exactly the case the user described, reply four of eight. The
   window remembers the message's thread separately;
   `ThreadListModel::threadIdForMessage()` cannot help, since it searches the
   rows and by then the thread has left them.

**A fifth defect, found by the user in hand testing rather than by any test.**
The notice outlived the message it describes: running a new query blanked the
pane and left the bar above it, still naming the previous thread, with a button
offering to recover a thread the user had deliberately navigated away from. The
bar belongs to the rendered message exactly as the remote-content bar does, and
`MessageView::clear()` already hides that one for this precise reason; the new
bar simply was not added beside it. Fixed there, which covers all six paths that
blank the pane at once, rather than at the query path where it was noticed.

Worth recording because the tests could not have caught it as written: every
one of them asserted that the notice APPEARS, and none that it goes away. A
feature's off-switch needs its own test, and "it shows up when it should" passes
identically whether or not it ever stops showing up.

**A sixth defect, also found by the user in hand testing, and the same mistake
in a different place.** The status bar sat on "Background sync running..." with
no sync running. That string is written straight to the label when the lock
appears, and the "Background sync completed" message on the way out was the only
thing that ever replaced it; removing that message to make the refresh silent
left the claim standing indefinitely.

The rule this establishes is worth more than the fix: **silent means saying
nothing NEW, not leaving a stale claim on screen.** The Idle branch now retires
its own running message and nothing else, tracked by a flag rather than by
matching the text, so it cannot overwrite a selection count or a tag result the
user is reading. Both directions are pinned by mutation: never retiring
reproduces the reported bug, and always writing the default stamps over the
selection message.

Note the shape shared with the fifth defect above. Both are a piece of UI state
that outlived the thing it described, and in both cases the tests asserted only
that the state APPEARS. An "it goes away" test is a separate test.

**A seventh and eighth defect, one report, and the worse of the two mutates
mail.** The user came back to the window from another desktop and found the new
message the refresh had brought in already OPEN in the pane, with the stale
notice above it still naming the four-message thread they had been reading.

- **Nothing in `MainWindow` selected it.** `QTreeView` gives itself a current
  index when it takes FOCUS with none set, and current is what drives loading.
  Probed rather than assumed, because the obvious hypothesis is wrong: inserting
  rows into an empty view does NOT set current, focusing the view does, which is
  exactly why the report came with "as I go back to the window from another
  desktop" attached. Before item 35b this was unreachable, since a populated
  list always had a current row; a refresh dropping mail into a view the user
  read empty created the state. The consequence is not cosmetic: opening a
  message arms the mark-read timer, so a cron sync plus a window switch marked
  mail read that nobody looked at. `onThreadSelected()` now requires the row to
  be SELECTED, which every real route (click, arrow key, `selectRowAt`) does and
  Qt's housekeeping does not.
- **The notice was correct when raised and became a lie underneath.** It named
  the thread that was rendered; the auto-open then replaced the pane without
  touching the bar. `MessageView::clear()` retires it, but selecting a row
  RE-RENDERS rather than blanking, so that path never ran. Retired in
  `onThreadSelected()` as well.

The first of these was reported as one bug and is two, and only the second was
visible on screen. Worth remembering that "the wrong thing is displayed" and
"the wrong thing happened to the mail" can arrive in the same sentence.

**A ninth defect: recovery brought the thread back collapsed and blank.** The
user reported it as minor and livable, and it was three faults stacked, each of
which alone would have produced roughly the symptom they saw.

- **The notice threw away a message id it had.** A thread ROOT sets BOTH
  `m_currentThreadId` and `m_currentMessageId`, because the root card is the
  thread's first message and the pane renders exactly that message. The notice
  read the message id only when the thread id was empty, treating it as the
  message-row case, so opening a thread the ordinary way lost it and recovery
  had nothing to reopen.
- **Recovery never expanded.** It selected the row and returned, so the
  conversation the user asked to get back to was not on screen. It expands
  first now, in every branch, which is also what asks the worker for the
  replies.
- **A freshly queried root does not know its own first message either.**
  `MessageIdRole` on a thread row returns `first.messageId`, which is empty
  until the tree loads, so the root check could not match on the pass that
  matters and the code fell through to `rowCount(thread) == 0` and returned,
  selecting nothing. Recovery now selects the thread PROVISIONALLY on that
  pass, without clearing the target, and refines to the exact reply when the
  replies arrive.

**One change here is not demonstrated and is recorded as such.** Recovery also
moved from `setCurrentIndex()` to `selectRowAt()`, on the reasoning that
`onThreadSelected()` ignores an unselected current index since the auto-open
fix. A mutation reverting it passes the whole suite: under
`ExtendedSelection`, `setCurrentIndex()` selects as a side effect, so the two
are indistinguishable here. It is kept as the honest expression of the intent,
not as a fix, and nothing should be claimed for it.

**A tenth defect, and the only one in this item that six rounds of reasoning
failed to find: a dangling reference across a signal.** Recovery brought the
thread back collapsed with a blank pane. The user reported it three times, each
time after a fix that was aimed at the wrong thing.

`MessageView` emitted `staleThreadRecoveryRequested(m_staleThreadId,
m_staleMessageId)`, passing its own members. The connection is direct, so
`MainWindow::recoverStaleThread()` received REFERENCES to those members. It then
called `runCurrentQuery()`, which blanks the pane, which calls `setStaleThread()`
and assigns to exactly those members. From that line onward the slot's own
parameters read as empty, so `m_recoverThreadId = threadId` stored an empty
string and `applyPendingRecovery()` returned at its first line, forever. The
thread was re-queried and expanded correctly, which is why the symptom looked
like a layout or expansion problem rather than a lifetime one.

**Every existing recovery test passed against it, and could not have failed.**
They all reach the slot through `QMetaObject::invokeMethod`, which COPIES its
arguments; the reference never dangles under a test. The defect needed the real
button and the real signal, which is what the new test uses.

**Six wrong mechanisms were proposed and rejected before the log named this
one**, each one plausible and each one disproved by a probe rather than by
argument: `QTreeView::expanded` not re-firing, expansion collapsing when
children arrive, the multi-row guard blanking the pane, `selectRowAt` not
clearing the previous selection, a stale `m_refreshGeneration` swallowing the
result, and `onQueryFinished` not running at all. The thing that ended it was
instrumenting the running application and reading `RECOVER target set to ` with
nothing after the `to`, which no amount of reading the code had produced.

**The rule worth keeping: a Qt signal argument is a reference until something
copies it.** Emitting a member across a direct connection to a slot that can
reach back and modify that member is a use-after-write, and it presents as the
value being "wrong" rather than as a crash. Copy at the emit site when the slot
can plausibly re-enter the emitter.

**A trap the recovery had to handle.** `setThreadMessages()` drops the depth-0
message because the root card IS the thread's first message, so a reader
recovering from message one must land on the ROOT row. Looking for it among the
children finds nothing and leaves the selection nowhere.

**Verification.** 105 tests in `test_mainwindow`, 56 in `test_threadlistmodel`,
17/17 binaries. Every reconcile test was mutation-checked: an unconditional
refresh, a skipped move, corrupted index bookkeeping (which trips
`QAbstractItemModelTester` fatally), a per-batch reconcile, a notice that never
fires and one that always fires are each caught by a named test. The
abandoned-recovery test initially passed for the wrong reason, because its
recovery never reached its target, and was rewritten until it failed against the
missing guard.

**One measurement worth carrying to item 61.** During this work
`test_mainwindow` failed three runs in a row on the pair recorded there
(`anActionOnAMessageRowTagsThatMessageNotTheThread`,
`aSuccessfulCronSyncDrainsTheEditedAccounts`), then passed twelve consecutive
runs unchanged. The recorded rate is about one in twenty; a cluster of three
consecutive failures does not fit an independent one-in-twenty event and
suggests the trigger is a machine state that persists across runs rather than a
per-run race.

### Outcome (35a, superseded by the above)

`MainWindow::externalRefreshIsFree()` gates the `State::Idle` branch of
`onExternalSyncStateChanged()`: it refreshes when the undo stack is empty, the
selection model reports no selection, and the model holds no rows, and prints
the existing "press Enter" message otherwise. The M-sized reconciling refresh
(35b) is untouched and still open.

**The test crashed the constructor, and the crash was real.**
`SyncMonitor::start()` polls SYNCHRONOUSLY (`src/syncmonitor.cpp:52`), so on a
machine whose lock file is idle it emits `stateChanged(Idle)` from inside
`buildUi()` (`src/mainwindow.cpp:535`), while `m_threadView` and `m_model` are
still null. The old code survived that only because reporting to the status bar
touches no widget built later; the first handler to dereference a view segfaults
before the window exists. `externalRefreshIsFree()` returns false on a null view
or model, which is also correct on the merits: the startup query has not run at
that point, so there is nothing to refresh.

**The undo check is not redundant with the row check**, and that is asserted
rather than argued. Removing it alone leaves
`aCronSyncDoesNotRefreshOverPendingUndo` failing, because an empty model with
live undo entries is reachable by tagging the last thread out of the current
view.

**Both guard tests passed before the fix existed**, since nothing refreshed at
all, so each was verified by mutation: an unconditional `return true` fails both,
and dropping the undo check fails the undo one.

**One existing test changed, and the change is a narrowing.**
`aSkippedLocalSyncStillReportsTheOtherRunFinishing` asserted the words
"Background" in the status bar, and its fixture is an empty list with nothing
selected, so it now takes the refresh branch and the words never appear. Its
actual subject is that a handed-back lock is attributed to the other run rather
than swallowed, so it asserts the query generation instead. Pinning the wording
there would fail again the next time this decision is revisited.

## 36. `test_mainwindow` cannot reach the worker

**Observed:** twice in one session (0.8.0), a defect could not be given a
regression test because `MainWindow` in tests has no notmuch database, so its
`NotmuchWorker` never emits `threadLoaded`. Both were verified by hand and by a
standalone model instead:

- A queued `threadLoaded` repainting a pane that a multi-row selection had just
  blanked. The fix guards `onThreadLoaded()`, and that guard is untested: the
  test passes with it reverted.
- A local sync reporting itself as a background one. Staging it needs
  `MailSync::isRunning()` true at one transition and false at the next, which
  needs a configured sync command and a live child process. That was tried and
  abandoned: it left a process running for the length of the suite and popped a
  dialog on the user's screen.

**The machinery already exists and is not the gap.** `tests/notmuchfixture.h`
builds a throwaway Maildir in a `QTemporaryDir`, runs `notmuch new` with
`NOTMUCH_CONFIG` scoped to the test process, and `addMessage()` takes
message-id, subject, from, date, body, unread and in-reply-to, so threads come
from real `In-Reply-To` chains. `test_notmuchworker` uses it. `test_mainwindow`
does not.

**Explicitly rejected: a corpus built from the user's real mail.** Considered
and declined 2026-08-04. The global rule against personal data in fixtures
forbids it, git hooks enforce it, and this repository is public. Scrubbing is
also the fragile path: one surviving `In-Reply-To` or `References` header names a
real correspondent, and a scrubbed message no longer demonstrates what the real
one did. Where a real message exposes a parser bug, hand-write a minimal `.eml`
reproducing its **shape**, as `truncated.eml` and `hostile_filename.eml` already
do.

**Approach.** Give `test_mainwindow` the fixture and point the window's worker at
it, so a test can select a thread and let a real `threadLoaded` arrive.

**Do this when a defect needs it, not before** (user, 2026-08-04). Wiring it
with nothing to test proves nothing. The two defects above are already fixed;
this item is the note that the next one of its kind should be tested properly
rather than modelled.

**Constraint:** every existing `test_mainwindow` case constructs a bare
`MainWindow` and must keep working. The fixture is per-test, not a suite-wide
`initTestCase`, or every case pays for a `notmuch new`.

## 37. The worker stalls on a tag edit made during a background sync

**Observed:** the user's note asks whether edits made while a background sync is
running are carried by that same job or need a manual sync afterwards. The
answer splits in two, and the second half is a defect rather than a question.

**This entry was rewritten on 2026-08-04 after its original cause was
disproved by measurement.** It first claimed the read-write open *fails* during
a sync and the edit is discarded. It does not fail. That claim was written from
the plausible reading of the error path at `src/notmuchworker.cpp:298-305`
without ever provoking the condition, and a fix was built on it before anyone
checked. Recorded here rather than quietly corrected, because the same
false-cause-from-a-plausible-error-path mistake is cheap to repeat.

**Cause, part one: reaching the disk is not the problem.** `applyTags` calls
`notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags()` (`src/notmuchworker.cpp:327`)
immediately after thawing, so a `seen`/`flagged` change renames the file in the
Maildir at edit time. No manual sync is needed for the change to exist on disk.
Whether the *running* mbsync carries it is a matter of ordering: mbsync scans
each mailbox once per run, so an edit landing after that box was scanned goes
out on the next run. That is expected behaviour, not a bug, and the ten-minute
cron interval bounds the delay. This half of the note is a question, answered.

**Cause, part two: the write blocks, it does not fail.** Measured 2026-08-04
against Slackware's notmuch, with the lock held deliberately rather than by
racing cron:

- `notmuch_database_open_with_config(NOTMUCH_DATABASE_MODE_READ_WRITE, …)`,
  the exact call `applyTags` makes, **blocks until the lock is free and then
  returns `NOTMUCH_STATUS_SUCCESS`**. A C probe against a lock held for 12s
  returned after 9.158s with status 0; the same call with no lock held returns
  in 0.001s. It was never observed to return an error or to time out.
- The `notmuch` CLI behaves identically (waits 3.6s and 13.2s against 5s and
  15s holds, always exit 0), so this is libnotmuch's behaviour and not a
  wrapper's retry loop.
- Therefore the error branch at `src/notmuchworker.cpp:298-305` is **not
  reachable through lock contention at all**. It fires only for a genuinely
  broken open: bad permissions, a corrupt index, a missing database.

**The real defect is a stall.** `applyTagsToThreads` is invoked on the worker
thread through a queued connection (`src/mainwindow.cpp:1788`), so a blocking
open freezes *the worker*, not the UI. The window keeps painting and the rows
show the optimistic update, but every later query, thread load and tag write
sits behind that open in the worker's event queue until the lock frees. Nothing
is lost and no error appears; the application simply stops responding to
selections for the duration.

**How bad in practice.** Bounded by how long `notmuch new` holds the lock, which
on this user's already-indexed Maildir is a fraction of a second at roughly
T+32s into a ~35s run (measured from `~/.local/state/mailsync.log`: runs start
at :00 and reach "Processed N total files" 32-40s later). The stall is
therefore usually invisible, and becomes user-visible only when `notmuch new`
has real work: a first index, a large delivery, a `notmuch reindex`. That is
also why it cannot be reproduced by clicking during a normal sync, and why the
reproduction below holds the lock on purpose.

**Reproducing it.** Racing cron does not work. Hold the lock deliberately:
`notmuch tag --batch` keeps the write lock for a whole session and releases it
when stdin closes, so feeding it a slow stream of no-op tag commands holds the
lock for a controllable time. Verified: a competing writer blocks for exactly
the remaining hold.

**Approach.** Do not send a write the worker will block on. `SyncMonitor`
(item 27) already reports whether a sync holds the lock, so `MainWindow` can
hold the edit while `State::Running` and send it on the transition to `Idle`,
which is a signal that already exists and already fires. The rows keep showing
the change meanwhile, which is honest: it is what the user asked for and it is
going to be applied.

**Explicitly rejected: retrying on error.** That was the first implementation
and it is dead code against this cause, since the error it keys off never
arrives from lock contention. Keying on the monitor's state is also strictly
better: it avoids the stall rather than recovering from it.

**Constraints.** The optimistic-update-then-revert contract must survive: a
held edit is still unsynced and must keep counting toward the pending indicator,
or the quit prompt will let the user leave on work that never landed (the
failure item 28 and the 0.9.0 net-state fix were both about). Do not widen the
write window by holding the read-write handle open, per the read-only-by-default
rule in `CLAUDE.md`. A held edit must re-resolve its thread ids when it is
finally sent: `notmuch new` may have renamed files underneath it. And
`SyncMonitor::State::Unknown` must not gate writes, or a platform that cannot
read `/proc/locks` would never send an edit at all.

**What the stall looks like, observed 2026-08-04.** Confirmed by hand with the
Xapian lock held deliberately: switching between threads left the message pane
showing the FIRST thread selected, and when the lock released the pane stepped
through the three or four threads selected in the meantime, in sequence. That
is the worker's queue draining, and it is the user-visible shape of this defect.

**Reads are NOT blocked by the write lock.** Measured the same day, and it
bounds how bad this is. A read-only open and a 200-thread query take 0.001s and
0.015s whether or not another process holds the write lock, identical to
baseline. So `loadThread` never blocks on the lock itself. The stall is purely
head-of-line blocking on the single worker thread: one blocked `applyTags` holds
up every read queued behind it. Do not "fix" this by making reads lock-aware;
there is nothing there to fix.

**Residual gap: the 2s polling window. Accepted for now (user, 2026-08-06),
and deliberately left open rather than closed.** `SyncMonitor` polls every two
seconds, so a sync that starts between polls is invisible to the window for up
to 2s, and a tag edit in that window is still sent straight into a blocking
open. The window is 2s wide, `notmuch new` holds the lock for well under a
second on an already-indexed Maildir, and reads are unaffected either way, so
the exposure is small and the shipped behaviour is the pre-existing one.

**The option stays on the table, to revisit:** check the lock at send time.
`SyncMonitor::lockHeldIn()` is already a static, pure function over
`/proc/locks` content, so `sendThreadTagChange` can call it for the cost of one
small file read per tag action. That closes the window entirely. It was not
taken now because it would add untested code to a change that had just been
verified by hand, which is the wrong order.

### Hand test (2026-08-06): passed

Verified against a real blocking open, which the unit tests cannot reach: they
drive the deferral through the meta-object and never take a lock. Both locks
held for 100s by the throwaway scaffold, with a tag edit made during the hold.
All six expected behaviours confirmed by the user: the row kept the tag, the
status message did not expire, the unsynced indicator rose, the Sync button was
disabled, **the window stayed responsive**, and the held edit sent itself on
release without a click.

The responsiveness check is the one that mattered. The stall observed on
2026-08-04 left the message pane frozen on the first thread selected and
replayed the queue on release; that no longer happens.

**Related:** item 35 (refresh after sync) touches the same `Idle` transition,
and both want a non-destructive path that does not clear the undo stack.

## 38. `test_mainwindow` fails when a real sync holds the lock

**Observed 2026-08-04:** `theSyncButtonIsDisabledWhileABackgroundSyncHoldsTheLock`
failed once during a full run and passed on every rerun. The cause is not
ordering or pollution between tests: the user's cron sync happened to be running
at that moment.

**Cause (verified in code).** `MainWindow::buildUi()` constructs a real
`SyncMonitor` on `SyncMonitor::defaultLockPath()` and the live `/proc/locks`
(`src/mainwindow.cpp:467`) and starts it. Every `MainWindow` a test builds
therefore observes the machine's actual sync state. The test asserts
`button->isEnabled()` on a freshly built window, which is false whenever a real
sync holds `/tmp/mbsync.lock`. With cron firing every ten minutes and a run
lasting ~35s, roughly 6% of test runs land inside one.

**Not caused by the item 37 work**, though that is when it was noticed. The
test and the monitor both predate it; confirmed by stashing the item 37 changes
and seeing the suite pass, then reproducing the failure with a sync live.

**Approach.** The monitor is already injectable: its constructor takes a
`locksPath` precisely so tests can drive transitions without real locks
(`src/syncmonitor.h:59-64`), and `test_syncmonitor` uses that. `MainWindow` does
not expose it. Either let the window take a locks path (config or a setter used
only by tests), or have the test point `SyncMonitor` at a temporary file. The
existing tests that drive `onExternalSyncStateChanged` through the meta-object
are unaffected either way; it is only the construction-time state that leaks in.

**Constraint:** do not simply stop starting the monitor in tests. The
construction-time state IS the behaviour under test for this case, and a window
that never polls would pass the assertion for the wrong reason.

### Outcome (done)

`MainWindow::setLocksPathForTesting()` / `locksPath()` give the window the seam
`SyncMonitor` already had, and the test points it at an empty file in its own
`QTemporaryDir` so construction observes no sync. The constraint above is
respected: the monitor is still constructed and still started, it simply reads a
lock table the test controls.

**A test seam, deliberately not a config key.** `/proc/locks` is not something a
user would ever set, and a wrong value fails silently by disabling background
sync detection rather than loudly. A `[general]` key was considered and rejected
for that reason.

**The override is process-wide and is reset at the end of the test**, since the
`QTemporaryDir` holding the file is destroyed with it; leaving it set would
point every later window at a path that no longer exists.

**Verified by reproducing the original failure rather than waiting for cron.**
Running the suite under `flock -n /tmp/mbsync.lock` fails the assertion exactly
as reported when the seam is bypassed, and passes with it in place. The first
mutation attempted was a dud worth recording: writing `MUTANT` into the injected
lock table does not fail the test, because it is not a parseable `/proc/locks`
line and `lockHeldIn()` correctly finds no lock in it.

## 39. Thread list cannot be sorted by clicking a column header

**Dropped 2026-08-10 (user).** The item asked for a column header to click and
there is no longer one to click: the card list (items 20 and 53) collapsed the
five columns into a single column of cards, and the header is gone with them.
0.13.0 shipped a sort dropdown in the query row, which is the same capability
reached a different way, so the complaint behind this item is answered and the
mechanism it proposed is unbuildable. The analysis below is kept because its
constraints outlived it: the batched-append problem and the sort-on-timestamp
rule apply to any future sort, including the dropdown's.

**Observed (user, 2026-08-05):** "left pane columns order by clicking on the
column header."

**Cause (verified in code):** nothing sorts. `setSortingEnabled` appears nowhere
in `src/`, no `QSortFilterProxyModel` exists, and `ThreadListModel` implements no
`sort()`. The order is whatever the worker emitted, and that is fixed:
`NotmuchWorker::runQuery()` calls
`notmuch_query_set_sort(..., NOTMUCH_SORT_NEWEST_FIRST)`
(`src/notmuchworker.cpp:135`). Clicking a header does nothing because the header
was never made interactive.

**Approach.** Sort in the model, not in the query. The worker's sort is over
notmuch's own ordering and cannot express "by From" or "by Subject" at all, and
re-querying per header click would send the user's place away for a presentation
change.

- `ThreadListView::setSortingEnabled(true)` plus a `sort()` on the model, or a
  `QSortFilterProxyModel` between them.
- Persist the sort column and order into `uistate.conf`, per item 1's rule. A
  sort that resets on restart is item 1 restated.

**Constraints.**

- **Batched appends are the real difficulty.** Threads arrive in batches of 200
  through `appendBatch()` while the query is still running, so a sorted view is
  re-sorted on every batch and rows move under a selection the user is already
  working in. Decide explicitly: sort only once the query completes, or accept
  the movement. A proxy model makes this worse rather than better, since it
  re-sorts on every insert by default.
- The date column is displayed text but must sort as a timestamp, not as a
  string. `ThreadSummary` carries the real value; sort on that, not on the
  rendered cell.
- Row styling (item 13) and the unread bold are per-row, so they follow the row
  and need nothing here. Verify anyway after a proxy is introduced: a proxy that
  forwards only `DisplayRole` drops them silently.

## 40. No live filter over the current view

**Observed (user, 2026-08-05):** "search in current view", spelled out as two
things: "a light filter applied live on the current view", and "a search bar
appearing as soon as we type while no entry box is focused".

**Cause (verified in code):** the only search is the query bar, which runs a
notmuch query and replaces the result set. There is no client-side filtering
of an existing result: no `QSortFilterProxyModel` anywhere in `src/`, and
`ThreadListModel` has no filter of its own. Narrowing the current view therefore
means writing a new notmuch query and losing the view.

**Approach.** Distinct from the query bar, and the distinction is the point: this
filters rows already fetched, without touching notmuch.

- A filter over the model's loaded rows, matching subject and from, case
  insensitively. No worker round trip.
- A filter strip that appears on the first keystroke while no entry box has
  focus, and disappears on Escape, restoring the full result set.

**Constraints.**

- **Type-to-filter competes with the plain-letter shortcuts.** Item 3's outcome
  records that a plain-letter `QAction` shortcut is suppressed only while an
  editable widget has focus, which is exactly the state this feature does not
  start in. Any binding that is a bare letter would be swallowed by the filter
  strip or would swallow it. Check the current defaults before choosing the
  trigger, and prefer appearing only for characters no action claims.
- Escape already blanks the message pane (item 32). If Escape also closes the
  filter, decide the precedence explicitly rather than letting whichever handler
  runs first win.
- The filter is presentation only: it must not clear the selection, the undo
  stack, or the query, and the pending-edit count must not move.
- Interaction with item 39: a filter and a sort over the same rows want the same
  proxy. Whichever is built first should leave room for the other.

## 41. A message whose HTML body carries a `Content-Id` renders blank

**Observed (user, 2026-08-05):** a specific message from a bulk sender opens
blank, and the app reports it has no HTML part.

**Cause (verified in code): the inline-part branch runs before the body
branches, and returns.** `collectParts()` in `src/mimeparser.cpp` tests
`g_mime_part_get_content_id()` at `:133` and, whenever a part has one, files it
into `out.inlineParts` and returns at `:139`. The `text/plain` and `text/html`
assignments at `:142-146` are never reached for that part.

Setting a `Content-Id` on the `text/html` body part is legal and common in
bulk-sender output. Such a message parses with an empty `htmlBody` and an empty
`plainBody`, so `ParsedMessage::hasHtml()` (`src/mimeparser.h:115`) is false,
`HtmlBuilder` falls through to a plain body that is also empty
(`src/htmlbuilder.cpp:208`), and the pane renders nothing. Both halves of the
user's observation follow from one wrong ordering.

**Approach.** A `Content-Id` makes a part *referenceable*, not non-displayable.
The two are independent, and the current code treats them as exclusive.

- Register the part in `inlineParts` as today, and then still let a
  `text/plain` or `text/html` part fill the corresponding body slot when that
  slot is empty. Do not return early on the presence of a content id alone.
- The existing "first one wins" rule (`out.htmlBody.isEmpty()`) already keeps a
  genuinely inline image from displacing a real body, so a part that is not text
  is unaffected by this change.

**Constraints.**

- **Do not use `Content-Disposition: inline` as the discriminator.** It is
  absent far more often than it is correct, and a body part commonly carries no
  disposition at all. The `attachment` check above it (`:116-117`) is already the
  right test for "not a body" and should stay the only one.
- A part that is both the body and a `cid:` target must remain reachable under
  its id, or a sibling referencing it breaks. Register first, then assign.
- This is `MimeParser`, which is fixture-tested: the fix needs a fixture message
  whose `text/html` part carries a `Content-Id`, asserting both that the body
  renders and that the id still resolves. Write the fixture by hand rather than
  from real mail, per the no-personal-details rule.

**Verification:** the user's original message renders. The `cid:` rewriting of
item 15's namespacing is unaffected, which the existing mimeparser tests already
cover.

**Confirmed on real mail (2026-08-07).** Affected messages are not easy to find,
because the common case, a `Content-Id` on an inline image, always worked and
swamps a naive grep. The narrow case is a `Content-Id` in the *same header
block* as a `Content-Type: text/html`:

```bash
notmuch search --output=files 'tag:inbox' | while read -r f; do
  awk 'BEGIN { IGNORECASE=1; html=0; cid=0 }
       /^$/   { if (html && cid) { print "yes"; exit }; html=0; cid=0; next }
       /^Content-Type:[ \t]*text\/html/ { html=1; next }
       /^Content-ID:/                   { cid=1;  next }
       END    { if (html && cid) print "yes" }' "$f" | grep -q yes && printf '%s\n' "$f"
done
```

That found 96 messages in one inbox, all from bulk senders, with 57 from a
single one. Pull `Message-ID` from a match and paste it into the query bar as
`id:<the-id>` to open it. Note `file:` is **not** a notmuch search term, so a
path cannot be turned into a query directly; read the header instead.

## 42. "Syncing..." says nothing about what is being synced

**Observed (user, 2026-08-05):** the only feedback during a manual sync is
"Syncing" in the status bar. The user asked for the account being synced
(e.g. `Syncing provider-work`) and the operation in progress (mbsync, notmuch).

**Cause (verified in code): the information is already arriving and is thrown
away.** `assets/mailsync.sh` streams every mbsync and `notmuch new` line,
timestamped, through `tee` (`assets/mailsync.sh:75-96`), and `MailSync` emits
each chunk as `outputReceived` (`src/mailsync.cpp:65-74`), which fills the sync
log pane. The status label is set once to `tr("Syncing...")`
(`src/mainwindow.cpp:1569`) and never updated until the run finishes.

**Correction (2026-08-07, measured): the paragraph above was half wrong, and
the "no script change needed" claim with it.** `notmuch new` does stream, but
plain `mbsync -a` prints **nothing at all** until it exits, then one summary
line. Measured on a real run: one line at 11:11:08, then 73 lines within the
single second 11:11:33, at the end of a 46-second run. So for the part of a
sync that actually takes time there was no output to read, and no parsing of
the existing stream could have fixed that.

Two wrong diagnoses were made and discarded before the real one. It is **not**
buffering, so `stdbuf` does nothing: the output streams fine, there simply is
none. And the account name **is** available, contrary to the first reading of
this item, which concluded it was not and proposed shipping phases only.

`mbsync -V` is what changes both: it announces each channel as it reaches it
(`Channel <name>`), which is at once the progress indication and the account
name the user asked for. The shipped script now passes it.

**Approach.** Derive a short status from the output already being received.

- Recognise the phase from the stream: lines before `notmuch new` starts are
  mbsync's, and `notmuch new` announces itself. Show "Syncing mail (mbsync)"
  then "Reindexing (notmuch)".
- mbsync prints the channel it is working on **only under `-V`**, which is the
  account name the user wants to see. Take it from the output rather than from
  config, so what is shown is what is actually happening, and in the order it
  actually happens.

**Constraints.**

- **Sync output is untrusted-ish input.** It comes from a local script, but it is
  interpolated into a status label; keep it plain text and truncate it, so a long
  or hostile line cannot resize the status bar or inject markup.
- The status label is shared with transient messages, which expire (item 33).
  A sync phase is not transient and must not be cleared by that timer, nor
  clobber a message the user is reading.
- Do not parse the output to decide success or failure. The exit status is the
  authority, deliberately (`assets/mailsync.sh:101-108`), and a second opinion
  derived from text would eventually disagree with it.
- Match loosely. mbsync's exact wording varies by version, and a status line that
  goes blank because a string moved is worse than the current fixed one.

**Two defects in existing code, found while building this and fixed with it.**

- `startSync()` called `setSyncBusy(true)` **after** `m_sync->start()`, so any
  per-run state reset there happened after the process had already produced
  output. A short run delivers everything before control returns, which wiped
  the phase those lines had produced. The reset now happens before the launch.
- The first draft deferred a phase while a transient message was still showing,
  reading the constraint above as "never clobber a message the user is
  reading". That let a `Background sync completed` message armed **before** the
  sync started suppress the entire run's phases, which is how the first hand
  test came back red. A running sync's state outranks an expiring event
  message, so the deferral was removed. The constraint it was serving is
  satisfied the other way round: a phase is written directly rather than
  through `showTransientStatus()`, so the timer never reclaims it.

**Verification note.** A test script that prints its lines at once is delivered
in a single `readyRead`, so the tracker sees the whole run in one call and only
the final phase is ever painted, which makes every intermediate one
unobservable. `test_mainwindow`'s script therefore paces itself with `sleep`,
standing in for a real sync's tens of seconds. The parser itself was checked by
replaying real captured `mbsync -V` output through it.

## 43. No "Mark all read" for the current view

**Observed (user, 2026-08-05):** a "Mark All Read" button next to Sync, Archive,
Delete and Undo, applying to the current view.

**Cause (verified in code):** no such action exists. The registered actions are
the list at `src/mainwindow.cpp:590-756`; there is `toggle_unread`, which acts on
the selection, and nothing that acts on a whole result set.

**Approach.** The machinery is already there and this is mostly a question of
scope. `applyTagsToThreads` resolves a multi-thread selection in one combined
query, per `CLAUDE.md`, so marking many threads read is one write, not N.

- An action removing `unread` from every thread in the current view, routed
  through the same funnel, with its inverse pushed onto the undo stack as a
  single command.
- Item 25 already established select-all, so "select all, then toggle unread" is
  the manual route today. Decide whether this item is that, or genuinely
  view-wide regardless of selection.

**Constraints.**

- **"The current view" is not the same as "the loaded rows".** Threads arrive in
  batches and a large query may still be running, so an action taken mid-load
  would silently skip whatever has not arrived. Either act on the model's rows
  and say so, or wait for the query to complete. Do not describe it as "all" if
  it is not.
- One undo entry for the whole operation, not one per thread. A user who marks
  400 threads read and then hits Ctrl+Z expects one press to be enough.
- No confirmation dialog, per `CLAUDE.md`, even though this touches many threads.
  Undo is the answer here as everywhere else.
- The pending-edit count must move by the real number of threads changed, or the
  quit prompt understates the work at risk.

**Resolved (2026-08-07).** The scope question above was decided by the user:
the action is **disabled until the query reports its total**, rather than
acting on a partial set or stalling on a wait. `m_queryComplete` gates it,
cleared in `runCurrentQuery()` and set in `onQueryFinished()`. A greyed control
says "not yet" without a dialog, and the honesty constraint is satisfied by
construction rather than by wording.

Two things came out differently from the plan, both forced by existing code.

- **It carries a default binding, `Ctrl+Shift+U`**, shifted against `Ctrl+U`
  for `toggle_unread`. The intent was toolbar and menu only, but
  `everyActionHasAShortcut` requires every registered action to have one: an
  unbound action is unreachable from the keyboard, and an empty shortcut means
  the action list and the default table have drifted apart. The invariant is
  deliberate, so the action was given a binding rather than the invariant being
  relaxed.
- **Only the threads that are actually unread are sent.** Sending every row
  would inflate the pending-edit count with writes that change nothing, and the
  quit prompt reads that count. A view with nothing unread does nothing at all,
  pushes no command, and says so: an undo entry that restores nothing is worse
  than none, since it absorbs a Ctrl+Z meant for the previous action.

**A test-seam note worth keeping.** `undo->isEnabled()` cannot answer "was a
command pushed": the undo `QAction` is always enabled and tests `canUndo()`
when triggered. A first version of the no-op test asserted on it and passed
against a mutant with the unread filter removed. `undoDepthForTesting()` exists
because of that, and the mutation is caught now.

## 44. No way to manage the filters applied at sync time

**Observed (user, 2026-08-05):** "manage filters to be applied when syncing (view
existing, edit, delete, create new, copy as new, dry-run)."

**Unspecified, and blocked on a question the user has to answer first: there are
no such filters in this application.** Nothing in `src/` applies rules at sync
time; `MailSync` runs one configured command and shows its output, and
`assets/mailsync.sh` is mbsync plus `notmuch new` under a lock, with no rule
engine anywhere in it.

So the item is not "expose the existing filters in the UI". It is one of:

- **A UI over rules that live somewhere else**, e.g. the companion `mailctl`
  project or a hand-written notmuch tagging script the user runs after
  `notmuch new`. If those exist, this item is an editor for that file and its
  shape follows that file's format.
- **A rule engine in qtmaildir**, which is a materially larger piece of work and
  a change to what this application is: v1 is read-and-organize over an index
  someone else fills.

**Next step: ask the user which, and where the rules live today.** The
dry-run request is the strongest hint that they have something in mind that
already runs, since a dry run only makes sense against rules that exist.

**Constraint if it is built here:** `CLAUDE.md` records that this project does
no network protocol work at all and that fetching is external. A filter engine
that rewrites the Maildir would not violate that literally, but it would put
qtmaildir in the business of moving mail, which is a decision to take
deliberately rather than by implementing a dialog.

## 45. Two Sync buttons on the main window

**Observed (user, 2026-08-05):** "there's currently 2 Sync buttons on the main
interface. UX redundant."

**Cause (verified in code): they are two separate widgets built by two separate
passes.** `m_syncButton` is a `QPushButton` created in `buildUi()`
(`src/mainwindow.cpp:441`) and placed in the query bar row. Independently, the
`sync` action registered at `:721` appears on both the File menu and the
toolbar, from item 3's menu work. Nothing removed the original button when the
toolbar gained one, so the window shows both.

### Revised 2026-08-06: this is a defect, not a cosmetic cleanup

**The two controls do different things**, which the original write-up assumed
away by treating them as duplicates. Confirmed in code after the user reported
that the toolbar one "doesn't perform a sync":

- The `QPushButton` handler (`src/mainwindow.cpp:464`) starts the sync, clears
  the log pane, shows it, disables the button, and reports "Sync already
  running" when `start()` returns false.
- The `sync` QAction handler (`src/mainwindow.cpp:721`) is
  `if (m_sync->isAvailable()) m_sync->start();` and nothing else. No log pane,
  no disable, and the return value is discarded, so a rejected start is silent.

So the toolbar button most likely *does* start a sync; every piece of evidence
that it did lives in the other handler. That is item 13's failure restated: the
feedback exists where the user cannot see it.

**Worse, item 29 shipped for one widget only.** `onExternalSyncStateChanged`
disables `m_syncButton` during a background sync (`src/mainwindow.cpp:1606`) and
never touches the action. During a cron sync the toolbar Sync stays clickable
and can only produce the EX_TEMPFAIL skip, which is the exact behaviour item 29
exists to prevent. The user's note about "2 sync buttons" is therefore sitting
on top of a live defect rather than a redundancy.

**The user's preference (2026-08-06):** keep the top-left one, next to Archive,
Delete and Undo. The one beside the query bar reads instinctively as a Search
button, which is a real misaffordance given what sits next to it.

**Approach.** Not "pick a survivor". Move the button's handler onto the action,
so the two behave identically, then drop the now-redundant `QPushButton`. The
action carries its shortcut, its enabled state and its menu entry from one
place, which is the whole point of item 3's conversion; the loose button is the
last widget that predates it.

Route the enabled state through the action too, so `setEnabled` has one target
rather than two that can disagree. `QAction::setEnabled` propagates to every
widget showing it, which is what makes this smaller than it looks.

**Constraints.**

- **The button is not just a button today.** It is disabled while a sync runs,
  including one started externally (item 27/29), and `test_mainwindow` asserts on
  it by name. Whatever replaces it has to carry that state, and the tests need
  pointing at the action rather than at the widget. Three tests find it via
  `findChild<QPushButton *>("syncButton")`, including the one item 38 just
  fixed, so they move together with the widget.

- **A test must cover the toolbar path specifically.** The whole defect is that
  one of two controls was never given the behaviour, and a test that drives only
  the surviving widget would have passed throughout. Assert on the action's
  enabled state during a background sync, which is the half that silently never
  worked.

### Outcome (done)

Built in the order the user asked for: make the toolbar control work, prove it,
then remove the other one.

`startSync()` is now the single handler behind every route in, the toolbar, the
File menu, the shortcut and, until it was removed, the button. The old action
handler was `if (m_sync->isAvailable()) m_sync->start();`, which cleared no log,
opened no pane, disabled nothing and discarded `start()`'s return value, so a
rejected start was silent. It now also reports when no sync command is
configured rather than doing nothing at all.

`setSyncBusy()` sets the enabled state on the QAction, which reaches the toolbar
button, the menu entry and the shortcut at once. That was the actual defect:
item 29 set a separate QPushButton and never touched the action.

**Verified red first, then load-bearing.**
`theSyncActionIsDisabledWhileABackgroundSyncHoldsTheLock` fails before the fix
with the action still enabled during a background sync, and fails again when the
action's `setEnabled` is removed afterwards. The pre-existing button test passed
throughout, which is exactly why the defect survived item 29: it drove the half
that worked.

**Confirmed by hand before the widget was removed**, per the user's condition:
reading mail grew the unsynced count, the toolbar Sync ran the sync, and the app
refreshed and reported "Sync complete" at the end.

**Then the QPushButton went.** Its unavailable-command tooltip moved to the
action, since with no command configured the control is disabled and the tooltip
is the only thing that says why. The old button test was deleted rather than
repointed, being an exact duplicate of the new action test, and the
unobservable-lock-table test now asserts on the action.
- Check for other loose widgets doing the same thing before touching this one, so
  the fix is not repeated per widget later.
- Removing a visible control is the kind of change that looks like a regression.
  Confirm with the user which of the two survives; the note says redundant, not
  which one is wanted.

## 46. `uiStateSurvivesARestart` fails under the offscreen platform

**Observed 2026-08-06:** the full suite is green on the user's Wayland session
but `TestMainWindow::uiStateSurvivesARestart` fails under
`QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen`, which is how the suite is run when a session must
not open windows on the user's screen. Only the width is wrong:

```
Actual   (reopened.size()): QSize(798x620)
Expected (resized)        : QSize(940x620)
```

**Cause (verified by probe, not assumed).** The offscreen platform reports an
800x800 screen. `QMainWindow::restoreGeometry()` clamps a restored window to the
available screen area, so the test's 940 width comes back as 798 while its 620
height, which fits, restores untouched. That asymmetry is the tell: the state
file is written and read correctly, and the zoom factor in the same test
restores fine. Nothing is broken in item 1's persistence.

**Not a state-file collision.** The test already scopes itself properly with
`QStandardPaths::setTestModeEnabled(true)` and removes the file at both ends
(`tests/test_mainwindow.cpp:229-255`), so it never touches
`~/.local/state/qtmaildir/uistate.conf`. An earlier reading of this failure
blamed the real state file being held by a running app; that was wrong, and the
test source disproves it.

**Approach.** Pick a size the smallest plausible test screen can hold, well
under 800x800, and assert on that. The test is about persistence, not about
large windows, so the specific number carries no meaning and only needs to
differ from the default.

**Constraint:** do not "fix" this by widening the assertion to a tolerance or by
skipping under offscreen. Both would hide a genuine restore failure later, and
the property under test (the size that went in comes back out) is exact.

**Related:** the same class as item 38. Both are tests that silently depend on
the machine they run on, and both were found by running the suite in a context
its author had not tried rather than by reading it.

### Outcome (done)

The asserted size is now 640x560, which fits the offscreen platform's 800x800
screen. Nothing in `MainWindow` changed: the persistence was never broken, only
the test's choice of a window wider than the smallest screen it runs against.

Verified both ways round, since this one passed on Wayland throughout: 45 of 45
under offscreen where it previously failed, and still green on the real
platform.

## 47. The query bar looks unfinished, and cannot be cleared by mouse

**Observed (user, 2026-08-06), immediately after item 45 removed the Sync
button:** the bar "having no button seems kind of incomplete", and the user
asked whether a clear icon could be shown in it.

**Cause:** the query field was the last stretching item in its row, so with the
Sync button gone it ran flush to the window edge with nothing terminating it.
Clearing it needed the keyboard; `QLineEdit` does not draw a clear button unless
asked.

**Approach, and what was deliberately NOT built.** The user's first instinct was
a "🔎 Search" button. That was argued against and dropped: Return already runs
the query, and a button beside a text field is exactly what read as Search and
got removed in item 45. Adding one back would restate items 13 and 45 in a new
spot.

What was built instead:

- `setClearButtonEnabled(true)` on the query field. Qt draws the ✕ inside the
  field, shows it only when there is text, and themes it from the desktop. One
  line, no icon asset, no new widget.
- The saved-query buttons moved from their own row onto the query row, after the
  field, so the bar is framed by the account dropdown on the left and the saved
  queries on the right. The row they left is gone and the thread list gains that
  vertical space. This was the user's own proposal and it addresses the
  "incomplete" reading directly, without adding a control.

**Constraints.**

- **`[queries]` is unbounded.** Three entries fit comfortably; enough of them
  would squeeze the field. No overflow handling was built, marked with a
  `ponytail:` comment pointing at item 23, which already specifies
  buttons-plus-menu and is where that belongs.
- Button order follows `childKeys()`, which sorts alphabetically, so the buttons
  read Flagged, Inbox, Unread regardless of the order written in the config.
  Pre-existing, and its own item if it matters.

**Known behaviour, accepted:** clicking ✕ focuses the field, and an empty field
makes `QueryCompleter` offer everything, so the popup opens. Confirmed by the
user as acceptable; suppressible if it becomes annoying in daily use.

**Verification:** by hand. The tests do not click the ✕, which is a mouse path.
The user confirmed the icon renders correctly, is themed, and clears the field.

## 48. Removing a tag suggests every tag, not the thread's own

**Observed (user, 2026-08-06):** "when removing a tag from a thread using the
input box, I get suggested all tags, not only those relevant to the message
being edited."

**Cause (verified in code):** both fields share one completer setup.
`TagDialog`'s constructor loops over `{ m_addEdit, m_removeEdit }` and builds
`new QCompleter(knownTags, edit)` for each (`src/tagdialog.cpp:163-164`), and
`knownTags` is every tag in the database. That is right for Add, where the point
is to reach any tag and even create one, and wrong for Remove, where the only
tags that can be removed are the ones the selected threads already carry.

**The data is already in the dialog.** The constructor takes `currentTags`, a
`QHash<QString, int>` of tag to how many selected threads carry it
(`src/tagdialog.h:66-67`), and uses it at `:212` to render the existing-tag
display. It is simply never given to the remove field's completer, so this needs
no new plumbing and no worker query.

**Approach.** Build the two completers from different vocabularies rather than
in one loop: `knownTags` for Add, `currentTags.keys()` for Remove.

**Constraints.**

- **Keep the setWidget/prefix machinery exactly as it is.** Both fields hold a
  comma-separated list, and `QLineEdit::setCompleter` is the documented trap
  this dialog already works around, hit twice in this codebase. Only the
  candidate list changes; the wiring does not.
- **Completion stays a suggestion, not a whitelist.** The dialog's own comment
  records that a tag absent from the list is exactly what it exists to create.
  For Remove that matters less, but typing a tag not in the list must still be
  possible rather than blocked, so nothing may start validating input against
  the candidates.
- On a multi-thread selection `currentTags` is the union across the selection,
  with counts. That is the right set to offer, since removing a tag two of three
  threads carry is meaningful. Do not filter to tags every thread has.

**Verification:** a test can construct the dialog with a known `currentTags` and
assert the remove field's completer offers only those. The keys must be typed,
not `setText()`, since `setText` does not drive a completer at all, which
`CLAUDE.md` records.

## 49. Sync always runs every account, even when one account was touched

**Observed (user, 2026-08-07):** "make the manual and closing sync operation
work only on affected accounts (it now runs for all accounts, independent from
actual modifications present). If no modifications exists, assume it's for all
accounts and run normally."

**Cause (verified in code):** the account set is not a parameter anywhere on the
path. `MailSync::start()` (`src/mailsync.cpp:170`) takes no arguments; it splits
the configured `sync_command` string and runs it verbatim
(`src/mailsync.cpp:177-184`), so the command line is fixed at config time and
identical for every run. The shipped script then hardcodes the whole-store
sweep: `mbsync -V -a` (`assets/mailsync.sh:83`), where `-a` means all channels.
Nothing between the tag edit and mbsync carries which account changed.

**Approach.** Three pieces, and the first is the real work.

- **Track which accounts have unsynced edits.** Item 18's `m_pendingEdits` is a
  bare count; this needs the set of account tags behind it, accumulated in the
  same `onTagsApplied()` handler and cleared on the same successful-sync reset.
  `ThreadSummary` already carries the account tag that `ThreadListModel` renders
  as the account chip, so the mapping exists and needs no worker query.
- **Let `start()` take accounts.** An optional `QStringList` appended to the
  configured command's arguments, empty meaning today's behaviour.
- **Let the script accept channel names.** `mailsync.sh` passes them to mbsync in
  place of `-a` when given, keeping `-a` when not.

**Constraints.**

- **Empty set means all accounts, per the user's own wording.** A sync with
  nothing pending is a fetch, and fetching one account because that is where the
  last edit happened to be would be wrong.
- **A notmuch account tag is not necessarily an mbsync channel name.** The
  config already separates the two ideas (`[account.<key>]` has a notmuch tag and
  a display `label`); mapping to a channel needs either a new per-account key or
  an explicit decision that the key IS the channel. Settle this with the user
  before building, it is the one design question in the item.

  **Resolved 2026-08-07 by reading the user's real mbsync config against their
  qtmaildir config: a new key is required.** Three of five accounts match their
  channel name exactly, and two do not, because a QSettings section key may
  carry dots that the channel does not: a section `[account.mail-first.last]`
  against a channel `mail-firstlast`. Key-as-channel would therefore name two
  channels mbsync does not know, and mbsync treats an unknown channel as fatal,
  so those two accounts' syncs would fail outright rather than degrade. The
  `maildir` key tracks the section key rather than the channel and is no help.
  Built as an optional `channel` key defaulting to the section key, so the three
  matching accounts need no config edit.
- **`notmuch new` still runs over everything**, and must. Restricting the fetch
  does not restrict the index.
- **The script's two shipped properties survive**: it prints to stdout as well as
  its log, and it exits with the real status. `CLAUDE.md` records why.
- Item 42's status-bar parsing reads the account name out of `mbsync -V` output;
  a narrowed run must keep `-V` or that regresses.

**Verification:** by hand, since it ends in a real fetch. Tag in one account,
sync, and confirm from the log that only that channel ran. Then sync with
nothing pending and confirm all channels run.

## 50. Esc blanks the pane but leaves the row selected

**Observed (user, 2026-08-07):** "esc in the main window should deselect whatever
is selected in the left pane while still blanking the right pane. Two actions
instead of one."

**Cause (verified in code):** deliberate, and now reconsidered. The `clear_pane`
action (`src/mainwindow.cpp:772`) is bound to `Esc` by default
(`src/keymap.cpp:88`), and its own comment states the intent: "A view change,
not a mail change: the selection, the query and the undo stack are all left
alone." It calls `m_messageView->clear()` and drops `m_currentThreadId`
(`src/mainwindow.cpp:783`) and touches the selection model not at all. Item 32
built exactly what was asked for then; the user now wants the selection cleared
as well.

**Approach.** The note asks for "two actions instead of one", so this is not a
matter of adding `clearSelection()` to the existing one:

- `clear_pane` keeps its current behaviour and its name, still available to a
  user who binds it.
- A second action clears the pane AND the thread list selection, and takes the
  `Esc` default.

**Constraints.**

- **Clearing the selection must not resurrect the pane.** The selection handler
  reacts to `selectionChanged`, so clearing it fires that path; confirm it
  leaves the pane blank rather than re-rendering or repainting a placeholder,
  and order the two operations accordingly. This is the whole risk in the item.
- **Interacts with item 30.** Once the blank pane shows a placeholder, "blank"
  means "show the placeholder", and a multi-selection message is one of the
  things item 30 specifies the placeholder saying. Build 30 first or the two
  will disagree about what an empty pane looks like.
- The in-flight-load guard must keep working: `m_currentThreadId` is cleared
  with the pane precisely so a `threadLoaded` arriving afterwards is dropped.
- Both actions need entries in the shortcut reference, which is generated, so
  the descriptions must distinguish them in one line.

### Outcome (done 2026-08-07)

Built as two actions, per the user's "two actions instead of one".
`clear_selection` takes `Esc` and does both; `clear_pane` keeps its existing
behaviour on `Shift+Esc`. It needed a default rather than being left unbound:
every action carries one, and `everyActionHasAShortcut` enforces it.

**The reload hazard is real, and both guards against it are load-bearing.**
`clearSelection()` leaves `currentIndex()` VALID, so `onSelectionChanged()`
takes its "one or fewer rows" branch, finds a current row whose id differs from
`m_currentThreadId`, and calls `onThreadSelected` for it: the thread is
re-adopted and a `loadThread` sent for the row being cleared. Clearing the
selection BEFORE blanking means that runs while `m_currentThreadId` still names
the displayed thread, so the ids match and nothing reloads; `setCurrentIndex()`
then stops a later collapse-to-one-row reaching the same row.

All four arrangements were tried, and **only one passes**: dropping
`setCurrentIndex()` fails, and moving either line after the blanking fails.

**The first version of the test could not tell any of them apart.** It asserted
`showingPlaceholder()`, which passes whatever the code does, because
`test_mainwindow` has no worker: `loadThread` never replies, so nothing ever
repaints the pane. That is the standing limitation `CLAUDE.md` records, met
head-on. What IS observable without a worker is `currentThreadId()`, the id the
window sets on its way to sending the request, and `currentIndex()`. Asserting
those two is what made the test discriminate.

**A caution about mutation testing, learned the hard way here.** Two of these
conclusions were reached and reversed before the four-way comparison settled it,
once because a mutation crashed the build and the crash was read as a test
failure. A mutation that does not compile, or that dies before the assertion,
proves nothing. Check the run actually reached the assertion before believing
what it says.

## 51. Clicking a subject scrolls the list sideways

**Observed (user, 2026-08-07):** "when selecting a row by clicking on the subject,
the table scrolls horizontally to accomodate the whole subject column into view.
Minor UX."

**Cause (verified in code):** `QAbstractItemView`'s auto-scroll, which is on by
default and scrolls the clicked index fully into view. The Subject column
stretches and holds long text, so the view has somewhere to scroll to;
`src/mainwindow.cpp:548` sets `setHorizontalScrollMode(ScrollPerPixel)`, which
makes the movement smooth rather than by whole columns but does not cause it.
Nothing calls `scrollTo()` explicitly, and `setAutoScroll` is not set anywhere.

**Approach.** Cheapest first, and check it is enough before going further:
`setAutoScroll(false)` on the thread view suppresses the scroll-into-view on
click. If that proves too blunt, override `scrollTo()` to ignore the horizontal
component and defer to the base class for the vertical one.

**Constraints.**

- **Keyboard navigation must still scroll vertically.** Arrowing past the bottom
  of the viewport has to follow the current row, and `setAutoScroll(false)` is
  the flag that governs that too. Verify with the keyboard, not only the mouse;
  if it breaks, the `scrollTo()` override is the answer rather than the flag.
- Drag-select auto-scroll rides on the same flag. Selecting past the edge of the
  viewport is a real gesture on a list this long.
- The item is cosmetic and must not grow into column-sizing work. The Subject
  column being wider than the viewport is the precondition, not the defect.

## 52. `test_querycompleter` fails under Wayland, passes offscreen

**Observed 2026-08-07**, while verifying an unrelated change: `ctest` reports
`theDescriptionSurvivesAModestPopupWidth` failing, while running the same binary
directly passes. Reproduced on a clean checkout, so it predates that work.

**Cause (verified):** the test grabs the completer popup and asserts the image
is not null (`tests/test_querycompleter.cpp:824`). Under the Wayland platform
plugin the grab returns a null pixmap, with the warning

```
qt.qpa.wayland: Failed to create grabbing popup. Ensure popup ... has a
transientParent set and that parent window has received input.
```

Wayland will not create a grabbing popup for a window that has never received
input, which a test window has not. `ctest` sets no `QT_QPA_PLATFORM`, so it
inherits the session's Wayland plugin, whereas a developer running the binary
by hand usually exports `offscreen` and never sees it.

**Why this matters more than one red test.** The suite's result depends on how
it is invoked. A test that only passes under a platform plugin nobody sets is
not protecting anything, and worse, it trains you to read a real failure as
environmental. It cost a wrong diagnosis on the day it was found: the failure
was initially attributed to the change in flight, because the clean-tree
comparison was run under `offscreen` while `ctest` ran under Wayland. Comparing
two environments and reading the difference as a regression is exactly the
mistake this item exists to stop repeating.

**Approach.** Pin the platform for the tests that need one rather than for all
of them, the same shape as item 46:

- `set_tests_properties(... ENVIRONMENT QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen)` for the
  tests that grab widgets, so `ctest` is deterministic however the session is
  configured.
- Preferable if it works: give the popup a `transientParent` and show the parent
  first, which fixes the grab under Wayland rather than avoiding it. Try this
  before reaching for the environment override, since a test that can run under
  the real plugin is worth more than one that opts out.

**Constraints.**

- **Do not simply delete the assertion.** It exists because a null grab is
  precisely how this class of rendering test silently passes, which `CLAUDE.md`
  records at length. Weakening it to `if (!shot.isNull())` would make it pass
  everywhere and check nothing.
- Whatever is chosen must hold for `test_mainwindow` and `test_messageview` too,
  which create widgets and could grow the same dependency.

### Outcome (done 2026-08-07)

**The warning named the wrong cause, and the real one was worse.** Wayland's
"failed to create grabbing popup" message points at a transientParent, so the
plan above proposed setting one. Instrumenting the test first showed what
actually reaches the assertion: the popup viewport measured **1278x0**. The zero
height is why the grab returned a null pixmap, but the 1278 is the important
half. This test sizes a line edit to 550px and exists to prove the description
survives a popup that size; under Wayland it was handed a popup more than twice
that wide, so a working grab would have measured a different popup and **passed
while proving nothing**. Offscreen gives 548x40, the geometry the test means.

So pinning the platform is the correct fix rather than the cheap one, and the
preference recorded above was based on a misreading. Deterministic geometry is a
requirement of the test, not a convenience: a compositor is entitled to size a
popup how it likes.

- `set_tests_properties(... ENVIRONMENT QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen)` is applied
  in `add_qtmaildir_test()`, so it covers every test including `test_mainwindow`
  and `test_messageview` as the constraint required, and any test added later.
- **The test also guards its own geometry now**, since the CMake setting only
  covers `ctest` and the binary is often run directly. It asserts the viewport
  has a non-zero height and is no wider than 700px, each with a message naming
  the cause. A bare `QVERIFY(!shot.isNull())` reported nothing useful; the guard
  now says "popup viewport has no height (1278x0)".
- Both guards were **verified by mutation**: widening the line edit to 1200px
  makes the width guard fail with its explanation, where before the change that
  case would have passed.

## 53. Message rows still read as a table, not as a conversation

**Observed (user, 2026-08-08)**, on the finished item 20: *"I'm not very
convinced about this session's work. I don't think the table view fits our
use."* Said after the expander, the indent, the thread spine, the tint and the
dimmed text were all in and working, so it is not a report that a cue is
missing. It is a judgement on the result.

**This is a design finding, not a defect.** Item 20 shipped exactly what its
four decisions specified and every one of them was the user's own choice. The
work is sound; what it produced is not what was wanted. Recording it as a defect
would misattribute the cause, and recording nothing would leave the next session
building on a design the user has already rejected.

**Cause (verified in code, 2026-08-08).** A message row fills the SAME five
columns as a thread row: `ThreadListModel::data` answers `DateColumn`,
`AuthorsColumn` and `SubjectColumn` for message rows in the same switch that
answers them for threads. One model, one column grid, both row kinds. So every
reply lands on the same rigid column boundaries as the threads around it, and
the eye reads columns before it reads indentation or tint.

**Line numbers deliberately omitted.** That code is on the branch
`item-20-message-rows`, not on master, where the same lines are unrelated. To
read it: `git show item-20-message-rows:src/threadlistmodel.cpp` and find the
`isMessageRow(index)` branch of `data()`.

Compare the reference the user gave. In the Thunderbird screenshots the reply
rows carry sender and date only, laid out freely on a plain band, with no column
rules running through them. The structure comes from the ABSENCE of the grid,
which is the one thing three added cues cannot supply.

Two aggravating details, both visible in the 2026-08-08 screenshots:

- Every reply repeats `Re: <the thread's subject>`, near-identical down the
  whole block, which is exactly the visual signature of a table of records.
  Dropping the redundant prefix was offered and not chosen; it is worth
  revisiting first because it is the cheapest of these by a wide margin.
- Reply rows keep the same row height as thread rows, since
  `setUniformRowHeights(true)` is required for the tag strip's band arithmetic
  (on the branch, in `MainWindow`'s view setup). A conversation view would want
  tighter replies.

**Approach: unspecified, and deliberately so.** Ask the user what to change
before proposing anything, exactly as item 20 required. The plausible directions
differ enormously in cost and are not interchangeable:

1. **Span the columns for message rows.** Draw a reply as one free-form band
   (sender, date, no grid) rather than as cells. `QTreeView::setFirstColumnSpanned`
   does this per row without a second model. Cheapest real change, keeps
   everything else built.
2. **Drop the `Re:` prefix and shrink what a reply shows.** XS on its own, and
   worth trying before anything structural.
3. **Two different row shapes.** A delegate that paints a reply row entirely
   itself, ignoring the columns. More control, and it fights `uniformRowHeights`.
4. **Abandon message rows in the list** and revisit the `<details>`-per-message
   design in the message pane, which was offered at size S on 2026-08-08 and
   declined in favour of this. Item 20's work would largely be reverted.

**Constraint that shapes all of them.** The tag strip is why `ThreadListView`
exists, and its band arithmetic assumes a uniform row height and a known column
layout. Anything that varies row height or removes columns for one row kind has
to answer for the strip on thread rows, which must not change.

**Specified 2026-08-09.** The user's answer was that the grid is wrong for the
WHOLE left pane, not only for reply rows, which is wider than any of the four
directions above. Threads and replies both become cards in a single column, with
no column grid at all. The design is at
`docs/superpowers/specs/2026-08-09-card-list-design.md`; read that rather than
this entry, which records only the finding.

Two things settled here that the directions above got wrong. Direction 2's `Re:`
prefix removal is folded in rather than tried first, since the grid goes anyway.
And the constraint about the tag strip inverts: the strip is not something the
design has to answer for, it is deleted, because `ThreadListView` exists ONLY to
paint across columns that no longer exist. This item is a net removal of code.

**Item 51 is resolved by this design as a side effect** and should not be worked
separately. Cards are exactly viewport width, so the pane has no horizontal
scroll range for a click to scroll into.

## 54. A cron sync carries the edits but the count still says pending

**Observed (user, 2026-08-08):** "If I apply some edits in the program, then the
sync runs from crontab, my edits should go through the sync, instead I still see
`N changes pending`."

**Cause, verified in code.** The edits really do go out; only the count is
wrong. A tag edit reaches the notmuch index at edit time, so a `notmuch new`
fired by cron carries it to the mail store exactly as a local sync would. But
the pending count is cleared in **one place only**: the success branch of the
local sync-finished handler, `m_pendingTagEdits.clear()` at
`src/mainwindow.cpp:1719`, reached from the `MailSync` process this window
started.

The external path never touches it. `onExternalSyncStateChanged()`
(`src/mainwindow.cpp:1852`) is driven by `SyncMonitor` watching the lock in
`/proc/locks`. On `State::Idle` it clears `m_externalSyncBusy`, calls
`flushHeldEdits()`, and shows "Background sync completed. Press Enter in the
query bar to refresh." (`src/mainwindow.cpp:1901`). It does not clear
`m_pendingTagEdits`, does not reset `m_unnettablePendingEdits`, and does not
drain `m_editedAccounts`. So the indicator keeps counting edits that have
already shipped, until the user runs a sync from the window.

This is a **defect, not an enhancement**, and it is the same class as item 28:
the indicator exists to answer "is my work safe to quit on", and here it says no
when the answer is yes. It also feeds the exit prompt (`pendingEditCount()` at
`src/mainwindow.cpp:173`), so the user is asked to sync on quit for work that a
cron run already carried. Adjacent to item 49, which made the account set drive
which channels a sync runs: `m_editedAccounts` is stale in exactly the same way.

**Approach.** Clear the same three pieces of state on an observed external
`Idle` that a successful local sync clears. Two things make this harder than
copying the block, and both must be answered before it is written:

- **The monitor sees a lock, not an outcome.** A cron run that fails releases
  the lock exactly as a successful one does, and the comment at
  `src/mainwindow.cpp:1715` records the rule that only a *successful* sync may
  clear the count. An external run's exit status is not observable from
  `/proc/locks`. Either the count is cleared optimistically on any external
  release, or `mailsync.sh` grows a status file the window can read. Ask before
  choosing: the optimistic version can clear a count whose edits a failed cron
  run did not carry.

  **Resolved 2026-08-09, and the dilemma was false: the script already writes
  the outcome.** Every run ends with a
  `===== RUN END: <ts>  status=OK =====` or `status=FAILED  mbsync=<n>
  notmuch=<n>` banner in its log (`assets/mailsync.sh:115-117`), which survives
  the process that wrote it. `MailSync::lastRunOutcome()` reads it, so neither
  the optimistic clear nor a change to the sync script was needed. The user
  chose this over both alternatives.
- **The held-edit race is already solved for the local path and must hold
  here.** `flushHeldEdits()` is called on the external `Idle` branch too, and it
  calls `sendThreadTagChange()`, which writes `m_editedAccounts`
  **synchronously**, while the pending map is written on the worker's queued
  reply. The local path handles this by snapshotting `m_editedAccounts` before
  the flush (`src/mainwindow.cpp:1711`) and subtracting only the snapshot.
  Anything written here has to do the same, or edits made during the cron run
  are marked as carried by the sync that did not carry them.

**Constraints.**

- `State::Unknown` must not clear anything. It means `/proc/locks` could not be
  read, so nothing was observed, and the existing code is careful to distinguish
  that from `Idle`.
- The local path must keep working unchanged, including the `m_localSyncHoldsLock`
  early return at `src/mainwindow.cpp:1874`, which exists so a local sync's own
  lock release is not mistaken for an external one.

**Verification.** `test_mainwindow` can drive `onExternalSyncStateChanged()`
directly, which is how the existing external-sync tests work, so this does not
need a real cron run. Assert on the count and on the exit prompt, and mutate:
the test must fail if the clear is removed. Item 49's account-set behaviour
needs its own assertion, since a count that reaches zero while
`m_editedAccounts` stays full would look correct and still sync the wrong
channels.

**Built 2026-08-09.** `SyncOutcome` and `MailSync::lastRunOutcome()` parse the
banner; `Config::syncLog()` supplies the path, defaulting to the script's own
and overridable through a new `[sync] log` key so a test never reads the
developer's real log. `onExternalSyncStateChanged()` clears the map, the
unnettable counter and the account set on `Idle` **and** a definite `OK`, before
`flushHeldEdits()`, matching the local path's ordering. 13 tests across
`test_mailsync`, `test_config` and `test_mainwindow`; 15/15 binaries green.

Two notes on the verification, both worth more than the passing count:

- **A timing probe endorsed a tail read that was not happening.** The first
  version of `lastRunOutcomeReadsATailOfAHugeLog` required the call under
  100 ms, and it **passed with the seek deleted**, because reading 10 MB is
  fast either way. It measured nothing, exactly as CLAUDE.md's rendering-probe
  entry describes. Replaced with an assertion on content: a marker reachable
  only from the head of a large file must be invisible to a tail read, plus a
  guard appending a marker within reach to prove the parser can still find one.
  That version fails when the seek is removed.
- **Every fixture was invented, and the first batch was wrong.** They wrote the
  banner as `RUN END: 2026-08-09 10:20:03`, where the script uses
  `date -Iseconds` (`assets/mailsync.sh:111`) and so emits
  `2026-08-09T09:20:33+02:00`. The tests passed anyway, because the parser keys
  on the `===== RUN END:` prefix and the `status=` token and never looks at the
  timestamp. Found only by reading the user's real log while waiting for a cron
  run, not by any test. A fixture invented to match the code tests the code
  against itself. `lastRunOutcomeReadsABannerTheScriptActuallyWrote` now builds
  the line by running `date -Iseconds` the way the script does, and the parser
  was confirmed against the real `~/.local/state/mailsync.log`, which it reads
  as `Ok`.
- **The ordering claim is not covered by any test.** With no lock file present
  `aSyncHoldsTheWriteLock()` is false throughout the suite, so `flushHeldEdits()`
  is a no-op and moving the clear after it changes no result. The ordering is
  inherited from the local path rather than independently verified; a test for
  it needs a held lock, the way item 37's tests stage one.

## 55. In a narrow window the message pane is invisible

**Observed (user, 2026-08-08):** "when opening in a squared window, the left
pane takes the whole width (right pane almost invisible)".

**Cause, verified in code, and NOT what this item first recorded.** The
original entry blamed the thread view's size hint, computed as the sum of its
fixed column widths (~886px) against a `setStretchFactor(1, 2)` with no leftover
space to distribute. Measured, the hint is **256px**: a `QTableView` does not
put its column sum in its size hint, so that mechanism never applied and a
freshly built window splits correctly.

The real trigger is the **restore**, not the first run. A splitter position is
saved in pixels (`window/splitter`, `src/mainwindow.cpp:120-124`), and the
user's own state file held `1285/1252`, saved from a wide session. Reopened at
1136px, `QSplitter::restoreState()` honours the first pane's 1285 verbatim and
gives the second whatever is left, which is **29px**. That is the sliver in the
screenshot. It gets worse the wider the window ever was, which is why item 1's
persistence is where this comes from and why widening the default window would
have changed nothing.

**Approach, as built.** A `setMinimumWidth()` on the message view plus
`setCollapsible(1, false)`, and nothing else. A restore-time repair was written
first, running from `showEvent()` because the splitter has no laid-out width
until the window is shown, and was then **deleted**: with the floor in place it
was mutation-tested to be redundant, since the minimum width constrains
`restoreState()` as much as it constrains a drag. Two mechanisms for one fault
is one too many.

**Constraints.**

- Must not fight the restore path. A `setSizes()` call that runs after
  `restoreState()` would throw away the user's saved position, which is item 1.
- A minimum width on the thread view as well would reintroduce the same problem
  from the other side. Only the message pane needs one.
- `resize(1200, 800)` at `src/mainwindow.cpp:206` is the default only when no
  geometry is saved; the reported case is a user-sized window, so widening the
  default fixes nothing.

## 56. No action carries an icon, so the toolbar reserves space for nothing

**Observed (user, 2026-08-09):** "icons inconsistency. All buttons should have
them, at least in the main window interface. Better if also the popups have
them." And: "Buttons should honor the 'Icon only' option."

**Cause, verified in code.** The mechanism exists and is used; it simply does not
cover most actions. `src/mainwindow.cpp:902-919` holds a `themeIcons` table
mapping action names to freedesktop icon names and calls `setIcon()` for each,
guarded so a name the theme lacks leaves the action with text alone. It covers
**eight** actions: `sync`, `archive`, `delete`, `undo`, `spam`, `flag`, `quit`,
`focus_query`.

Everything else registered through `MainWindow::addAction()`
(`src/mainwindow.cpp:598`) gets none, and there are roughly twenty of them:
`toggle_unread`, `mark_all_read`, `edit_tags`, `select_all`, `clear_pane`,
`clear_selection`, `zoom_in`, `zoom_out`, `zoom_reset`, `toggle_html`,
`load_remote`, `message_details`, `complete_query`, `next_thread`,
`prev_thread`, `open_thread`. That is the reported inconsistency: adjacent
entries in one menu, some with an icon and some without, which reads worse than
none having one.

The toolbar is `setToolButtonStyle(Qt::ToolButtonTextBesideIcon)`
(`src/mainwindow.cpp:948`), so an action without an icon lays out an empty slot
beside its text.

**The names are not the obstacle.** Probed against this desktop's theme
(`Material-Black-Plum-Suru`) with a throwaway Qt program: the eight in use all
resolve, and so do `mail-mark-unread`, `view-refresh`, `edit-select-all`,
`zoom-in`, `zoom-out`, `zoom-original`, `tag`, `mail-message-new`, `edit-clear`
and `help-about`. So the missing icons are missing because no name was assigned,
not because the theme lacks art. On another desktop the guard already handles a
name that does not resolve.

**The "Icon only" half is separate, and is a genuine override.** Qt takes the
desktop's toolbar button style from the platform theme, and the hardcoded
`setToolButtonStyle()` at line 948 **overrides** the user's choice, so an "Icon
only" setting cannot take effect. Honouring it means dropping that call, or
reading `QApplication::style()->styleHint(QStyle::SH_ToolButtonStyle)` instead of
asserting a style. This is the smaller of the two halves and is independent of
the first.

**Dialogs are a third case.** `QDialogButtonBox` standard buttons take their
icons from the platform style, so whether Ok and Cancel carry one is a style
question rather than something this code decides.

**Approach.** Extend the existing `themeIcons` table to the remaining actions,
and stop overriding the toolbar button style. No new mechanism is needed; the
table and its null guard already do the work.

**Constraints.**

- Keep the null-icon guard. It is what makes a theme without a given name
  degrade to text rather than to an empty slot.
- Prefer theme names over shipped art. Per-action bitmaps in `src/resources.qrc`
  would grow the package for something the desktop already provides; that file
  currently carries only the application icon and two subsetted fonts.
- Item 3 (done) added the buttons and menu entries. This is decoration on top of
  that: no action should be added, removed or rebound here.
- `flag` already maps to `mail-mark-important`, which agrees with item 57's
  proposed rename. Do the two together if 57 is picked up.

**Verification.** `test_mainwindow` can assert that every action in `m_actions`
has a non-null icon. Note what that test does and does not prove: it passes only
on a machine whose icon theme resolves the names, so it is an assertion about
this desktop as much as about the code, and it says nothing about whether the
icon chosen is the *right* one.

**Built 2026-08-09, with item 57.** The `themeIcons` table now covers all 24
registered actions; the fifteen names added were probed against a live theme
before being written, not taken from the freedesktop spec on faith. The null
guard is kept, so a theme missing a name still degrades to text.

`setToolButtonStyle()` now reads `QStyle::SH_ToolButtonStyle` instead of
asserting `TextBesideIcon`. Removing the call entirely was considered and
rejected: verified empirically that a bare `QToolBar` defaults to
`Qt::ToolButtonIconOnly` rather than to the platform hint, which would have
ignored the user's setting just as thoroughly in the other direction.

**This changes the toolbar's appearance on the developer's desktop.** Its hint
reads `0` (`ToolButtonIconOnly`), so the toolbar shows icons without text where
it previously showed both. That is the setting being honoured, which is what the
note asked for, but it is a visible change rather than a silent one.

Two tests: `everyActionCarriesAnIcon`, which iterates
`KeyMap::knownActions()` and names every action missing one (it reported all
sixteen before the change), and
`theToolbarDoesNotOverrideTheDesktopButtonStyle`. The first carries a guard
asserting the window really registered its actions, so it cannot pass by
iterating an empty list.

## 57. "Flag" would read better as "Important" or "Starred"

**Observed (user, 2026-08-09):** "Flagged to be renamed as 'Important' or
'Starred', with a ⭐ as icon."

**Cause.** Naming, not a defect. The action is created as `tr("&Flag")` at
`src/mainwindow.cpp:684` and applies the tag through
`tagSelected({ QStringLiteral("flagged") }, {}, tr("Flag"))` at
`src/mainwindow.cpp:686`, the second `tr("Flag")` being the undo-stack
description the user sees in the Undo entry.

**The rename must not reach the tag.** `flagged` is a notmuch tag, and notmuch
tags are wire format: `src/types.h:37` tests for it, `src/tagcolors.cpp:31`
colours it, `src/threadlistmodel.cpp:145` lists it among the tags a row shows
another way, and the user's own `neomutt` and saved queries refer to it. Renaming
the tag would rewrite the mail store and desynchronise every other tool. Only the
**label** changes: the action text, the undo description, and any prose that says
"flag".

**The star already exists.** `ThreadListModel::flagGlyph()`
(`src/threadlistmodel.cpp:62`) returns a solid star, with a `*` fallback when the
system font cannot draw it, and the flag column already paints it
(`src/threadlistmodel.cpp:213`). So the icon half of the note is shipped for the
list; what is missing is an icon on the *action*, which is item 56's business.

**Approach.** Pick one of "Important" or "Starred" and change the action text,
the undo description, and the keyboard-shortcut reference entry. Ask the user
which word: they offered two and the choice is theirs, and it should agree with
whatever the icon depicts (a star suggests "Starred").

**Constraints.**

- Every changed string is inside `tr()` and must stay there.
- The accelerator `&F` is taken from "Flag" and a new word needs a new one. The
  Message menu currently holds `&Archive`, `&Delete`, `Mark &spam`, `Toggle
  &unread`, `Mark all &read`, `Edit &tags`, `&Flag`
  (`src/mainwindow.cpp:864-871`), so **"Important" can take `&I` freely, while
  "Starred" collides with `Mark &spam` on `&S`** and would need a letter from
  inside the word. A small argument for "Important".
- `src/tagdialog.cpp:211` mentions `flagged` in a comment about token completion.
  That is the tag, not a label, and must not be touched.

**Built 2026-08-09, with item 56.** The user chose "Important". Changed: the
action text to `tr("&Important")`, its status tip, the undo description to
`tr("Mark important")`, and the flag column's tooltip
(`src/threadlistmodel.cpp:192`), which still read "Flagged". The README's
keybinding row and tagging prose followed.

Unchanged, deliberately: the action **name** `flag`, which is the key a user
writes in `[keys]` and whose rename would silently break every existing
binding; the tag `flagged`; `ThreadSummary::isFlagged()`; the `[tagcolors]`
entry; and the `Flagged = tag:flagged` saved query in the README's sample
config, which is a user's own query name rather than one of our labels.

`Ctrl+I` was already the binding, which happens to fit the new word.

`theImportantActionStillWritesTheFlaggedTag` is the test that matters: it
triggers the action and asserts on the tag the model actually received, with a
guard proving the thread did not already carry it. Mutating the tag to
`important` fails it, and also fails two pre-existing held-edit tests, which is
independent confirmation that `flagged` is load-bearing across the suite.

## 58. `message_zoom` documents a 0.5 to 3.0 range and enforces none of it

**Observed:** not by the user. Found on 2026-08-09 while adding
`toolbar_icon_size`, by reading `message_zoom` as the model for a bounded
numeric key and noticing it is not bounded.

**Cause, verified in code, and narrower than this item first recorded.** The
entry claimed the value is applied unclamped and "the first render is
unusable". It is not. `MessageView::clampZoom()` (`src/messageview.cpp:716`)
bounds every value to `kMinZoom`/`kMaxZoom`, which are 0.5 and 3.0
(`src/messageview.h:96-97`), exactly the README's numbers, and
`MainWindow::restoreUiState()` routes the config value through
`setZoomFactor()`, so `message_zoom = 500` renders at 3.0.

What is genuinely missing is the **report**. `src/config.cpp` parses with
`toDouble()` and, on success, assigns without comment, so nothing ever tells
the user the 500 in their file is not what they are looking at. That silence is
what the item's own Constraints section asks for.

**Approach, as built.** Report only, no second clamp. `MessageView` owns the
bounds and already enforces them; a copy in `Config` would be free to drift
from the one that does the work, so `config.cpp` includes `messageview.h` and
reports against `MessageView::kMinZoom`/`kMaxZoom`. This is where it differs
from `toolbar_icon_size`, which has no widget-side enforcement to defer to.

**Constraints.**

- Report rather than silently clamp. Silence is how this went unnoticed: the
  key parses, so nothing ever said the value was not being honoured.
- Do not extend this to `mark_read_delay_ms`, whose zero and negative values are
  meaningful and deliberately unclamped (`src/config.cpp:96-102`).

**Verification.** `test_config` already has the pattern in
`toolbarIconSizeIsClampedAndReported`; mirror it. Note that
`messageZoomDefaultsAndValidates` exists and passes today, so it is asserting
only on the parse and not on the range.

## 59. Archive and Mark all read shipped with the same icon

**Observed (user, 2026-08-09), against 0.12.0:** "Archive" and "Mark all read"
share the same icon, and in an icon-only setup they are not distinguishable.

**Cause.** Introduced by item 56, in this session. The `themeIcons` table gave
`archive` the name `mail-mark-read` (it predates item 56, from when only eight
actions had icons and `mark_all_read` had none), and item 56 then assigned
`mail-mark-read` to `mark_all_read` as well without checking the table for
duplicates. Twenty-four entries were added or reviewed by hand and this one
overlap was not noticed.

It only became visible because of the other half of item 56. While the toolbar
forced `TextBesideIcon` the label disambiguated the two buttons; once it follows
a desktop set to icon-only, the icon **is** the whole control, and two buttons
whose consequences differ (`archive` removes `inbox` from the selection,
`mark_all_read` removes `unread` from the entire view) looked identical.

**Fix.** `archive` now uses `mail-archive`, which is also the more accurate
name: `mail-mark-read` describes read state, which is what `mark_all_read`
does, not what archiving does.

**The verification is the point of this entry.** A test for the reported pair
would have been worthless, since the defect is the class and not the instance: a
hand-written table of twenty-four names has more plausible duplicates in it.
`noTwoActionsShareAnIcon` compares every action against every other and names
any pair that matches. Two details matter:

- It compares `QIcon::cacheKey()`, not the theme name, which the window does not
  keep. Two *different* names that resolve to the same art on some theme are
  equally ambiguous on screen, and that is what the user actually sees.
- It carries a guard requiring every action to have an icon before comparing.
  On a theme that resolves nothing, every icon is null, the loop body never
  runs, and the assertion would pass having compared nothing.

Mutation-checked by introducing a *different* collision (`zoom_out` pointed at
`zoom-in`); the test named that pair rather than the one it was written for.

**Also worth recording: the icon-name probe endorsed the wrong thing.** Item 56
verified that every name resolves to non-null art, and that check passes
happily for two names resolving to the *same* art. Resolving and being
distinguishable are separate properties, and only the first was tested. The
candidate replacement was therefore checked by rendering both icons at 24px and
comparing the images, not by asking whether the name existed.

## 60. Next thread dead-ends on the last reply of an expanded thread

**Observed (found while specifying 53, 2026-08-09), not user-reported.** On the
`item-20-message-rows` branch, with a thread expanded and the last reply
selected, `next_thread` (Ctrl+J) does nothing. It should move to the next
thread.

**Cause (verified in code).** `mainwindow.cpp:644-655` implements both actions
as arithmetic on a row NUMBER:

```
const int row = current.isValid() ? current.row() + 1 : 0;
if (row < m_model->rowCount())
    m_threadView->selectRow(row);
```

A `QTableView` numbers rows once for the whole view, so this was correct before
item 20. A tree numbers them **per parent**: the last reply of a thread is row
N of that thread, `row + 1` names a sibling that does not exist, and
`m_model->rowCount()` with no argument counts top-level threads rather than the
current parent's children. `prev_thread` fails the mirror case, moving from the
first reply to nowhere instead of to the thread root.

This is a fresh instance of the rule the branch's own commit message states:
**nothing may be keyed on a row NUMBER**, because a tree numbers rows per
parent. That commit lists it for the tag strip's paint walk. Nobody checked the
navigation actions against the same rule.

**Approach.** Walk with `QTreeView::indexBelow()` / `indexAbove()` from the
current index, which follow visible rows across parent boundaries. For
thread-to-thread jumping, skip any index whose `IsMessageRole` is true.

**The cause above is wrong, and was corrected on 2026-08-10.** It was read off
`master`, where the arithmetic really is `current.row() + 1`. The branch does
not do that: `5487d58` added `MainWindow::threadRowOf()`, which walks up to the
containing thread BEFORE the arithmetic, so from the last reply of an expanded
thread `next_thread` already reached the next thread. The defect was fixed in
the same commit that could have introduced it, one commit before this entry was
written. Verified by writing both failing tests first, on the branch, and
watching them pass against unchanged code.

The entry is kept rather than deleted, because the reasoning it records is
sound and the tests it demanded now exist. It is a reminder that a cause
"verified in code" is only verified against the branch it was read on.

**Superseded by the card-list work all the same.** Both actions now walk with
`indexBelow`/`indexAbove` (`card-list`, 2026-08-10), so nothing in that path is
keyed on a row number, which is the rule a deeper tree would break next.
Alt+Up/Down were added alongside Ctrl+J/K there.

**Constraint.** The test that would catch this must start from the **last reply
of an expanded thread**. A test that arrows down a collapsed list passes against
the bug, since with nothing expanded every row is top-level and the arithmetic
is accidentally correct.

## 61. `test_mainwindow` fails intermittently, about 1 run in 20

**Observed (2026-08-10), not user-reported.** A full `test_mainwindow` run
occasionally fails with one or both of:

- `anActionOnAMessageRowTagsThatMessageNotTheThread`: `pendingMessageIdsForTesting()`
  is empty where one id is expected.
- `aSuccessfulCronSyncDrainsTheEditedAccounts`: `work-channel` is still queued
  after a successful sync.

**It predates the card list, and that was measured rather than assumed.** A
worktree at `f72dba9`, the commit before any of this work, failed 3 of 12 runs,
which is a HIGHER rate than the branch's. Neither test was touched by the card
list: `aSuccessfulCronSyncDrainsTheEditedAccounts` arrived in `d213bbf` on
master, and `anActionOnAMessageRowTagsThatMessageNotTheThread` in `7c36486`,
before the redesign began.

**Not order dependence.** Both pass 15/15 when run alone by name, and a full
suite passed 15/15 immediately after failing twice on the same binary. What
distinguished the failing runs was other work happening on the machine at the
time, which points at timing rather than at leaked state between tests.

**Cause: not established.** Both tests are timer- and QProcess-driven, and the
obvious hypothesis is that a `QTimer` or a `runExternalSync` step is being given
a deadline that a loaded machine misses. That was not confirmed: synthetic CPU
load across four cores did not reproduce it in 8 runs, so the trigger is
narrower than "the machine is busy". Do not fix this from the hypothesis alone.

**Approach.** Run the binary in a loop with `-v2` until it fails and keep the
full log, rather than re-running until it passes. The two assertions are about
state that should be set synchronously by the time they run, so the question to
answer first is which step is actually asynchronous: if `sendThreadTagChange`
reaches the worker on a queued connection, the test may be asserting before it
lands, and the fix is a `QTRY_COMPARE` rather than a longer timeout.

**Constraint.** A flaky test is worse than a missing one, because it teaches
everyone to re-run the suite instead of reading it. This one already cost a
false "green suite" report: it fired during the card-list merge check and was
initially mistaken for a regression that change had introduced.

**Size: S**, most of it in reproducing reliably rather than in the fix.

## 62. No config option for the date format on a card

**Observed (user, from the notes):** "option in config file for date format".

**Cause, verified in code.** `CardLayout::formatDate()`
(`src/cardlayout.cpp:24-30`) is a single unconditional line:
`QLocale::system().toString(date, QLocale::ShortFormat)`. It reads no setting,
takes no format argument, and is the only date formatter on a card
(`src/carddelegate.cpp:176` is its only caller besides
`CardLayout`'s own `widestDate`). `Config` parses no date key: the `[general]`
keys it reads are `notmuch_config`, `startup_query`, `message_zoom`,
`completion_on_focus`, `toolbar_icon_size`, `sync_on_exit` and
`mark_read_delay_ms` (`src/config.cpp:78-184`). So there is nothing to
configure, not a setting that is being ignored.

The current behaviour is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight, and the
comment at `src/cardlayout.cpp:26-28` says why: the system short format is what
every other application on the desktop shows, and a mail client that disagrees
looks wrong. This item is about giving the user an override, not about
replacing that default.

**Approach.** A `[general] date_format` key, empty by default meaning "the
system short format", otherwise a `QDateTime::toString()` pattern.
`CardLayout::formatDate()` takes the format as a parameter rather than reading
`Config` itself, keeping the struct free of dependencies the way it already is,
and `CardDelegate` passes it down.

**Constraints.**

- **`CardLayout::widestDate()` reserves the date column's width and must agree
  with whatever the format produces**, or a long custom pattern is elided or
  overlaps. It currently computes the widest string the short format can return;
  with a custom pattern it has to measure that pattern instead.
- An unparseable or absurd pattern must not blank the date. `toString()` with a
  pattern containing no field returns the pattern itself verbatim, so validate
  in `Config` and fall back to the system format with a problem reported, the
  way `message_zoom` and `toolbar_icon_size` already do.
- Document all three states in the README's `[general]` block: absent, empty,
  and a pattern.

**Size: XS.** One key, one parameter, one width calculation.

## 63. No way to see sent mail, and no filter for it

**Observed (user, from the notes):** "Sent mail filter".

**Cause, verified in code, and it is not one missing feature but two.**

- **Nothing in the codebase knows what "sent" means.** `Account` carries
  `name`, `address`, `maildir`, `drafts`, `label`, `channel` and `color`
  (`src/config.cpp:254-270`); there is no `sent` field, and no query anywhere
  composes one. `Account::scopedQuery()` (`src/config.cpp:42-45`) scopes by
  `path:"<maildir>/**"`, which covers a sent folder only in the sense that it
  covers everything in the account.
- **The saved-query mechanism could express it today and nothing ships one.**
  `[queries]` is read wholesale from `childKeys()` (`src/config.cpp:291-297`),
  so a user can already write `Sent = tag:sent` by hand. The README's example
  block (`README.md:178-181`) offers Inbox, Unread and Important and no Sent, so
  nothing points the user at it.

Which of the two this item is depends on a decision the notes do not make:
whether "sent" is a **notmuch tag** the user's own filters apply, or a
**maildir path** per account. If it is a tag, this is a documentation and
defaults change and it is XS. If it is a path, `Account` needs a `sent` key
beside `drafts`, and the query has to be composed per account, which is where
the S comes from.

**Approach, pending that decision.** Ask the user first which their setup
already produces. Their mail is filtered outside qtmaildir (`assets/mailsync.sh`
is `mbsync` plus `notmuch new`), so the answer is a property of their existing
filters, not something to design here.

**Constraints.**

- **Do not invent a tag qtmaildir applies itself.** v1 is read-and-organize;
  nothing here sends mail, so nothing here can know a message was sent except by
  where it landed or what tagged it.
- If it becomes a per-account key, it composes with `scopedQuery()` and must not
  bypass it, or a Sent view in one account shows another account's mail.

**Size: S**, and XS if the answer is "it is a tag".

## Deferred, unsized, or split out

Items noted while triaging but not part of the original list. Same numbering
sequence, appended as they arise.

| # | Item | Why here |
|---|------|----------|
| 12 | `HtmlBuilder` CSS is light-theme only | **Done 2026-08-07**, and moved to the main status table. Kept listed here so the split from item 5 stays traceable. |

## Adding to this document

Append a row to the status table with the next free number, then a section using
the same shape: **Observed** (what the user saw), **Cause** (the code, with file
and line, verified not assumed), **Approach**, **Constraints**, and
**Verification** where it is not obvious. Do not renumber. Do not delete: mark
`dropped` with a reason.
