Hover-help

Hover-help is a small info box docked at the bottom of the left panel. It describes whatever the mouse is currently over — chip, menu item, tree row, tab, activity-bar icon — or when the mouse is idle, whatever the keyboard is focused on. Off by default; toggle on when you’re learning mnml’s chrome and off once you’ve built the muscle memory.

The box is modelled on Ableton Live’s Info View: a fixed corner, word-wrapped, zero-delay, always visible when enabled so the eye knows where to look. It’s different from the tooltip popup (src/ui/tooltip.rs) — the tooltip waits 500 ms before painting and floats near the cursor; the info box paints immediately and stays put.

Turning it on

Three surfaces reach the same setting:

[ui]
hover_help = true            # default: false

:set hh                      " on
:set nohh                    " off
:set hh!                     " toggle

Palette command: view.toggle_hover_help. Menu bar: View → Toggle hover-help strip.

The prior form of this feature was a 1-row footer strip below the cmdline; that was replaced on 2026-08-09 with the bottom-of-left-panel info box. The config key (hover_help) and toggle command (view.toggle_hover_help) kept their names — the shape changed, the wiring didn’t.

Layout

Six rows tall, docked at the bottom of the left panel. Width matches the panel width (respects [ui] tree_width).

── WORKSPACE ─────────────
▸ src/
   app/
   ui/
     hover_help.rs
   main.rs

── GIT ───────────────────
  · main
    2 unstaged / 0 staged

┌────────────────────────┐
│ ?  Info                │
│ hover_help.rs · Rust   │
│                        │
│ File. Enter opens it   │
│ in a new tab. Right-   │
│ click for cut / copy   │
│ / paste / rename.      │
└────────────────────────┘

Row 0 is the ? Info header (a cyan ? marker + dim “Info” label) so users learn what the box is. The body wraps to the panel width with a 1-cell gutter on each side. Long descriptions truncate at the box’s height — there’s no scrollbar because the box is ephemeral information, not a document.

The bg is a slightly darker tint than the tree rail so the box reads as a distinct pane rather than accidental tree overflow.

When the toggle is off, the box isn’t reserved — the tree gets those six rows back. Setting a very narrow left panel width (below the minimum required for the box) hides the box even when the toggle is on.

What it describes

The text feed is the same one the tooltip popup uses (crate::ui::tooltip::describe_text), stripped down to just the text pair (primary + optional secondary line). Every chip, menu item, tree row, activity-bar icon, and bufferline tab in mnml has a description registered — hovering anything in the chrome gives you a line of text.

The fallback ladder

When nothing is hovered, the box falls through a fixed ladder so it never goes blank-and-purposeless:

Hovered chip — the chip currently under the mouse (via app.hover_chip).
Focus target when focus isn’t on a pane — for tree focus, the selected tree row; for right-panel focus, the hosted pane; for bottom-panel focus, the hosted pane.
Active pane summary — the file / URL / kind of the active pane (Editor / Request / Pty / MdPreview / Ai / ClaudeAgents / …).
Focus hint — a last-resort line pointing at the palette (Ctrl+Shift+P).

The focus-target branch takes precedence over the active pane on purpose. Before 2026-08-09, a keyboard-only walk through the tree kept showing the same editor pane info because the active-pane branch always matched first — a vim user on j / k in the sidebar saw the last-touched editor pane’s description instead of the row they were on. The fixed order shows the row when it’s what you’re focused on.

Tree rows show file language

For files, the description includes the friendly language name derived from the extension:

Extension	Language line
`.rs`	Rust
`.tsx`	TypeScript (JSX)
`.ts`	TypeScript
`.py`	Python
`.go`	Go
`.md`	Markdown
`.yaml` / `.yml`	YAML
`.toml`	TOML
`.dockerfile`	Dockerfile
`.http` / `.curl` / `.rest`	HTTP request
unknown	uppercased extension (`.foo` → `FOO`)

Directories show as <name>/ with the secondary line Directory. Enter or Right expands / opens. j/k walks rows..

Pane-specific summaries

The active-pane branch (either as fallback #3, or via right-panel / bottom-panel focus branch #2) shows a compact one-liner per pane kind:

Pane	Primary line	Secondary hint
Editor	`<title> · <LANG> · <N> lines[· unsaved]`	Preview / pinned status, when applicable
Request	pane title	`Request pane — Enter to send, Ctrl+S saves as .http/.curl.`
Pty	pane title	`Terminal pane — Ctrl+Alt+H to detach, Ctrl+Alt+K to kill.`
MdPreview	pane title	`Rendered markdown preview — click header chip to jump back to source.`
Ai	pane title	`Claude / Codex session — type at the bottom prompt.`
ClaudeAgents	`<source> · <workspace> · <state> · <short session id>`	`Agents dashboard — j/k walks rows, K kills, Enter drills in, / filters.`

The Agents-dashboard branch reads live from the currently-selected row rather than showing a generic pane title — a dense pane with many session rows is otherwise opaque without a mouse hover. See AI panes for the sessions themselves.

When the mouse doesn’t matter

The box is genuinely useful without a mouse. Keyboard-only users get:

Tree focus + j / k → the box updates every row change with the file / language.
Right-panel focus (Ctrl+E to cycle) → the hosted pane’s summary line.
Bottom-panel focus (same cycle) → same, for whichever pane is hosted at the bottom.
Everything else (active editor pane focused, palette open, etc.) → the active pane’s summary.

The fallback text for pane focus reminds you Ctrl+Shift+P opens the palette, so it’s still useful even when the box has nothing else to say.

Interaction with other overlays

The tooltip popup and the info box coexist — hover a chip and both fire, with the tooltip appearing near the cursor after 500 ms and the info-box text updating immediately. The info box has no delay and never floats — it’s always in the same corner, so a quick glance down-left tells you what the cursor is on.

The info box lives inside the left panel’s paint region. When the left panel is hidden (via view.toggle_tree / Ctrl+B), the box is hidden with it — the toggle for hover-help doesn’t force the panel visible.

When to leave it off

Off is the default because the box costs six rows of the left panel — those rows show file tree entries otherwise. Enable it while you’re:

Learning mnml’s chrome for the first time (hover any chip to see what it does).
Auditing a keybinding you don’t remember (walk to the pane, look at the summary line).
Wondering why a chip is dim (the description often explains — e.g. enabled = false for integrations, or a [requires] predicate failure).

Once the muscle memory forms, :set nohh and get the tree rows back.

Menu bar — the toggle-hover-help entry lives under View
Activity bar — the left panel that hosts the info box
Workspaces & the file rail — the tree the box paints below
Statusline, gutter & F1 help — the tooltip popup the info box shares its text feed with
Settings & configuration — the [ui] hover_help key and its neighbours