Settings is browse-only — no way to land on one option across five sections

[noyobo]

The problem we hit

⌘, opens a five-section dialog (Appearance, Git, Authentication, AI, Shortcuts). Changing one card — SSH, Zoom, Auto fetch — means clicking each sidebar item and scanning. Graph already has Find; Settings does not.

Environment: macOS 15, Tauri v2 / WKWebView (also Chromium via bun run dev), current Settings dialog on v0.16.0 (7751a14). This is not Graph ⌘F and not a Git-object bug.

Options we considered

• Leave it. Fine while the dialog stays short. Cost: every new card (editor, hosts, CLI) makes the miss-rate worse.
• Filter as you type: hide non-matching sections and cards, highlight terms (IDE Settings). Cost: catalog or live text scrape; empty vs no-match UX.
• Find as you type: keep every section, step next/prev like Graph Find. Cost: noise stays; N/P already mean something in the Diff.
• One Command palette row per setting. Cost: palette clutter; does nothing for someone already in the dialog.

What we verified works

We prototyped the Filter path in a local build (Chromium demo + macOS WKWebView):

• Static catalog of card titles + keywords; AND terms; a section-label hit shows every card in that section.
• Enter scrolls the first catalog hit into view and short-flashes it (same locate animation as Graph).
• WKWebView: scrollend often never fires. A card already fully in view still needs the flash — measure with getBoundingClientRect, do not wait for scroll.
• macOS puts an inline spell-correct bubble on the search field unless spellcheck/autocorrect are off (commit message field still spellchecks).
• We did not scrape the live DOM for labels. We did not add next/prev — this is Filter, not Find.

Questions for the maintainer

1. Is a Settings filter in scope, or should the dialog stay short enough to scan by eye?
2. If in scope: hide non-matches, or keep the full list and step matches like Graph Find?
3. Should Enter land on the first hit (scroll + flash), or is switching the sidebar enough?
4. Catalog of titles vs matching visible card text — preference, or a known dead end?