René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"Recall previously-sent prompts in the composer with the Up / Down arrows","articleBody":"## Problem or Motivation\n\nTerminal shells, the **Claude Code CLI**, and the **Codex desktop** composer all\nlet you recall a prompt you already sent by pressing the **Up arrow** in the\ncomposer — Codex documents it explicitly (\"cancel the current run and recover\nyour previous prompt by pressing the up arrow key in the composer\"), and it's the\nsame muscle-memory as a shell's history (`↑`/`↓`).\n\nOpenWork's chat composer (`FreeFormInput`) has **no prompt history**. Once you\nsend a message it's gone from the input; to re-run or tweak a previous prompt you\nhave to retype it or scroll up and copy it out of the transcript. `ArrowUp` /\n`ArrowDown` in the composer today only drive the inline mention / slash / label\nmenus — outside those menus they just move the caret.\n\n## Proposed Solution\n\nAdd **shell-style prompt history recall** to the composer:\n\n- Each **sent** prompt is appended to a history list (newest last), persisted in\n  the renderer's `localStorage` (global, like a shell history file), trimmed,\n  with immediate-duplicate collapse, capped at 100 entries.\n- Pressing **Up** in an **empty** composer (or while already recalling) walks\n  **backwards** through history (newest → oldest), clamping at the oldest.\n- Pressing **Down** while recalling walks **forwards** (older → newer); paging\n  past the newest entry **restores the draft** you started from and exits recall.\n- Any real edit, submitting, or switching sessions **exits** recall mode.\n- When the composer already has a draft and you aren't recalling, `Up`/`Down`\n  keep their normal caret-movement behaviour — so recall never hijacks editing.\n\n## Feasibility\n\n**Classification: pure frontend — candidate.** No qwen-code backend involvement.\n\n- The composer's imperative handle (`RichTextInputHandle`) already exposes\n  `value` / `setValue` / `setSelectionRange`, and recall drives the existing\n  controlled `value` prop (via `setInput`) — the same mechanism `@mention`\n  selection already uses. No new IPC, no main-process change.\n- Persistence reuses the existing `lib/local-storage.ts` `KEYS`/`get`/`set`\n  helper (one new key, `craft-prompt-history`), exactly as the recent\n  reduce-motion work did.\n- The navigation model (push / prev / next / entry-at) is a small pure module,\n  so it is fully unit-testable without a DOM.\n- **No new i18n keys** — the feature has no visible labels.\n\n## Alternatives Considered\n\n- **Per-session history** instead of global: closer to some apps, but a global\n  history matches shell / Codex behaviour and is simpler; can be scoped later.\n- **A visible history dropdown**: heavier and less discoverable than the\n  universally-expected `↑` affordance; could be layered on later.\n\n## Additional Context\n\n### Acceptance criteria (CDP e2e assertion)\n\nA new `e2e/assertions/prompt-history.assert.ts` drives the real built app over CDP\nentirely in the draft (no-session) state — no seeded conversation, no backend. The\ncomposer reads its history fresh from `localStorage`, so the assertion seeds three\nprior prompts there and walks them:\n\n1. The composer renders and starts **empty**.\n2. Seed `localStorage['craft-prompt-history'] = ['alpha one','beta two','gamma three']`.\n3. `ArrowUp` recalls the newest (`gamma three`); further Ups walk older\n   (`beta two`, `alpha one`) and **clamp** at the oldest.\n4. `ArrowDown` walks newer again (`beta two`, `gamma three`) and, once **past** the\n   newest, **restores the original empty draft**.\n\nReading the composer's actual text after each keypress proves the arrows really\nchange the composer contents, not merely toggle state. In addition, the pure\nhistory module ships with unit tests (`prompt-history.test.ts`) covering push\nsemantics (trim, immediate-repeat collapse, cap) and the Up/Down navigation\nround-trip.\n\nPart of the autonomous desktop-feature loop (`loop-bot`).","author":{"url":"https://github.com/DragonnZhang","@type":"Person","name":"DragonnZhang"},"datePublished":"2026-07-04T01:33:12.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":0},"url":"https://github.com/52/openwork/issues/52"}