App Console -> App Docs

[jlewi]

There are a bunch of problems with the app console right now

• Lots of UX paper cuts; e.g. trying to edit commands doesn't work as expected
• AI can't generate commands

I think a big source of the UX problems is that we are treating it as a "terminal" and implementing our own character device streaming input/output. I think that's the wrong UX for a web-app. It makes more sense to treat it as cells and reuse the monaco editor in which you then execute on enter.

We could then figure out how to port the relevant parts of a terminal like UX.
I think we'd want something closer to a chat like UX meaning you enter new commands and then these get appended to the history. Then the AI can just append cells.

The one thing I'm unsure about is that in a terminal being able to easily scroll through your history is nice not sure what the equivalent would be.

[hamelsmu]

I reviewed this end-to-end. xterm.js is already in the web stack, so this is mostly an integration/UX-flow issue, not a missing dependency.

Assessment:

• AppConsole renders console-view (which is backed by xterm) and receives raw terminalStdin.
• In web/app/src/components/AppConsole/AppConsole.tsx, stdin is intercepted and custom-parsed for prompt/history/editing (\u001b[A/B/C/D, Enter, backspace, etc.), then only a subset is rewritten.
• That manual character-device layer is the likely root of edit-UX issues and likely why command generation feels awkward.

Plan:

1. Keep xterm for output rendering (already good), but stop treating AppConsole as a raw terminal editor. Use a real input surface (monaco/textarea + Enter-to-run), append command+result as chat/cell entries, and only stream output from JSKernel to terminal.
2. Move history to an explicit app-level model (commands[]), with optional up/down nav in the input widget.
3. If terminal-like experience is still desired, either delegate more behavior to xterm key handling/addons in a focused way, or pivot AppConsole to runme-console with stream-backed session when true interactive shell behavior is needed.

Nice-to-have follow-up: add AppConsole input/output tests for arrow/edit/enter behavior since this is currently mostly manual parsing logic.