feat(chat): the chat is an editor tab, and only an editor tab

[ndemianc]

Removes the contributed chat view in the right-hand bar entirely. Sessions keeps that container — an index of past conversations is a different thing from the conversation, and doesn't need to split a narrow column with it.

Why the view had to go, rather than be deprioritised

Two possible hosts for one conversation is what produced every bug reported against it:

• closing the tab reopened the chat on the right
• ⇧⌘I opened it on the right
• the ResizeObserver console spam came from purpose=webviewView — the sidebar copy

Each was fixable in isolation. The shape that kept generating them was not.

Gone with the view: the hand-over card (detachedHtml), the reattach message, the move command and its button, the close-versus-move distinction, and two of the three transcript-replay paths. levelcode.ai.focus (⇧⌘I) and every background reveal now open the tab.

Closing the tab is an ending, not a discard

It seals the live session into History and lets memory learn from it — the same m.seal('done') + enrichMemoryAsync(sealedId) New Chat has always done, now extracted into sealLiveSession() and shared.

Two copies would drift, and the half that drifted would be the close path, because that's the half nobody watches. It cannot throw: it runs from a dispose handler, where an exception has nowhere to go.

The buttons moved with the chat

New Chat, Add Files and Set API Key lived on the sidebar view's title bar. They're now on the chat tab's title bar, gated on activeWebviewPanelId == 'levelcode.ai.chat'.

Deleting the view without moving them would have deleted the only place they were reachable outside the palette — which is no place at all for a capability nobody knows exists. A guard also fails on any menu entry still scoped to the removed view, since a stale when is a button that appears nowhere.

Setting

chat.startLocation drops secondarySidebar; editor and none are the only honest values left. An existing secondarySidebar in settings.json falls back to the default through the validation that was already there.

Guards

Each bypass-verified by reverting the fix:

bypass	caught
closing no longer seals — conversation silently dropped	✓
memory never learns from the sealed session	✓
newChat grows its own copy of the sealing logic again	✓
⇧⌘I points back at the removed view	✓
nothing constructs the chat provider (it still owns wire()/makeLive())	✓
the chat returns as a contributed view	✓ (caught in sessionsUi, where that guard lives)

Two test corrections worth naming

The fire-and-forget scan was checking nothing. It looked for executeCommand('levelcodeAi.chat.focus') — a string that no longer appears anywhere — so it would have kept passing forever. Repointed at openChatInEditor(), and taught to skip the function declaration rather than flag it as an unhandled call.

sessionsUi asserted "both Chat and Sessions views present". It now asserts Sessions is there and Chat is not, which is the property that matters.

Supersedes #80

A close-versus-move distinction is meaningless when there's nothing to move to. #80 should be closed unmerged.

19 tests in chatSurface, 34 suites green.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR makes the LevelCode AI chat editor-tab-only by removing the contributed sidebar Chat view, keeping the sidebar container exclusively for Sessions, and simplifying the chat lifecycle (open/focus/close) around a single WebviewPanel.

Changes:

• Removed the contributed levelcodeAi.chat WebviewView surface and related “move/hand-off” machinery.
• Ensured closing the chat tab seals the live session (shared sealing path with New Chat) and triggers memory enrichment.
• Updated extension contributions and tests to reflect the editor-only chat surface and moved title-bar actions onto the chat tab.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 4 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

File	Description
extensions/levelcode-ai/extension.js	Removes sidebar chat surface, re-routes focus/open behavior to editor tab, and adds shared session-sealing on close.
extensions/levelcode-ai/package.json	Removes Chat view contribution and move command; relocates chat actions to the chat editor tab title bar.
extensions/levelcode-ai/test/chatSurface.test.js	Updates wiring/guard assertions for editor-only chat and adds close-path sealing and “no sidebar resurrection” checks.
extensions/levelcode-ai/test/sessionsUi.test.js	Updates view contribution assertions to ensure Sessions is present and Chat is not.

Suppressed comments (1)

extensions/levelcode-ai/extension.js:2370

• The PR description says an existing chat.startLocation: "secondarySidebar" should fall back to the default via validation, but the current flow still allows that value through chatStartLocation() and then logs it. Even though it ultimately opens the editor tab, this means the setting does not actually “fall back” and diagnostics can misleadingly report where: secondarySidebar. Consider mapping the legacy value to editor before logging/branching.

	const where = chatStartLocation();
	dbg('chat.startLocation', { where });
	if (where === 'none') { return; }
	await openChatInEditor({ preserveFocus: true });
}

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