ThothII/docs/reports/2026-09-12-context-shelf-a-implementation.md

Context shelf A: implementation and local acceptance

Date: 2026-09-12. Status: implemented and deployed to local Docker; not deployed to the server.

Accepted scope

The owner selected the latest option A and explicitly required functional preservation of Core and session management. Aesthetic refinement is limited to the agreed Administration workbench and global context.

• Workspace, Evidence, Memory, Database and Pi open as peer pages in the work area.
• A single top collapsible shelf selects workspace and interaction model. Explicit choices are independently remembered per origin, mount and principal; installation defaults fill only missing choices. Invalid saved choices fail closed instead of silently choosing another context.
• Core's composer, eight phases, review widgets and left activity log remain the original production components. Session scope tabs, grouping, rename, archive, bulk operations, read-only inspection and guarded Resume remain intact.
• Visited Admin pages and Core remain mounted during page navigation. Unsaved Admin edits block navigation/context changes until saved or explicitly cancelled in the editor. Failed saves and failed catalog refreshes preserve drafts.
• Workspace/model selectors are locked during operations. A navigation drawer preserves access to the session rail when the log is open or space is narrow.
• The unified Installation Model Catalog remains the only model authority. Core and metadata generation consume the same canonical selection. Resume now includes the session's pinned workspaceId in successful responses, binding the global workspace immediately without replacing the selected model; older backends have a manifest fallback.
• Impeccable informed typography, warm surfaces, restrained red, spacing, natural help-text wrapping and container-responsive layout. No Omics header or left sidebar was added to production ThothII.
• A, B and C prototype sources and launch scripts were preserved.

Verification

Using Node 24.16.0:

Check	Result
Full frontend Vitest suite (two workers)	671 tests passed, 82 files
Full backend Vitest suite (two workers)	Passed; existing 40 opt-in auth runtime projection tests skipped
Frontend TypeScript build check	Passed
Backend TypeScript check	Passed
Frontend production Vite build	Passed; bundle-size advisory remains
Git whitespace check	Passed
Strict MkDocs build	Passed

Regression fixtures now provide valid context where they exercise normal Core or session workflows. Separate tests explicitly cover invalid saved context, global selector uniqueness, lock/unlock, failed and successful saves, retained drafts across refresh failure, Core/Admin round trips, and pinned-workspace Resume. The existing 40 session-management tests remain green.

Browser acceptance used the actual production React application against a temporary read-only synthetic API, not the earlier prototype implementation. Checked Core, expanded/collapsed shelf, Memory, session scope tabs and mobile navigation at 390, 768 and 1280 CSS-pixel application widths. The test frame scaled wider layouts to fit the inspection panel; layout width inside the frame remained the stated CSS width. No real data, provider calls or runtime mutations were performed. This is sampled visual acceptance, not certification of every Admin editor on the real portal.

Remaining release gates

Local Docker update

At the owner's subsequent request, core and frontend were rebuilt from /Users/mp/projects/ThothII and recreated in the existing thothii-18998cca7b0a project. Its launcher preserves all previous Compose bindings and adds /private/tmp/thothii-context-a.compose.yaml last to override the old worktree build context. Only core/frontend were recreated; PostgreSQL, Qdrant, embedding and persistent volumes were retained.

Verified HTTP 200 for the frontend and both direct/proxied core health endpoints. The served production bundle contains the global shelf and unsaved-change guard, without the synthetic preview API. All five persistent services report healthy. The mounted catalog is schema v2, default zai/glm-5.3, with shared DeepSeek Pro/Flash, local Qwen and GLM model identities. Previous image tags are retained as before-context-a-20260912 for each image. This startup check does not exercise authenticated Core/provider or Admin workflows.

Server release

1. Integrate on the server beneath Omics Portal's actual red header and beside its existing sidebar. Supply available height through --thoth-app-height when the host is shorter than the viewport. Check real host styles, widths, zoom, keyboard traversal and Back/Forward.
2. Use approved test data to verify configured Core/Pi and Admin/LiteLLM models through their real workflows. Unit fixtures do not certify provider compatibility.
3. Verify workspace readiness, synchronization and resume on the configured stack before release. Follow the existing guarded server migration runbook.
4. Gitea publication and final independent standards/spec review remain separate gates; no remote issues or deployment are claimed by this implementation.

The working tree also contains earlier model-catalog and Administration work. Unrelated changes were preserved; this report does not claim a clean or committed tree.