TODOs, Notes & Sessions panels

Three of mnml’s activity-bar sections are list-shaped: TODOs scans source-code comments for TODO / FIXME / XXX / HACK / REVIEW markers, Notes lists the workspace’s .mnml/notes/*.md files, Sessions lists every open Pty pane (Claude Code, Codex, shell, task). All three share the same interaction shape as the HTTP / Agents / Cloud Agents panels — / focuses a filter input; typing narrows in place; j / k (or arrows) move the row cursor; Enter activates.

This page is the deep tour for those three panels. For the parent activity bar (icons and section switching) see Activity bar. For the HTTP panel’s variant of the same idiom see HTTP Request pane — variables, edit split & panel filter.

The shared filter shape

Every one of TODOs / Notes / Sessions / Agents / CloudAgents / HTTP renders the same filter row directly under its section header:

TODOS  (3 of 47)                ← count only appears when filter is active
 / filter                       ← inactive placeholder

Focused:

TODOS  (3 of 47)
 🔍 database▏                    ← inverted cursor, chip bg lifted to bg2

The magnifier glyph is a Nerd Font code (nf-cod-search). Filter behavior is case-insensitive substring match against the panel-specific haystack (below).

Keys when the panel is focused

Key	Action
/	Focus the filter input
any letter / digit	Append to the filter
Backspace	Drop the last character
Enter	Unfocus (keep the filter applied), move focus to row list
Esc	Clear + unfocus
j / ↓ (when filter is unfocused)	Move row cursor down
k / ↑ (when filter is unfocused)	Move row cursor up
Enter (when filter is unfocused)	Activate the cursored row

↑ / ↓ and Enter do double duty by intent — while the filter is focused they edit the input; while it’s unfocused they drive row navigation. This matches the HTTP / Agents / Cloud Agents panels for muscle-memory reuse across the activity-bar.

Click the filter row to focus via mouse; click anywhere else in the panel body to unfocus.

The TODOs panel

view.activity_todos (activity bar icon: nf-fa-check_square, ASCII fallback O) — a workspace-wide scan for marker patterns in comments, one row per hit.

The scan runs on first activation and populates a cache. Re-scan via the ⟳ Rescan chip at the bottom of the panel or todos.refresh.

Marker patterns

Case-sensitive, matched on a word boundary so TODOLIST doesn’t false-trip:

Marker	Color
TODO	blue
FIXME	orange
XXX / HACK	red
REVIEW	purple

The heuristic for “is this in a comment?” is intentionally rough — the marker gets picked up if any of //, #, /*, --, or <!-- appears before it on the same line. Everything else is skipped, so a let title = "TODO"; in a Rust literal doesn’t count as a marker but the // TODO: hook this up above it does.

Per-file constraints:

• Files larger than 1 MB are skipped.
• Non-UTF-8 files (binaries) are skipped.

Playwright / Jest test-modifier scanner

.spec.ts / .test.ts / .spec.js / .test.js files get a second scanner pass that picks up call-site test modifiers — even though they’re not comment markers:

Call	Rendered tag	Behavior
test.fixme('title', …)	FIXME	Pending test — needs work
test.fail('title', …)	XXX	Expected-to-fail — flagged as hazard
test.skip('title', …)	REVIEW	Disabled test — needs a decision

The title is the first quoted string on the same line (single or double quotes). When no title is present the tag reads .fixme(...) verbatim so you can still find the row.

FIXME wins if two markers appear on the same line (higher-severity mapping).

Non-test files still use the comment-only path — no false positives on a .fixme( in production code.

Example: a Playwright spec with three modifier calls surfaces three rows:

FIXME  tests/survey.spec.ts:3   renders survey card
XXX    tests/editor.spec.ts:8   editor accepts nested lists
REVIEW tests/legacy.spec.ts:12  legacy filter

Row shape

TAG  path:line  title

The tag renders bold in its color; the path renders in the comment color; the title in the foreground color. Long titles truncate to 40 characters.

Filter haystack

The / filter matches (case-insensitive substring) against any of:

• Tag (TODO / FIXME / etc.)
• Workspace-relative path + line number
• Title text

So typing db narrows to every TODO that mentions “db” in any of those three.

Header switches to TODOS (N of M) when the filter is active — N is filtered hits, M is total hits.

Activation

Enter (or click) on a row opens the file at the marker’s line via open_path + goto_line_str. The cursor lands at column 0 of the marker line.

The Notes panel

view.activity_notes (icon: nf-fa-sticky_note, ASCII fallback N) — persistent workspace scratches under .mnml/notes/*.md.

What lives there

Markdown files under <workspace>/.mnml/notes/. .mnml/ gitignores itself by default (mnml-scoped state), but you can commit specific notes per-workspace by removing them from .gitignore.

+ New note action

A + New note row at the bottom of the panel creates a new markdown file (.mnml/notes/note-1.md, incrementing when files exist) and opens it as an MdPreview pane. Palette command: notes.new_note.

Row shape

Flat list of filenames (no directory nesting). Click / Enter opens the file.

Filter haystack

Case-insensitive substring match against the filename (without the .md extension). Header switches to NOTES (N of M) when the filter is active.

Empty filtered state renders No matches — try clearing (Esc) instead of the default no notes yet copy.

The Sessions panel

view.activity_sessions (icon: nf-md-tab, ASCII fallback T) — a cmux-style vertical tab strip of every open Pty session in the workspace.

What appears

Every Pane::Pty in the pane list — Claude Code, Codex, shell panes, :term binaries, tasks. Each tab shows:

• Row 1 — session display name (from :session.rename, else [ui] ticket_prefixes detection, else OSC window title, else profile label). Long names truncate.
• Row 2 — ⎇ <branch> · <cwd basename> — the git branch of the pane’s cwd + a short cwd label.
• Row 3 — status chip (running / recent / idle / exited) + optional detected-ticket chip + optional listening-port chip (:3000).

Status thresholds:

Elapsed since last output	Status	Color
<2s	running	green
<30s	recent	comment
else	idle	grey
child exited	exited	red

The port chip lists any TCP ports the child process is listening on (cached via periodic lsof), so a Vite / Next / mixr / Playwright session shows :3000 on the status row without extra work.

+ New session action

+ New session at the bottom of the panel opens a new shell Pty pane. Click / Enter activates. Palette: sessions.new_session (or the various ai.claude_code_new_* variants for placement-specific spawns — see AI panes).

Filter haystack

Case-insensitive substring match against any of:

• Session display name (from :session.rename)
• Profile label (claude code / codex / shell / user-set)
• Git branch of the cwd
• Cwd basename
• Detected Jira / project ticket (via [ui] ticket_prefixes)

The five-way match makes the filter useful for the common case: “show me the Codex tabs” (type codex), “show me the TE-1234 sessions” (type te-1234), “show me sessions on the refactor branch” (type refactor).

Header switches to SESSIONS (N of M) when the filter is active. Empty filtered state renders No matches — Esc clears.

Activation

Enter (or click) reveals the cursored session’s pane — focuses it and scrolls it into view. If the pane is in a different tab page or leaf, the reveal walks up the layout tree until the pane is focused.

Cross-panel comparison

Since the three panels look and behave similarly, here’s the “which one has what” summary:

Feature	TODOs	Notes	Sessions
Source of rows	scan of workspace comments	files under .mnml/notes/	live Pane::Pty list
Scan trigger	on activation + ⟳ Rescan	on activation + notes.refresh	continuously (live)
Filter match	tag / path / title	filename	display name / label / branch / cwd / ticket
Row activation	opens file at line	opens file (MdPreview pane)	reveals + focuses pane
Action row at bottom	⟳ Rescan	+ New note	+ New session
Playwright modifier scan	yes (on .spec.ts etc.)	n/a	n/a

Filter idioms are identical — the same / / Enter / Esc chords, the same header count format, the same “no matches” copy. Muscle memory transfers.

Related panels

Two more activity-bar panels use the same filter idiom:

• Agents (view.activity_agents) — cross-workspace Claude / Codex / shell agents dashboard, grouped by status (Action Needed / Running / Done) with an animated spinner glyph on running rows.
• Cloud Agents (view.activity_cloud_agents) — cloud-only agents (ECS runner rows), with per-row affordances for Copy runId / Open CloudWatch / Open PR.
• HTTP (view.activity_http) — the seven-section HTTP sidebar (FILES / RECENT / CAPTURED / ENVS / CHAINS / MOCKS / COLLECTIONS). Covered in depth on HTTP Request pane — variables, edit split & panel filter.

Next

• Activity bar — the parent icon strip that switches between all sections
• AI panes — the Pty sessions that populate the Sessions panel
• HTTP Request pane — variables, edit split & panel filter — the HTTP panel’s variant of the same filter shape
• Editing — the buffer TODOs / Notes rows open into