Viz/legible steps - #457
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Three additions to the Flow Definition renderer, each derived from vocabulary Dex
already has, so a Flow gets them without adopting a convention or changing the
analyser:
stepRole() gate | batch | work. A Step whose WaitFor holds a Channel
condition is a gate: in Dex that already means an actor outside
the Flow must publish before it proceeds. Naming it adds no
concept, it promotes one that was in the graph all along. A
SubFlow condition makes it a batch; Timers alone do not.
waitSentence() the wait as one plain sentence. Channel and Timer names stay
verbatim because they are the operator's handles; what goes is
the scaffolding around them — anyOf, skipWaitImmediately, and
the `.for 1` suffix a reader has no use for.
displayName() reads the FDG schema's existing per-node `metadata`, falling
back to the type name. A Step type is part of the durable
contract of an open execution, so a display name sits in front
of it and never replaces it: the card keeps showing the type
whenever a display name covers it.
Gates are coloured and carry a SOMEONE MUST ACT badge, so the reader can see
where a human is required without reading any label.
On a real 12-Step Flow this finds all four gates and both fan-out Steps from the
graph alone. Deliberately absent: whether a model or a script does the work.
No Dex concept answers that, and inventing one here would put an application
fact into the renderer's vocabulary — `metadata` is the place for it.
The graph opened with every layer visible, so a reader met WaitFor shapes, decision cards and resource rails before they met the Steps. On a twelve-Step Flow only eleven of sixty-three drawn nodes were Steps. Open with waits, decisions, RPCs, attributes, channels and recovery hidden. Each stays a legend button, so nothing is removed, only deferred. Rank separation now follows the cards: the gap sized for a card holding a decision grid leaves a collapsed column mostly empty and forces the viewport to zoom the text away. A Step card now shows its display name, its input and output, and a sentence for what it waits on, all from the schema's per-node metadata. It sizes itself to that content and lays it out as a column, so the title no longer sits on top of the other lines. The Step type name moves to the selection panel, where a developer resuming a run needs it, rather than competing with the name a reader came for. A derived colour key explains why some cards differ, and is built from the roles the Flow actually has. Also exclude the linked renderer package from dep pre-bundling. Vite resolves it through web/node_modules, so it was pre-bundled once per process and edits to its source never reached the browser.
The displayName block was left above metadataText when that function was inserted between them, so it documented the wrong function. Both blocks also exceeded the repository's comment-length rule.
zzheng-aiplay
marked this pull request as ready for review
September 7, 2026 17:07
zzheng-aiplay
marked this pull request as draft
September 7, 2026 17:07
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