Driver tab follow-ups: an open PR's label reads as landed, the panel re-triggers its own observer, and unread sessions are revisited every five minutes (#1332, #1703)

[suleimansh]

🤖 automated · Fable 5, effort high

Three things the #1703 review left open on purpose — none blocked the merge, each is a decision or a small change.

1. #N · Open reads as landed

content.js:754 — LANDED_LABEL = /^#\d+ · / — treats any pull-request label as "landed", open PRs included. A status word on the row wins since d3c87fac, so a session showing both "Awaiting input" and #1704 · Open is visited. But a session whose row shows only #1704 · Open (no status word) is never visited: its question, if it asks one later, is invisible until claude.ai puts a status word back.

Question: is "open PR, no status word" a terminal state for the Driver, or should only Merged / Closed count as landed, with Open treated as idle? The second reading costs a visit per open-PR session when it changes; the first risks missing a late question.

2. The panel/overlay rewrite re-triggers its own observer

content.js:1308-1316 — the MutationObserver watches document.documentElement (childList, subtree, characterData) and every survey redraws the panel or the overlay, which mutates the DOM, which schedules the next survey 250 ms later. A full survey (deep query of every code element, transcript diff, self-report) runs about four times a second for as long as the tab lives — and the Driver tab lives forever. Pre-existing, not introduced by #1703, but #1703 made the tab permanent.

Fix shape: observe the transcript region rather than the root, or have the redraw disconnect/reconnect the observer around its own writes. Either is a few lines; the second keeps the "any change triggers a re-read" guarantee intact.

3. Age-revisiting unread sessions

driver-plan.js:11-14 — PARKED = {awaiting, unread} and REVISIT_MS = 5 min: an unread session is revisited every five minutes for the whole 12-hour window even when nothing changed, because claude.ai's list does not clear "Unread response" on a visit. At fan-out (N finished sessions all unread) that is N visits per five minutes, each mirroring nothing new. Only awaiting needs that insurance — a question asked in prose carries no block, so the list status is the only signal, and a re-read is what catches it.

Design question for Rom: visit unread once on change only, and revisit only awaiting on age?

Context

Found in the #1703 review (comment 5414897797) and confirmed on the merged code (5091d8bc). The dogfood that preceded the merge (#1703, comment 5416375723) exercised the answer and create paths and found + fixed a fourth item (an answered question resurfacing after a daemon restart, 613a4949); these three are what remains.

[suleimansh]

Decisions (Suleiman), unless Rom objects:

• Item 1: only Merged / Closed count as landed. #N · Open with no status word is treated as idle — visited on change, never on age.
• Item 2: fixed in The bridge's own drawing no longer triggers its own re-read (#1707) #1709.
• Item 3: unread is visited once on change only; the 5-minute age revisit stays for awaiting alone.

Implementation next session: LANDED_LABEL in content.js, PARKED/REVISIT_MS in driver-plan.js, with check.mjs cases and the SPECs.

🤖 curated · Fable 5, effort xhigh

[suleimansh]

Two changes to which cloud sessions the Driver tab opens, merged in #1710 (dogfooded live, results on the PR).

A session with an open PR is no longer treated as finished. claude.ai's session list shows a PR label instead of a status once the session has a PR (#1706 · Open, #1706 · Draft, #1586 · Merged, …). The bridge took any PR label as "landed" = never look at this session again — so a session that opened a PR and then asked a question was invisible. Now only Merged / Closed mean landed; Open / Draft mean the session is quiet but still alive (same as claude.ai's own "Idle"), so it gets one visit when its row changes.

Finished sessions are no longer re-read every 5 minutes. claude.ai never clears "Unread response" after the Driver visits, so every finished session was being re-opened every 5 minutes for the whole 12-hour window, mirroring nothing new. Now: a session is visited once when its status changes (to awaiting / unread / idle), and only a session that is awaiting input is re-visited every 5 minutes — that one needs it, because a question asked in prose has no block and the list's word is the only signal.

One judgement call you can veto: a session that turns idle (plain "Idle" too) now gets one visit — the decision above said "visited on change", and idle was never visited before. Dropping it is one word in driver-plan.js and one test line.

Follow-up: #1711 — letting the extension reload itself when its files change, instead of the chrome://extensions click.

🤖 curated · Fable 5, effort high

[suleimansh]

All three items landed: #1709 (observer self-loop) and #1710 (open PR ≠ landed, no age re-read of unread/idle). Reopen to veto the idle-on-change reading.