2026-08-14 -- Panel-wide UI polish round (audit-driven)

Method

User request: full-panel design brush-up, no specific complaints. Five parallel critics (chat / settings / history / cards / cross-surface consistency) reviewed window-content-only screenshots (GrabPixels; the ReadScreenPixel screen-region approach was abandoned after it captured unrelated screen content on 2026-08-13) cross-checked against AgentPanel.uss + ThemeDark.uss ground truth. 28 findings; the load-bearing factual claims were re-verified by the PM before adoption (contrast ratio #909090-on-#404040 recomputed at ~3.26:1; zero .uap-perm-option--other rules; exactly one :focus and zero :disabled rules in the whole stylesheet; no title tooltip in HistoryView.BuildRow).

User selected bundles A (color foundation), B+C (chat + cards), D (history/settings). Bundle E (token hygiene: switch-track-on var, ctx-chip-glyph—warn rename, pill radius token, button padding families) is DEFERRED, not rejected — revisit with the next theme change.

Contract (shared vocabulary for the implementation streams)

New/changed tokens (ThemeDark.uss AND ThemeLight.uss):

• --uap-text-secondary: dark #909090 -> #ACACAC (implementation note: this note first suggested #A8A8A8, but the styles stream recomputed it at ~4.36:1 on —uap-bg-elevated #404040 — SHORT of the 4.5:1 this note claimed; #ACACAC measures ~4.57:1 / ~5.17:1 on elevated/base). Light theme #555555 -> #535353 (was ~4.46:1 on its base, now ~4.60:1 / ~4.74:1).
• NEW --uap-accent-caution: standing-policy caution (dark: #C98A4B-ish rust amber — distinct from —uap-status-warn yellow and —uap-status-error red; light: darker equivalent). Used ONLY by the auto-approve header chip’s relaxed/open tiers. —uap-status-error returns to meaning “something is wrong RIGHT NOW”.

New USS classes (AgentPanel.uss; names are final):

• .uap-card-btn:disabled, .uap-card-btn--primary:disabled — themed disabled state (bg-elevated / border-subtle / text-disabled).
• :focus rules for .uap-perm-option, .uap-perm-qtab, .uap-card-btn — accent-user border, mirroring the composer’s existing focus treatment (the one pre-existing :focus rule).
• .uap-perm-option--other — bg-sunken + secondary italic label (code already emits the class; it had NO rule).
• .uap-card-btn--quiet — transparent/borderless secondary for the question card’s Skip.
• .uap-note--warn — warn-colored system note variant.
• .uap-status-dot--reconnecting — warn-colored status dot while the client is gone but a reconnect is expected.
• .uap-thinking > Toggle header treatment — same bordered-row language as tool cards (“bordered row = expandable”).
• .uap-settings-field--group-start — margin-top: —uap-space-m for a field that starts a new topic after another field’s hint.
• .uap-settings-subgroup-start — top border + spacing for the allow/deny list block inside the Conversation card.
• .uap-perm-field-caption — small caption label above the deny / Other free-text fields.

C# behavior changes:

1. HeaderView auto-approve chip: relaxed/open modifiers switch from —uap-status-error to —uap-accent-caution (USS-only if the classes are already split by tier; verify).
2. System notes: ChatMessageBlock.MakeSystemNote(text, warning) overload (default false keeps every existing call compiling); AgentHub’s process-exited/reconnecting notes pass warning:true; MessageBlockFactory adds uap-note—warn for warning notes.
3. StatusBarView: the client-null/no-error branch gets uap-status-dot—reconnecting instead of falling through to neutral.
4. ToolCardDescriber: AskUserQuestion branch (first question text as summary); ToolActivityCard skips the summary label when it equals the display name case-insensitively (belt and suspenders).
5. PermissionCard: Skip gets uap-card-btn—quiet (question variant only); window-host title uses PermTitleFmt (name only — the description already renders as .uap-perm-desc in that host); caption labels above deny field and Other field (new L10n strings); .uap-perm-summary-title font-size -> —uap-font-size-title.
6. PermissionWindow.ComputeInitialSize: content-driven height for the question variant: base ~170pt chrome + ~175pt per visible question section (one at a time shows, so: one section) + tab strip when 2+ questions; clamp [320, 520]. Pure function extended, existing tests updated + new cases (1q short, 4q tall clamps to 520).
7. HistoryView: titleLabel.tooltip = resolved title; sub.tooltip = preview; group header tooltip; search field max-width 220px (USS); group headers to —uap-font-size-meta; refresh button restyled to the header icon-button family.
8. SettingsView: section order Conversation, Model first; CLI moves down next to Diagnostics/Uloop (call-order change only); .uap-settings-card-title -> font-size-body + text-primary; group-start / subgroup-start classes applied at the topic breaks named by the audit.

Row-menu-to-UIToolkit-popup (history) is DEFERRED with bundle E: it is the largest single item, needs its own interaction design, and the GenericMenu keeps working meanwhile.

Regression guards

• ToolCardDescriberTests: AskUserQuestion branch; equal-summary skip.
• PermissionWindowTests: ComputeInitialSize per question count/clamps.
• MessageBlock/system-note test: warning flag maps to uap-note—warn.
• HistoryView: tooltip presence via the row-build seam if one exists, else a source-scan test is NOT worth it — cover by building a row detached and asserting .tooltip (detached tooltip resolution is fine for the property itself, per the 2026-08-05 tooltip facts).
• UssHygieneTests: no new allowlist entries needed (no new flex-grow/space-between rows), but every new class must resolve its vars in both themes (existing sweep covers automatically).
• L10nTests: new caption strings in both catalogs.

Rejected in this round

• Renaming/merging button classes and radius/padding token work (bundle E) — deferred.
• Replacing GenericMenu — deferred (above).
• Auto-sizing the question window by measuring live layout — the estimate table (175px/question) is already measured and good enough; a layout-callback resize loop is the kind of feedback machinery the 2026-08-05 stepper note explicitly avoided.