Workbench is a fresh workspace surface for workbench-owned chats and terminals. It opens as its own canvas tab internally and intentionally does not embed ongoing app chat or terminal tabs.
- Solo chat header: Workbench action.
- CrewCode app menu: New Workbench.
- Workspace drawer App tab: Workbench.
- Window tab
+menu: Workbench.
- Workbench opens empty and unassociated with active app chat sessions.
- Add chat creates a fresh chat pane owned by the Workbench tab.
- Add terminal creates a fresh terminal pane owned by the Workbench tab.
- Existing chats and terminals remain in their own app tabs and are not mounted inside Workbench.
- Workbench pane cards are persisted so app restart reopens the same Workbench chats/terminals.
- Closing a Workbench pane tears down its owned chat/terminal state.
- Closing the Workbench tab clears its owned panes.
- Workbench pane layout/membership is stored in
crewcode:workbenchPanesByTab:v1. - Chat sessions and transcripts continue to use the existing chat session/message stores.
- Terminal pane metadata continues to use
crewcode:terminalSessions:v1and is restored for Workbench pane IDs on launch.
Workbench must not mount live panes from existing app tabs. Multiple active agents can stream large updates, and embedding those existing panes duplicates heavy React/xterm work that can freeze the renderer.
Workbench-owned panes are allowed because they are explicitly created inside Workbench. Future hardening should still add virtualization and terminal mount caps before encouraging high pane counts.
- Virtualize off-screen Workbench panes.
- Cap simultaneous mounted terminals.
- Pause or summarize hidden chat streams.
- Mount xterm only when visible/focused.
- Measure render cost under multiple active agents before enabling high pane counts.