feat: draft hero landing on the index route

[yordis]

• The index route was a dead end that told users to go click something else; the first screen should be a prompt so launching the app and typing is the entire flow.
• Unlike folder-scoped tools, this app spans many projects, so the headline carries an in-place project switcher instead of assuming a single context.
• Connection and git-status churn was shifting the centered layout around, which undermined the landing experience, so the hero group is isolated from anything that mounts below it.

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Note

Low Risk
UI and routing-only changes with no auth or data-path impact; main edge case is timing around environment bootstrap before auto-navigation.

Overview
The chat index route no longer shows a passive empty state: after environment shells finish bootstrapping, it replaces navigation into a draft for the most recently active project (or shows an add-project hero when none exist).

Empty local drafts get a centered hero in ChatView—headline plus composer—with DraftHeroHeadline (“What should we do in …?”) and an in-place project switcher when multiple projects exist. The timeline’s empty placeholder is hidden in that mode, and composer/banner/branch chrome is rearranged so connect/reconnect and lower UI don’t shift the centered group.

useHandleNewThread accepts optional replace for history-friendly redirects. allEnvironmentShellsBootstrappedAtom gates the index auto-start until each catalog environment has a shell snapshot or is safely disconnected (with a short backoff grace for retries).

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 17fbd15. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.}

Note

Add draft hero landing page to the chat index route

• The chat index route now auto-navigates to a draft thread for the most recently active project (using history replace) instead of showing an inactive thread state.
• When no projects exist, a new NoProjectsHero component renders a centered empty state with an add-project prompt.
• A new DraftHeroHeadline component renders above the composer on empty draft threads, showing a project selector that starts a replacement draft thread when switched.
• MessagesTimeline gains a hideEmptyPlaceholder prop to suppress the empty-state text in hero mode.
• useNewThreadHandler gains an optional replace flag to control whether navigation replaces the current history entry.
• A new allEnvironmentShellsBootstrappedAtom delays auto-navigation until all environment shells are ready, accounting for early connection retries.

^{Macroscope summarized 17fbd15.}

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[macroscopeapp]

Approvability

Verdict: Needs human review

This PR introduces a new feature that changes the index route landing experience with auto-redirect behavior, new hero UI components, and modified layout states. New user-facing features warrant human review.

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[yordis]

Screen.Recording.2026-07-16.at.5.12.58.AM.mov

[cursor]

Cursor Bugbot has reviewed your changes using high effort and found 1 potential issue.

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^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit e69bab6. Configure here.}