The lane header no longer draws a new-card button. Every other creation path is untouched: File > New Card (Cmd-N), Return on a selected lane, and double-click on lane empty space. - LaneView: drop the button and its overlay slot, leaving the collapse chevron as the header's one piece of trailing chrome. - NewCardTarget: drop the button's click-names-target carve-out over the Cmd-N target rule (Return on a selected lane is now the only direct-target path left). - AccessibilityPhrases: drop the button's spoken label. - BoardMetrics: drop its width reserve; laneHeaderTrailingReserve now reduces to the collapse chevron's own reserve. - DESIGN/03, 04, 10, 11: update the lane title-bar inventory, the Cmd-N override clause and search-clearing mechanism list, the accessibility tree-shape sentence, and the pointer-grammar row that described the button. - Tests: drop the two pinned accessibility-label tests and the newCardButtonReserve assertions; retarget the truncation-headroom test at the now-solo laneHeaderTrailingReserve; fix stale doc-quote comments and the manual accessibility-verification checklist. Full KanbanTests suite: 2807 tests, 482 suites, all passing. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014PtZdPwqZuqEDLc6wZMtEy
Lanework — Design Documents
A ground-up rewrite of the Kanban app, to ship as Lanework on the Mac App Store. The old repo (../../Kanban, one level above this repository — not the rewrite's own Kanban/ source folder, which shares the codename) was a pathfinder — it never shipped, but it is the reference implementation and the source of hard-won decisions. This design starts from a clean slate and keeps only what earned its place. The rewrite keeps the internal codename Kanban (bundle id dev.rzen.indie.Kanban).
Each document covers one aspect of the design. Within each:
- Decisions — settled, either carried over from the old app or newly made.
- Changes from Kanban — where this rewrite deliberately diverges.
- Open questions — flagged for iteration; nothing here is implicitly settled.
Index
| Doc | Aspect |
|---|---|
| 00-vision.md | What Lanework is, who it's for, goals and non-goals |
| 01-storage-format.md | On-disk contract: folders, frontmatter, ordering, the materialized trash |
| 02-architecture.md | App structure: source of truth, stores, watchers, concurrency |
| 03-board-ui.md | Board window: layout, lanes, cards, styling, templates |
| 04-interactions.md | Selection, drag & drop, keyboard, clipboard, search |
| 05-card-window.md | The card window: Markdown preview/edit, attachments |
| 06-history-undo.md | Git-backed undo/redo and history — retired 2026-08-08 (git excised, strategy/01-git-excision.md; Undo routing migrated to 13) |
| 07-sync-collab.md | Board modes and git-rails sync — retired 2026-08-08 as written; successor: the ops-based sync service workstream |
| 08-agent-integration.md | AI agents as first-class users of the board |
| 09-templates.md | Board templates: inventory and definition format |
| 10-accessibility.md | VoiceOver, text scaling, visual accommodations |
| 11-command-nexus.md | The command Nexus — every command and action: bindings, contexts, customizability |
| 12-editions.md | The tiers — mooted 2026-08-08: one version, everything free, tier machinery excised; Pro returns with the iPhone/sync era as a fresh pass (the doc is record: entitlement mechanics, distribution, the git rows) |
| 13-native-undo.md | macOS-native undo/redo — the history substrate (sole since 2026-08-08); owns Undo routing |
| 14-git-operations.md | Extracted pathfinder git-operations conclusions — retired 2026-08-08 (superseded record) |
Deferred design iterations
The card window (05-card-window.md), toolbar (03-board-ui.md ▸ Toolbar), styling controls (03-board-ui.md ▸ Styling ▸ Controls), and comments (01 ▸ Enhanced schema + 05 ▸ The comments column — designed 2026-07-29, shipping post-2.0) each had their focused pass and are settled.
The authoritative list of open design passes is the findings board (Lanework Redesign.kanban ▸ Issues to Resolve) — this section stopped enumerating by hand after drifting twice. Standing examples as of 2026-07-29: the attachment-undo staging design and the EchoLedger foreign-undo bridge (both flagged in 13-native-undo.md), Teams' tracker integration (no design yet), the fail-fast decision surface (01 ▸ Refuse), and the drop-release settle presentation (03 ▸ Motion — deliberately last in line).
Wishlist
Ideas worth keeping but outside the committed design live in ../WISHLIST.md.
Terminology
The rewrite adopts lane as the canonical term for what the old app called a column (it's in the name: Lane-work). "Column" survives only when referring to the old app or to interior card-grid columns inside a wide lane.