Bot stage gap analysis
What the live bot stage does today, against what you asked for
Lead: The stage works and it's live. You asked for a coworker's desk: see the bot, what it is doing, what it needs and what it made. Today three of those fall short: what it needs, what it did, and what it made. There is also one release problem that affects every Desktop user. Each gap below says what to do about it.
What it looks like live
This is your A:// main chat. Under the bot it says Needs you, but nothing on screen says what it needs. The conversation column shows only the greeting, because the last 10 messages are folded away as "earlier".
Gaps, ranked
| # | Gap | What you see | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Desktop updates can stall | Your app stopped downloading a 211 MB update and never resumed. I installed it by hand | The updater fetches new files 8 at a time with a 60 s stall timeout. It never staged the update, and the reason isn't known yet | Find why it stalls, show download progress, retry with resume. This affects every Desktop user |
| 2 | "Needs you" without the what | The status says Needs you, but there's no card | The status reads the bot's state across all its threads, and the stage no longer pins approvals | A "Needs you" card that names the thread and the question or approval, and answers it in place |
| 3 | The conversation column can be empty | Only the greeting shows, with 10 messages folded | Messages older than 48 h fold behind "earlier messages" | On the stage, always show the last several messages, whatever their age |
| 4 | "What I made" is thin | Most bots show no montage | It reads only this chat's recent messages, not the bot's saved artifacts | Fill it from the bot's artifacts across its threads and routines, with real thumbnails |
| 5 | No briefing across threads | It doesn't say what the bot did elsewhere while you were away | The speech bubble was removed in the dock redesign, and nothing replaced it | One "Since you were last here" line built from thread activity and routine runs |
| 6 | "What it's doing" needs a checklist or a computer | Most work shows only "Working…" | Steps come only from the bot's to-do list, and the screen only from a running computer | Show live tool steps (reading, searching, writing) when there is no checklist |
| 7 | The plan is just text | "Plan it first" gives an approval prompt in the chat | Plan mode ends at a generic approval | A plan card on the stage: steps, Edit, Approve |
| 8 | The dock moves too easily | Any scroll tucks the bot away | Every scroll counts | Dock only on send, or after scrolling some distance |
| 9 | Some avatars are still soft | Photo avatars, uploads and 512 px portraits | The 2× art covers only pack sprite sheets | Make 2× portraits, and render photo sprites at 2× when they're created |
| 10 | Repository weight | +168 MB of 2× art in git | Images are stored in the repo | Move avatar art to R2 or Git LFS |
| 11 | The app wouldn't quit | Quit requests timed out, and I had to close it at the process level | The main process didn't answer quit requests. Cause unknown | Check what blocks quit (a dialog, or the main process hanging) |
What I'd do next
First 1, because it hits every Desktop user. Then 2 and 3, because the stage says the wrong thing. Then 4 and 5, the "what it did" half you asked for, and 8, which is one line. 6, 7, 9, 10 and 11 can come after.