Comments card-window UI designed — three componentized panes and the .draft composer

Designed with the user 2026-07-29, closing Redesign card 82e2de6c (both halves). The card window recomposes as three componentized panes — body, comments, attributes — with a layout option (side-by-side default, body-over-comments for narrow displays; app-wide) and the thread visible through body Edit in both mounts. The column auto-shows when the thread is non-empty; sort direction flips at the header; the composer sits at the newest end. The composer edits comments/.draft/ — the user's idea, replacing any app-side draft store: one draft per card, ordinary comment schema with attachments, excluded from the thread, riding git/copies/trash, joining the claimed names; slow save cadence composing "Draft comment on 'X'"; posting renames to a fresh UUID and restamps created/modified in one bracket. Inline edits are body-edit sessions in miniature; no prompts anywhere. All editions ship comments — only tracker sync is Teams (matrix updated). A11y shapes in 10; menu, grammar, context-menu, and configuration rows in 11.

Board: Redesign card 82e2de6c → Resolved; Implementation card "Build comments" filed on Backlog (post-2.0).

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01CqjXB7ASoWtbyoGod68k97

DESIGN/05-card-window.md

@@ -2,14 +2,15 @@
 
 The standalone per-card window. Opened by fast double-click, ⌘↩, or the context menu; at most one window per card (reopening a live card focuses the existing window); board and card windows share one live store, so edits reflect everywhere instantly (02-architecture.md).
 
-> **Status: designed** — composition, body column, and the attributes sidebar are all settled. The storage-facing rules the pathfinder settled painfully — Preview/Edit over WYSIWYG, the untouched-body byte-identical guarantee, validate-before-write on the raw outlet, dirty-buffer-wins — carry over unchanged.
+> **Status: designed** — composition, body column, the attributes sidebar, and the comments column (2026-07-29) are all settled. The storage-facing rules the pathfinder settled painfully — Preview/Edit over WYSIWYG, the untouched-body byte-identical guarantee, validate-before-write on the raw outlet, dirty-buffer-wins — carry over unchanged.
 
 ## Composition
 
-Two full-height columns: a wide **body column** (leading) and a narrow **attributes sidebar** (trailing), each scrolling independently. Visual reference: [assets/card-sidebar-reference.png](assets/card-sidebar-reference.png) — a GitLab-style issue pane; its *pattern* (stacked small-caps sections, quiet read-first rows, actions at the bottom) is what carries over, not its enhanced-schema content.
+Three **componentized panes** (re-composed 2026-07-29, comments design): a wide **body pane** (leading), the **comments pane** (middle, when shown — The comments column below), and the narrow **attributes sidebar** (trailing) — each an independent component with its own scroll, arranged by the window's layout rather than wired to each other; componentization is the rule, so the comments pane mounts beside the body or below it (the layout option, next) without either pane knowing which. Visual reference: [assets/card-sidebar-reference.png](assets/card-sidebar-reference.png) — a GitLab-style issue pane; its *pattern* (stacked small-caps sections, quiet read-first rows, actions at the bottom) is what carries over, not its enhanced-schema content.
 
 - **Body column, top to bottom**: the **title field** — large, borderless; edits write through to frontmatter on commit (Return or focus loss); clearing it removes the `title` key (titles are optional — the untitled placeholder shows here as on the face); Return commits and moves focus into the body. **Escape abandons** (settled — the board inline rename's abandon, applied here): the field reverts to the on-disk title and focus moves into the body, never a commit. The Edit-mode collision resolves by focus, 06-history-undo.md's first-responder rule: while the title field is focused, Escape is the title abandon even with the body in Edit; with the body editor focused, Escape is the Edit→Preview flip as specified. Beneath it, a **quiet created/modified line** ("Created ⟨date⟩ · Modified ⟨date⟩ · by ⟨modified-by⟩", secondary styling, omitting whichever keys are absent — the "by" segment renders only when the self-reported provenance stamp is present, 01-storage-format.md; this is provenance made visible where git history may not exist) — the read-only readout the pathfinder dropped with its inspector, back where the mockup puts it. Then the **body** (Preview/Edit, below).
 - **Attributes sidebar**: everything about the card that isn't the body — sections below. Fixed narrow width derived from font metrics (full relative scaling, 10-accessibility.md); the window's resize flex goes to the body.
+- **Body/comments layout is an option** (ruled 2026-07-29 — componentized panes make it cheap): side-by-side is the default; **View ▸ Comments Beside Body** unchecked stacks them — body pane above, comments pane below at a fixed ≈3:2 split, each keeping its own scroll — for narrow displays. App-wide, persisted. The panes are identical in both mounts, and the thread stays visible through body **Edit** in either (Edit swaps only the body pane's content — the sidebar's own precedent); the window's minimum width grows only while the column is shown side-by-side, and resize flex always goes to the body, never the fixed panes.
 
 (The pathfinder's compositions are both gone: the metadata bar — labels, assignees, due — left with those fields' move to the enhanced schema, and the horizontal attachments strip dissolves into the sidebar.)
 
@@ -82,6 +83,19 @@ The card-level styling home: the **embedded style editor** — background palett
 - **Delete** — moves the card to the trash (destructive styling; the window then dismisses itself per Deletion & lifecycle below; recoverable from the board's trash lane — 03-board-ui.md).
 - **Reveal in Finder** — the card's folder.
 
+## The comments column
+
+Designed 2026-07-29 (storage: 01-storage-format.md ▸ Enhanced schema). Ships in **every edition** — only tracker sync is edition-gated (12-editions.md). Feature lands post-2.0.
+
+- **Visibility**: the pane shows when the thread is non-empty and hides on comment-less cards — the common card stays two panes. **View ▸ Show Comments** toggles it per-window (transient, not persisted); **File ▸ Add Comment** reveals it and focuses the composer in one gesture (11-command-nexus.md).
+- **The thread**: one comment = an author line (self-reported `author`, unattributed when absent; timestamp; "· edited" when `modified` differs from `created`), the rendered Markdown body (the card-body subset), and attachment chips when its `attachments/` is non-empty (Quick Look, the sidebar section's pattern). No avatars — there is no identity system, and initials faked from self-reported strings would be decoration. The section header carries the count ("Comments · 3") and the **sort-direction control**: chronological ascending by default, flippable to newest-first (app-wide, persisted).
+- **The composer edits `comments/.draft/`** (ruled 2026-07-29 — the draft is user content in the board, the `.trash` pattern applied to composition): an always-visible text area ("Add a comment…", Edit-mode Markdown highlighting) whose backing file is the card's single draft — a reserved dot-named folder under `comments/` holding ordinary comment schema, `attachments/` included, excluded from the thread listing. Restore-on-reopen falls out for free (the composer just reads its file); drafts ride git and sync across machines and editions like any file; concurrent drafts on two machines are an ordinary file race (local-wins). **The composer sits at the thread's newest end** (bottom ascending, top descending) and the window opens scrolled to it — a thread opens where the conversation is happening.
+- **Draft saves are slow-cadence, never prompted** (flow breakage minimized): the draft writes on composer blur, window close, quit, and a lazy interval (~30 s) — not the body editor's 700 ms, so a Pro user's typing never becomes a commit stream; the saves that do land compose the quiet path-shaped **"Draft comment on '⟨card⟩'"**. Close and quit just proceed — no DirtyBufferGuard, nothing to lose. A draft emptied of text with no attachments deletes its folder — no litter.
+- **⌘↩ posts** (a Comment button twins it): posting renames `.draft` → a fresh lowercase UUID and **restamps `created`/`modified`** in the same write bracket — chronology is when it was posted, not when drafting began — one gesture, one commit ("Comment on '⟨card⟩'" — 06-history-undo.md's verb family per 01).
+- **Edit and delete**: every comment is editable and deletable — files-first has no enforced identity. The comment's context menu (the per-item inventory — 10-accessibility.md) carries **Edit / Delete / Reveal in Finder**. Inline Edit is a **body-edit session in miniature** (no second draft mechanism): debounced saves to the comment's own file keep it crash-safe, Save (or ⌘↩) ends the session as its commit point, Cancel reverts to session-start bytes, window close flushes the session exactly as the body's does. Delete is immediate and undoable, no confirm (01's ruling — undo is the net).
+- **Live updates**: the pane reloads its thread from the same FSEvents stream (01's window-scoped rule — the board snapshot never loads comment content); foreign arrivals snap in per the motion language, and the announcer speaks them path-shaped ("New comment on '⟨card⟩'" — 10-accessibility.md).
+- **Raw Source still swaps the entire content area** — all panes, comments included; the raw outlet's rule is unchanged.
+
 ## Window
 
 - **The subtitle shows the card's place**: "⟨board⟩ › ⟨lane⟩" under the window title, live-updating as the card moves (the window follows its card).