The trace-target picker was gathered in prompt_params, which is a one-shot: it
resolved and popped before the live screen opened, so the trace screen sat
directly on the main menu. Esc out of a walk therefore skipped the list it was
launched from entirely, and trying the next node meant reopening the tool from
the menu — the picker's whole recency sort, the typed filter and the row you
were on, thrown away on the way in.
So the picker moves into the tool's own loop and stays pushed for the visit,
the hub idiom the contacts list and the Time Machine already use. The live
screen nests above it: one Esc pops back onto the row that launched it, the
second leaves for the menu. prompt_params now only marks the interactive path.
Coming back re-reads the lanes, because a returning trace ages the very column
the list is sorted by: ContactListScreen.update_rows swaps the rows in place
(the replace_items counterpart for a list whose lanes are data), so the node
just traced rises to the top of the TRACED sort with the highlight riding it
and the filter untouched. Both ages and counts come from stored history, so a
hand-back costs no device round-trip.
The free-text way in — no contacts at all, or no full-screen session — keeps
its one-shot shape, since there is no list underneath to come back to.
test_navigation gains the two guarantees: the picker is still on the stack
while the live screen runs, and update_rows re-sorts without moving the reader.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Jean-Pierre MartineauandClaude Opus 5
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