feat(sidebar): persist independent section sorting

[tellaho]

Overview

Category: new-feature
User Impact: Users can choose Recent or A–Z independently for each sidebar section and keep those choices after reopening Buzz.

Problem: Sidebar sections only have alphabetical ordering, making it harder to return to active conversations without changing how every other section is organized.

Solution: Add a per-section Sort menu with persisted choices, immediate feedback, and explicit rollback/retry when saving fails. Recent uses bounded, verified activity reads plus live updates, while a bounded startup presentation gate preserves saved placement without blocking the open conversation.

This is the focused sorting slice, integrated with main at 119195ea331de33c8480bab180df0091ca8e9421, not the older combined sidebar branch. Group/star editing, section CRUD/reordering, and sibling integration remain separate. The two-parent merge preserves main’s persistent app-owned sidebar, navigation, New message, session actions, delayed viewport restoration, and Todos; sorting presentation now belongs to features/channel-navigation/ChannelSidebar.tsx, not the conversation page. Recent includes kind-40008 diff messages in both historical and live activity. Sorting inherits the shared pill-shaped menu rows merged in #209; this branch no longer overrides shared menu radii. The section ellipsis and separate create buttons remain unchanged, and the Sort glyph remains 14px.

Accepted persistence contract: section choices are independently selectable, not conflict-safe across devices. The desktop-compatible encrypted channel-sort record remains whole-record last-write-wins: near-simultaneous saves can silently overwrite another section’s choice even when both saves report success. The owner accepted that limitation for this PR; the new documentation and deterministic regression test describe it, not a concurrency fix.

Changes

File changes

dev/relay-broker.mjs
Expose purpose-bound background activity reads and a narrow, serialized sort-write endpoint with bounded head reads, publication acceptance, and read-back confirmation.

dev/sidebar-preferences.mjs
Decode the additional encrypted sort coordinate alongside existing group and star preferences.

dev/sidebar-sort-broker.test.mjs
Cover the production broker's filter boundaries, signed writes, rejection paths, admission behavior, and publication confirmation.

dev/sidebar-sort.mjs
Validate sort intents and update the requested section while retaining unrelated fields present in the record read. Document that neither the broker-local queue nor requested-field read-back guarantees preservation against another device’s concurrent whole-record publication.

dev/sidebar-sort.test.mjs
Cover intent validation, encryption, fields retained from the record read, fresh-head reads, and failure/confirmation behavior. Add a deterministic actual-mutator race proving both saves can succeed while one section’s choice is lost under the accepted LWW contract.

docs/channels.md
Document desktop-compatible whole-record LWW persistence, independently selectable versus conflict-safe choices, and the limitations of local serialization and read-back.

src/bundled/channels/Channels.module.css
Keep each section's actions in the existing compact header layout.

src/features/channel-navigation/ChannelSidebar.tsx
Wire independent Sort menus, session-owned save errors and retry, Recent-activity Retry/Dismiss, displayed personal-group IDs, and startup presentation into main’s persistent sidebar. ChannelsPage.tsx is unchanged from integrated main. Keep saved viewport restoration behind settled preferences even when the bounded reveal exposes rows earlier.

src/bundled/channels/sidebar-sections.test.ts
Cover section independence, stable tie-breaking, missing activity, retained placement, and main’s always-present empty DMs section for New message.

src/bundled/channels/sidebar-sections.ts
Sort each section independently while preserving existing visibility, grouping, and starred placement.

src/bundled/channels/useSidebarPreferences.ts
Expose sort mutations and error dismissal through the existing sidebar preference hook.

src/bundled/channels/useSidebarStartup.test.tsx
Exercise the real hook's cold/warm presentation, bounded waiting, failures, and session lifetime behavior.

src/bundled/channels/useSidebarStartup.ts
Coordinate sidebar reveal with saved preferences, names, activity, and unread settlement; retain warm-session presentation without delaying indefinitely.

src/features/relay/channel-activity-session.test.ts
Cover activity demand, live admission, cancellation, session cleanup, failure → last Recent cleared → re-entry → fresh failure/recovery, and retained selections/activity at the integration owner.

src/features/relay/channel-activity.test.ts
Cover bounded batches, monotonic live/history reconciliation, stale completion fencing, failures, and diff-message activity.

src/features/relay/channel-activity.ts
Own the bounded activity projection independently of unread state and roster/access readiness. Retire loading/error status when demand is cancelled without discarding good activity values.

src/features/relay/contracts.ts
Expose verified last activity and initial activity status on existing channel contracts.

src/features/relay/live.ts
Include forum activity in the existing live channel subscription while retaining main's diff-message support.

src/features/relay/session.ts
Connect activity demand, verified live events, roster visibility, and teardown to the session-owned projection.

src/features/relay/sidebar-preferences-store.ts
Own optimistic sort choices, serialized writes, per-section rollback/retry, and supersession across page navigation.

src/features/relay/sidebar-preferences.test.ts
Extend preference projection expectations for the sort coordinate.

src/features/relay/sidebar-preferences.ts
Define normalized fixed/custom section sort keys and the narrow mutation contract.

src/features/relay/sidebar-sorting-store.test.ts
Cover overlapping choices, stale refreshes, independent failures, supersession, and lifetime cleanup.

src/features/relay/transport.ts
Advertise host capabilities, verify bounded activity responses, and route narrow sort intents to the broker.

src/shared/design-system/icons/index.ts
Expose the Phosphor sorting glyph through the existing icon gateway.

tests/browser/fixture.mjs
Add opt-in signed sorting/personal-group data and narrowly scoped injected-failure accounting for real broker journeys.

src/features/sessions/SessionMessageTarget.test.tsx
Preserve main’s focus assertion and the feature’s explicit scroll assertion at the reveal boundary; do not weaken either parent’s coverage.

tests/browser/navigation-scroll-intent.spec.mjs
Observe the current pending-details signal and await held requests during teardown. Preserve all four exact viewport contracts.

tests/browser/navigation-sorting.spec.mjs
Add browser journeys for independent optimistic sorting and recovery across page exit/reload, cold saved presentation, and personal-group persistence. Assert the shared pill corners on the Sort trigger and radio choices across light/dark themes and narrow/intermediate/wide viewports.

tests/browser/policy-relay.mjs
Model the exact bounded activity and three-coordinate preference reads used by the production broker.

tests/browser/sidebar-unread.spec.mjs
Establish the bounded sidebar reveal before measuring scroll and await held routes during cleanup, preserving the existing unread/session assertions.

Reproduction Steps

1. Open Messages on a host advertising sidebar sort writes. Open a sidebar section's More actions → Sort menu.
2. Choose Recent. That section reorders by observed activity; other sections retain their own mode. Starred/group placement remains unchanged.
3. Choose A–Z in another section, then reload. Both choices should remain selected. Repeat with a displayed personal group.
4. Send new supported message or forum activity to a visible conversation and check that a Recent section updates without another history read.
5. In the isolated failure fixture, reject an activity read: Recent remains selected, the warning offers Retry/Dismiss, and Retry restores actual activity order. Switch the last Recent section to A–Z: the warning disappears. Re-enter Recent, fail again and verify a new warning even after dismissing the previous one. Reject a sort save: the affected choice rolls back and exposes Retry/Dismiss. Leave Messages through Projects and return; the error remains actionable. Retry and reload to verify persistence.
6. On cold entry, verify saved sidebar placement and Recent order reveal together when their reads settle, with a bounded fallback if they stall. The conversation remains usable; warm return retains groups and scroll.

Validation and current review status

Current head: 602179040fb324564ddb87af3bb580bbd72f10d6; integrated main: 119195ea331de33c8480bab180df0091ca8e9421. Ready for review; final-head adversarial review and relevant validation passed; remaining hosted CI pending.

• b704fdb adds the Recent warning with Retry/Dismiss; 0c2291d retires the failure when the last Recent section becomes A–Z while preserving good activity values.
• Merge 6021790 integrates main without rewriting existing feature history. Section sort/startup/recovery wiring moved into main’s persistent sidebar owner. The conversation page equals main. Both broker capabilities, both lifecycle/persistence docs, and main focus plus feature scroll assertions are preserved.
• The new session regression failed on b704fdb with test-only edits: expected idle, received error; all other 3,108 tests passed. At final clean 6021790, 313 files / 3,362 Vitest tests passed (52.80s wall; 282.73s summed test execution).
• 62 browser cases passed (2.1m) in complete navigation-sorting, navigation-sidebar, navigation-scroll-intent, new-message and sidebar-unread files, both Chromium and WebKit, real production app/broker with isolated signed fixtures. Recovery now asserts A–Z warning removal, dismissal/re-entry, retained Recent selection and exact restored activity row order. Persistent sidebar/page transitions and original viewport contracts remain covered.
• Browser count: the four sorting scenarios from b704fdb remain four; no case removed or added in this correction. The existing recovery case now exercises the browser portal/action and production-broker boundaries end-to-end. State permutations and retained activity values stay in session/unit coverage. Browser fail-before was not run; fail-before evidence is the deterministic session regression. No performance-improvement claim.
• Mandatory pre-push hooks passed at 6021790: TypeScript, 189 related files / 2,298 tests, design-system types/guards. Hook total 37.40s; no bypass. Clean tree and diff check; all 12 PR commits audited for repository-required DCO.
• Ready-transition verification confirms exact head/base, not draft and REVIEW_REQUIRED. The preceding hosted snapshot has JavaScript, Browser measurements, Semgrep OSS, zizmor and DCO Check passing; Rust/tool integration and browser journeys are still running, and CI required is not yet reported. Old green checks are not reused as this head’s evidence.

Princess Donut (AI reviewer) passed exact clean head 6021790, including the lifecycle correction, persistent-sidebar integration and combined feature: no concrete code-review blockers found. She reviewed source and SHA-labelled validation logs without rerunning tests. The accepted whole-record LWW limitation remains accepted, not technically fixed. Her code-review pass does not attest hosted CI or merge readiness.

Moved to ready for review after exact-head Donut review and relevant validation passed; no unresolved UX decision remains. Remaining merge gates: all required hosted checks, eligible GitHub approval/CODEOWNER coverage, and fresh final merge preflight. DCO already passes. No approval review or merge performed. Native and live-relay/multi-device behavior remain unverified. No timers or CI polling.

Review/fix evidence: #206 (comment) . Earlier reports: #206 (comment) and #206 (comment) .

Earlier implementation validation (historical snapshots, not current-head runs)

Earlier head: a73c35ab3e002a898e4faec35516f7a9d29ee4c5; integrated main: 842c1d3bac29f42a029e383759642ef1fc6705a2.

• At the preceding clean integration head 86aa1e4, 58 browser cases passed across Chromium and WebKit in the complete navigation-sorting, navigation-session-menu, navigation-sidebar, new-message, navigation-scroll-intent, sidebar-unread, and todos files (1.4m local). This includes shared menu geometry, independent/personal-group persisted sorting, failure rollback/retry, cold startup, session context actions, New message, scroll intent, unread, and Todos integration.
• The only change from 86aa1e4 to current head is a pinned-formatter line wrap plus an optional trailing argument comma in ChannelsPage.tsx. The preceding hosted JavaScript job failed on that exact formatting difference before running its tests. The full-tree biome check --error-on-warnings . now passes locally; the unrelated schema-version notice is informational.
• At current head, mandatory pre-push checks passed: TypeScript, 171 related Vitest files / 2,105 tests, design types and guards. Vitest reported 19.70s; the full hook reported 24.24s. This is the hook-selected suite, not the full repository test suite.
• A fresh production build and two additional built-app screenshot journeys passed at current head, one each in Chromium/WebKit (8.9s). They assert the original 14px glyph, A–Z order, Recent save/reload, and the existing row-context New session action. The images below come from this final build.
• Separate design tests at 86aa1e4: 15 files / 94 tests passed. No broad test suite was rerun solely for the formatting-only follow-up.
• Remote head matches current head; working tree and diff check are clean. At the final hosted snapshot, DCO Check passed, PR was draft and mergeable, and no other checks were yet listed for the new head. Hosted CI is not established green. No CI polling or merge performed.

Commands (Hermit active):

bin/pnpm test:browser navigation-sorting.spec.mjs navigation-session-menu.spec.mjs navigation-sidebar.spec.mjs new-message.spec.mjs navigation-scroll-intent.spec.mjs sidebar-unread.spec.mjs todos.spec.mjs --project chromium --project webkit --no-deps
bin/pnpm exec biome check --error-on-warnings .
git push origin HEAD:refs/heads/tho/sidebar-sorting-focused
bin/pnpm build

Regression history: delayed scroll restoration was verified fail-then-pass before this integration: all eight scroll cases failed with early restoration, then passed after preserving main’s preference-settlement boundary (expected final positions 900/1800/0/1800). The current complete-file rerun retains those contracts. The rebase preserves both main’s ListChecksIcon and sorting’s ArrowsDownUpIcon; sorting-owned test expectations now retain main’s empty DMs section rather than changing upstream behavior.

Browser-test scope: three sorting scenarios run in both engines (six cases); none removed. They prove browser menu interaction, production-broker encryption/publication/read-back and reload, page-unmount recovery, and visible cold-start presentation. The shared pill-corner matrix extends an existing journey rather than adding cases. Combinatorial ordering, mutation races, validation, and lifetime matrices remain in unit tests. No broader before/after performance claim is made. Timings are local macOS arm64/Node 24.18.0 measurements, not hosted CI.

Evidence boundary: browser write/reload and failure journeys use the production frontend/broker against an isolated signed relay fixture, not live-community preference writes. Native behavior, live multi-device writes, and integration with the separate grouping work remain unverified. Prior independent review covered an earlier snapshot, not this latest integration. Hosted CI remains a separate gate.

Screenshots / Demos

Two real built-app captures show A–Z selected and Recent selected after save and reload, in dark theme with the teal accent. Both Chromium and WebKit captures were generated from pre-rebase head a73c35a (not regenerated for current head 6021790; these historical captures predate the persistent app-owned sidebar layout); the shared images are Chromium, tightly cropped to 430×390 with synthetic fixture data. They use #209’s shared pill-shaped menu styling and retain the section ellipsis. These are two states of the finished implementation, not a synthetic UI mockup or before/after code comparison.

A–Z selected

Recent saved and restored after reload

Originating channel: b9ab2a04-14c4-440d-8c82-aebfbc1caa68 (task thread).

Prepared by Carl, an AI agent, at Taylor Ho's request. Originally opened as a draft; now ready for review under the authorized review gates. No GitHub approval review or merge performed.

[tellaho]

AI review report — Carl (implementation/coordinator) and Princess Donut (adversarial reviewer) are AI agents.

Round 1: blocked. Donut reviewed a73c35ab3e002a898e4faec35516f7a9d29ee4c5 against 842c1d3bac29f42a029e383759642ef1fc6705a2.

• Concurrent preference writes: the whole encrypted channel-sort record is read, edited and replaced. Another device's save between the read and publication can be lost while the first writer still reports success (dev/sidebar-sort.mjs:67–124). Carl reproduced that lost-update interleaving on the rebased head. Process-local serialization and read-back of the requested field do not close this race. Fix under investigation; no claim of safe multi-device writes.
• Recent-read recovery: an initial activity-read failure can leave Recent selected with stale/alphabetical ordering and no visible retry (src/features/relay/session.ts:1797–1824 and ChannelsPage.tsx:1316–1368 at the rebased head). A visible failure/retry state is awaiting the owner's UX decision.

Integration completed: rebased and pushed a164e5e21893b47c8981dd86de534b1e665408da onto main 7de4708511aba08409bd7d7dbd157aadeb094fc5. The cache-clear conflict retains main's overlapping-purge memory-admission guard and sorting's activity reset; no mainline tests/assertions changed. This rebase does not fix the two findings.

Validation at clean a164e5e: TypeScript passed; full Vitest passed (286 files, 3,007 tests); complete navigation-sorting.spec.mjs and profiles.spec.mjs passed in Chromium/WebKit (14 cases). Mandatory push hooks passed. These checks validate the integration, not the missing race/retry contracts. Native and live multi-device behavior remain unverified; current hosted CI and current-head adversarial pass are not yet established.

PR remains draft. Remaining gates: both blockers, the specific retry UX decision, final-head Donut pass, required hosted checks and eligible GitHub/CODEOWNER approval. No GitHub approval review or merge submitted.

Integration follow-up: Princess Donut subsequently passed the bounded rebase delta at a164e5e against 7de4708, confirming both lifecycle owners and broker/transport capabilities survive. Overall feature verdict remains blocked by the same two findings; this is not a new full-feature pass.

[tellaho]

AI review report — Carl (implementation/coordinator) and Princess Donut (adversarial reviewer) are AI agents.

Bounded follow-up at 92c738448fc341d3a296a0ddedcece9adae75d8c: LWW contract slice PASS; integration not passed; overall PR BLOCKED. Integrated main snapshot: be53d8e1383a2bb25194cd6ea90bd9fcfc6e01ec.

• Accepted persistence limitation: the owner chose desktop-compatible whole-record last-write-wins. Commit 92c7384 documents that independently selectable section choices are not conflict-safe across devices. Its deterministic actual-mutator test orders two saves so both succeed while one section’s saved choice is overwritten. Donut passed this documentation/comments/test slice. Runtime behavior is unchanged; concurrent loss was accepted, not fixed.
• Still blocking: a failed Recent history read can leave Recent selected with stale/alphabetical ordering and no visible retry. The proposed notice + Retry, retaining selected mode and existing rows, awaits a UX decision and is not implemented. Donut has not cleared the new integration; her earlier integration pass does not cover this head.
• Exact-head validation by Carl: full Vitest 298 files / 3,107 tests, 25.39s wall / 144.94s summed test execution; complete navigation-sorting, new-message, profiles, and sidebar-unread browser files in Chromium and WebKit 30/30, 53.6s. Mandatory push hooks passed (TypeScript, 192 related files / 2,293 tests, design-system checks; 26.76s total). Explicit lease push succeeded; no hooks bypassed. Donut did not run these tests. Native/live-relay behavior is not claimed.
• GitHub snapshot: exact head confirmed, draft and mergeable, DCO successful; CI running and required CI required not yet reported. No GitHub reviews or review threads in the snapshot. Required checks, eligible approval/CODEOWNER coverage, resolved Retry behavior, and a final-head overall adversarial pass remain gates.

No ready transition, GitHub approval review or merge. Follow-up is event-driven, not monitored on a timer.

[tellaho]

AI review/fix update — Recent lifecycle correction delivered

Carl and Princess Donut are AI agents. Donut’s read-only review of local b704fdb found a blocker: after a Recent activity read failed, switching every section to A–Z left a warning and Retry that could not read history without Recent demand.

Fixed in 0c2291d; published head 602179040fb324564ddb87af3bb580bbd72f10d6. Cancellation now retires error/loading state while retaining good activity values. Session coverage verifies demand ending, re-entry, fresh failure/recovery and retained data/selection. The existing browser journey verifies warning removal, dismissal/re-entry, selected Recent and exact recovered row order.

Merge 6021790 integrates main at 119195ea331de33c8480bab180df0091ca8e9421, preserving its persistent app-owned sidebar. Existing sort/startup/recovery presentation moved to features/channel-navigation/ChannelSidebar.tsx; ChannelsPage.tsx equals main. Both broker capabilities, main lifecycle plus accepted LWW docs, and main focus plus prior scroll assertions remain.

Validation: the new session regression failed before the fix (error instead of idle) at b704fdb with test-only edits; 3,108 others passed. At clean final 6021790: all 3,362 Vitest tests / 313 files, 62 Chromium/WebKit browser cases in the five complete sorting/sidebar/scroll-intent/new-message/unread files, and mandatory push hooks passed. Browser tests use the built app and production broker with isolated signed fixtures, not live-community writes. DCO passed for the published head; hosted CI is still running/queued in the post-push snapshot. No native/live-relay/multi-device validation claimed.

Final-head code-review PASS: Princess Donut independently reviewed clean 6021790 and found no concrete blockers in the lifecycle correction or persistent-sidebar integration. She reviewed the SHA-labelled validation logs without rerunning tests. This is not hosted-CI or merge-readiness attestation. The PR is now ready for review, verified at unchanged head 6021790: exact-head Donut review and relevant validation passed, with no unresolved UX decision. Remaining hosted CI and eligible GitHub approval still gate merge, not the start of human review. No approval review or merge performed. This updates the same review-round report rather than adding another comment.

[wesbillman]

Carl, an automated reviewer, commenting via Wes’s GitHub account.

Source review clear of blocking findings at ab25dd2af0f7f491f340f2d5bf2487fa78802135 against 223028bbb59273dae9c109675b6b7f3141d13340. Two non-blocking P3 follow-ups are recorded inline. COMMENT only, not approval or merge readiness. The explicitly accepted cross-device whole-record LWW limitation remains accepted, not fixed.

Reviewed the section menu → session-owned optimistic queue → transport/broker → encrypted preference/read-back path, activity admission and cancellation, personal-group composition, and cold/warm persistent-sidebar lifecycle. Initial concerns were narrowed after tracing the alternate personal-group owner and existing preference-error Retry UI; neither warrants a blocking review.

Merge gate: required CI is red. Run 36077499072, attempt 1 failed Chromium's Beta warm-switch measurement: 200.9 ms against <200 ms; CI required failed accordingly. The logs establish the failure, not whether it is a reproducible product regression. JavaScript passed (327 files / 3,577 tests), Rust/tool integration and all four browser-journey shards passed; Windows native was skipped. Checkout logs pin tested merge 289b025f43ea178f69becb3b86ce80c0582a80ae with older base 6fa0e9a63690e7eab413f9e5c11be7a05a4f6c4f, so those results do not validate the reviewed base. Diagnose the measurement and obtain successful required checks on the final head/base before merge; do not simply relax the ceiling.

Source-only Blox review plus existing hosted evidence. No checkout, install, build, tests, browser execution or CI reruns were performed here. Packaged-native behavior, live-relay writes, physical interaction and multi-device acceptance remain unverified.

[wesbillman]

[P3, non-blocking] Ignore removed-group overrides when deciding Recent demand

Set a personal group to Recent, remove that group through ChannelGroupsDialog, and reopen with all displayed sections at A–Z. Full preference reads intentionally retain the old section:<id> key, but this raw-value check (and useSidebarStartup.ts:69) still demands activity. A failed read then shows “Sections sorted by Recent may be out of date” despite there being no such visible section; cold reveal can also wait up to its 1.5-second budget unnecessarily. The conversation remains usable and the notice is dismissible, so this is a follow-up rather than a merge blocker.

Derive demand from the actual current section set, including personal groups from channelKit, while preserving unknown keys in the encrypted record. Do not filter only against preferences.sections: valid personal groups are supplied by a different owner. Cover removed-group/all-visible-A–Z demand and preserve live personal-group Recent behavior.

[wesbillman]

[P3, non-blocking] Disable Sort until an initial preference snapshot exists

If the first preference read fails, startup correctly reveals the conversation list and shows the existing preference warning with Retry. This capability-only condition also exposes Sort, but setSort() rejects immediately when snapshot.data is absent; setSectionSort() then swallows that rejection and closes the menu without applying the choice. Later refresh failures retain data and do not have this problem.

Hide/disable the affordance until preferences.sortWritable && !!preferences.data, or give it an explicit unavailable reason. Preserve the existing Retry recovery and retained-data behavior. This is a misleading control in an already-signposted recoverable error state, not an unsupported-host defect.

[wesbillman]

Carl, an automated reviewer, commenting via Wes’s GitHub account.

No blocking source findings at be889c6fec69238f4555eb782029380e6dfdd1a2 against 31859908f88025bf24a7be4f5219cf22d3139cfd. This is a COMMENT review, not approval or live-product acceptance.

• Integration: production sorting files are unchanged from the prior source-clear ab25dd2a. Reviewed the incoming UI seams, retained activity/session and encrypted mutation/lifetime contracts, and both browser-test conflict resolutions. The shared wheel-completion helper preserves the movement/anchor assertions. Existing P3s remain nonblocking: removed-group Recent demand and Sort enabled without loaded preferences. The explicitly accepted cross-device whole-record LWW limitation remains accepted, not fixed.
• CI: the previous red required-check gate is now green in run 36080697284, attempt 1. Actual checkout was synthetic merge 4da6198eb647daec83a0b31e05cc5691080e8b02, merging this head into 2983b2f4b62673733419c6c52ed0e4dfbcc153d1, not the recorded base above. Its six differences from source head are profile-related paths. On that tested tree: 3,580 Vitest tests, 634 browser journeys across Chromium/WebKit, and 7 measurements passed; selected browser cases had no skips, retries or flaky outcomes. All five sorting journeys passed in both engines. Three documented WebKit local-only cases remain outside hosted selection; Windows native validation was skipped.
• Performance caveat: warm switches were 187.8, 186.2, 179.0 and 168.3 ms. These pass the existing <200ms ceiling but all miss the <100ms target. I inspected the raw timing/frame evidence; it does not establish runner contention or a PR-caused regression. This large-sidebar measurement uses no saved Recent selection, so it is not direct Recent-enabled performance acceptance. No budget or assertion weakening was found in the reviewed changes.

Source review and existing hosted evidence only; no independent test reruns, native app execution or live-relay/multi-device acceptance this round. Eligible reviewer/CODEOWNER approval and a fresh merge preflight remain separate gates. No approval or merge performed.

[tellaho]

AI-generated update — Carl, acting for Taylor Ho.

@wesbillman Both non-blocking follow-ups are implemented and pushed on tho/sidebar-sorting-review-followup, head e2f86bc4d6608f7e3bf05ea12bfa048eee436857:

• 91a22cd: activity demand and cold reveal use built-in sections plus the current personal-group owner (legacy sections only when that owner is absent). Removed-group overrides remain persisted but no longer request activity or delay reveal; confirmed group changes refresh demand.
• e2f86bc: Sort requires a usable preference snapshot. Initial read failure keeps Retry without a no-op Sort control; later refresh failures retain usable sorting.

These fixes are not in the merged PR. #206 merged at be889c6f while validation was underway. Only the two follow-up commits were replayed onto squash commit b276b867; the original review threads remain unresolved rather than implying the fixes shipped. No follow-up PR has been opened; that awaits Taylor's authorization.

Validation at e2f86bc4: all 12 sorting browser cases passed in Chromium/WebKit; all four channel-opening measurement cases passed in both engines, serially (--workers=1), without retries or budget changes. Normal push hooks passed TypeScript, 1,716 related tests across 124 files, and design-system types/guards. The new built-app journey covers initial read failure → Retry → later refresh failure → successful Recent publication while the read remains broken. Working tree is clean and remote head matches.

No hosted checks are reported for this follow-up head yet. Current-head independent review and native/live-relay behavior are unverified. The accepted whole-record last-write-wins contract is unchanged.