home: needs you becomes two groups — the questions that stopped something, then the landings to check

cmd/aforge-demo-home/seed_work.go

@@ -174,6 +174,56 @@ var demoTasks = []demoTask{
 			DurationMS: 7 * 60 * 1000,
 		},
 	},
+	// AND A GROUP OF LANDINGS NOBODY HAS CHECKED, ACROSS THREE PROJECTS. Home's
+	// `needs you` panel holds them as its `to check` group (homepanel_needs.go),
+	// and a fixture with ONE of them draws a group of one — which is the shape a
+	// group line, a count, a clause and a fold all fail to be tested by. These
+	// are deliberately unlike each other: one wrote seventeen files, one wrote
+	// none, one has a name long enough to be cut, and one is old enough to age
+	// onto the fold rather than onto a row.
+	{
+		project: firstProjectName, talk: "Reading the Ledger", ago: 26 * time.Hour,
+		entry: session.TaskIndexEntry{
+			ID: "1", Title: "Take the fortnight's spend apart by model", Status: string(session.TaskUnverified),
+			Outcome:      "Opus is four fifths of the fortnight and nearly all of it is one conversation; the split is in the page.",
+			Files:        []string{"docs/design/spend/fortnight.md"},
+			FilesChanged: 1, Cost: 0.19, Model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4", Tokens: 24_400,
+			DurationMS: 5 * 60 * 1000,
+		},
+	},
+	{
+		project: firstProjectName, talk: "The Manual's Missing Page", ago: 30 * time.Hour,
+		entry: session.TaskIndexEntry{
+			ID: "1", Title: "Write the page about reading a task, and every question it should answer",
+			Status:  string(session.TaskUnverified),
+			Outcome: "Seventeen sections, each under two thousand characters, and every probe in the table reaches one of them.",
+			Files: []string{
+				"internal/manual/chat/reading-a-task-page.md", "internal/manual/chat/tasks.md",
+				"internal/manual/chat/home.md", "internal/manual/chat/keys.md",
+			},
+			FilesChanged: 17, Cost: 0.61, Model: "anthropic/claude-opus-4.1", Tokens: 88_200,
+			DurationMS: 19 * 60 * 1000,
+		},
+	},
+	{
+		project: "pricing-site", talk: "Pricing Research", ago: 7 * time.Hour,
+		entry: session.TaskIndexEntry{
+			ID: "2", Title: "Read what the four nearest competitors charge", Status: string(session.TaskUnverified),
+			Outcome: "Three of the four price per seat and one per workspace; nobody could check the figures against a source.",
+			Cost:    0.08, Model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4", Tokens: 11_300,
+			DurationMS: 3 * 60 * 1000,
+		},
+	},
+	{
+		project: "infra", talk: "Rotating the Deploy Key", ago: 4 * 24 * time.Hour,
+		entry: session.TaskIndexEntry{
+			ID: "1", Title: "Rotate the deploy key and re-fasten the runners", Status: string(session.TaskUnverified),
+			Outcome:      "The key is rotated and both runners took it; the third host was not reachable to prove.",
+			Files:        []string{"terraform/runners.tf", "runbooks/deploy-key.md"},
+			FilesChanged: 2, Cost: 0.24, Model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4", Tokens: 31_100,
+			DurationMS: 8 * 60 * 1000,
+		},
+	},
 }
 
 // writeTaskIndex appends every row to its own project's index and answers how

docs/changes/unreleased/900-home-needs-groups.md

@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+---
+kind: changed
+title: home's `needs you` is two groups — the questions that stopped something, then what to check
+pr: 900
+surface: [chat]
+invalidates:
+  - "`needs you` drew a conversation's question, a watch and a landed task as ONE flat list ordered oldest-first. It is TWO GROUPS on one panel: the live questions first (a conversation stopped on a question or a consent card, a watch that needs somebody), longest wait first, and under them a dim group line `to check · N` with the clause `finished, nobody has checked it` at its right, holding every task whose call is the person's, NEWEST first. A live question is always above a landing, however old the landing is."
+  - "Every landing on home carried the sub-line `landed unchecked · enter to look` (`needsUncheckedWord` in `internal/tui3/placeprose.go`). That constant is DELETED and no row says it. A landing is ONE line — its name and `N files · age` — and only the row under the cursor grows a second line, which is the report's first sentence with the task's own two answers at its right."
+  - "A landing on `needs you` wore the amber `?` mark. It wears NONE. The mark means a thing has stopped and will not move until somebody answers it, and a landing has already finished; law 8's `two marks` is unchanged and the `?` is now only on a stopped conversation or watch."
+  - "The heading `needs you · N` counted every row including the landings. It counts the QUESTIONS only; the landings are counted on the group's own line. A frame holding only landings draws `needs you` with no number at all, which is the emptiness law applied to a heading."
+  - "A digit on home answered THE TOP question of `needs you`, always. It answers THE ONE ROW OF THE FRAME THAT IS DRAWING ITS ANSWERS: the row under the cursor when that row can take one, and the top answerable row otherwise. Drawing and routing read the same function (`app.homeAnswerAt`), so the chip on the screen and the key a person presses can never be two different rows."
+  - "A landed task could not be answered from home at all — `homeRowAnswers` gated the chips on a live session's presence question, which a `to check` row by construction does not have. A landing on `to check` now draws its own two answers in the TASK'S OWN WORDS (`session.TaskAsk.Yes`/`.No`) and takes them. THE KEYS ON HOME ARE `1` AND `2`, not the `[a]`/`[n]` the landing card, the task's room and its record take: a bare letter on home always types (the box promises `type to search or start something new` and the promise has no asterisk), and the drawn digit is the one printable exception that screen makes. The digit is mapped back to `session.LandingYesKey`/`LandingNoKey` before the answer leaves the surface, so the engine sees the same answer it has always seen."
+  - "A conversation whose presence says `waiting on you · your call on <title>` with no question object was drawn as a question on `needs you`, above the `to check` row for the same piece of work — one landing on two rows of one panel. `internal/session`'s `Agent.waitingOnPerson` reads a pending decision last and has no question object to write for it, so this is the ordinary shape of any live conversation sitting on a landed task. The conversation's row is dropped and the landing's row stands: it has the work's own name, its files and its answers."
+  - "`since you left` listed every landing since the look stamp, including the ones `needs you` was showing as your call. It DROPS a landing that the `to check` group is drawing, and shows it again as an ordinary line once that landing has been answered or has aged out of the group."
+  - "The pulse's `N want you` counted conversations, watches and errands and never a landed task, so it disagreed with `needs you · N` under it. It is the SUM OF BOTH GROUPS now, counted through the panel's own reading of a landing (`needsCallOf`, `needsAged`) rather than through a second test. The tab bar's `tasks` number is unrelated and unchanged — `placeCounts.ChangedIn` is `how many things moved since you last looked at this place`, and that seam is still nil."
+  - "A panel squeezed by taking rows off the bottom until it reached its floor, and there was no such thing as a group inside a panel. `homePanelRows.group` is a run of rows at the FOOT of a panel's list drawn under a dim line of its own; because they are last, the ordinary bottom-up cut spends them first, and when none is left the group's line goes and the panel's own fold names the group — `4 to check · 1 older · tasks`. `homeGridPanel.shrink` is now a plain walk down from the natural height rather than the old `least - 2` arithmetic."
+  - "The demo home (`cmd/aforge-demo-home`) had exactly ONE `unverified` row, which draws a `to check` group of one. It has five, across three projects, deliberately unlike each other: seventeen files, no files at all, a name long enough to be cut, and one old enough to age onto the fold instead of onto a row."
+---
+
+The note on the panel was that the difference between `needs you` and `to check` is not
+obvious, and the fix is one dim clause on the group's line rather than a label on every row.
+Seven words, once, in the place a heading's clause already lives — and the cursor row's
+`1 accept   2 not right` says what checking one actually means.
+
+Two things the tmux drive found that unit tests had not: the same landing drawn on two rows
+of one panel whenever its conversation is live, and that `a`/`n` cannot be answer keys on a
+screen whose foot promises that typing starts a conversation.

docs/design/home-mission-control/DESIGN.md

@@ -60,13 +60,29 @@ own keys, each a door to the place that owns it. The chat list is one panel.
 5. **A short terminal squeezes in priority order.** `next up` and `spend` give
    way first, then `since you left`, then `running`; `needs you` and `where you
    were` shrink last. A squeezed panel keeps its heading and `N more · <place>`.
+   A GROUP INSIDE A PANEL folds before the panel gives up a row above it: the
+   rows of `needs you`'s `to check` group sit at the foot of the panel's list, so
+   the ordinary bottom-up cut spends them first, and when none is left the
+   group's line goes and the fold names it — `8 to check · tasks` (#884).
 6. **Preselect the previous thing.** On double-space the cursor is on the chat
    you were in before this one (this window's own stack, `chattabs.go`
    `tabList`). Enter is a switch in two keys; esc goes back.
-7. **Digits answer the top question from anywhere on home.** No cursor move.
-   The answers are drawn on the row so the key is never a guess.
+7. **One row of the frame draws its answers, and the key answers it from
+   anywhere on home.** No cursor move. That row is the one under the cursor when
+   it can take an answer and the top answerable row otherwise (#884), so a digit
+   works on a frame nobody has walked and a landing somebody HAS walked onto is
+   the row the key means. The answers are drawn on the row so the key is never a
+   guess. THE WORDS ARE THE QUESTION'S OWN EVERYWHERE; the KEYS are too wherever
+   the question's own keys are digits, which is every card a conversation stops
+   on. The one exception is a landing in `to check`, whose keys are `[a]`/`[n]`
+   on its card, in its room and on its record and are `1`/`2` here — because a
+   bare letter on home types (home.go: the foot promises "type to search or start
+   something new" and the promise has no asterisk), and the drawn digit is the
+   one printable exception this screen makes. The digit is mapped back to
+   `session.LandingYesKey`/`LandingNoKey` before the answer leaves the surface.
 8. **Two marks, one accent, one hint line.** `GlyphNeedsHuman` in `hueWarn` for
-   a person, the single spinner cell for work. Nothing else wears a glyph or a
+   a person — a conversation or a watch that has STOPPED, never a landing on
+   `to check`, which has already finished — the single spinner cell for work. Nothing else wears a glyph or a
    colour. Money is a number. Key hints live on the foot and the alt map, never
    inside a panel.
 9. **Nothing grows past its budget.** Every panel folds inside itself with