user-preferences

name	user-preferences
description	Documented user preferences from feedback. Follow these when building new features. Covers cost/token display, UI conventions, and design preferences.

User Preferences for Flightdeck

Documented preferences from user feedback. Follow these when building new features.

Cost & Token Display

• No monetary cost estimates — show token counts only, never dollar amounts.
• Token counts should be labeled as estimates: ~ prefix, (est.) suffix.
• Budget: null or 0 means unlimited — don't show warnings for these values.

Alerts & Notifications

• No idle agent alerts — the Lead assigns tasks, not the user. Idle agents are normal.
• No context pressure alerts — Copilot handles compaction automatically.
• No predictions feature — agent stall prediction, cost prediction, context prediction are all handled by the system. Don't surface them.

Metrics & Analytics

• Remove metrics that don't account for task complexity:
  • No model effectiveness charts (can't fairly compare when tasks vary in size).
  • No role contribution charts (not a meaningful metric).
  • No session score stars (subjective, not useful).
• Session history table is useful — keep it, but without stars.

Data & Historical Sessions

• Historical data on ALL pages — never show an empty state for existing projects. Every page must fall back to REST API data when live WebSocket data isn't available.
• Data retention/cleanup controls belong in Settings page.

Navigation & UX

• Everything that looks clickable must BE clickable — no decorative buttons or fake links.
• Unified project selection via tabs across all pages — use <ProjectTabs>, not dropdowns.
• Milestones = progress events only — show task completions, progress reports, decisions, commits. Filter out agent spawn/termination/delegation noise.

Timeline

• Vertical scroll separate from horizontal — mouse wheel scrolls vertically only. Shift+wheel or trackpad horizontal gesture for horizontal pan.
• Default replay speed: 4× (not 1×).
• Replay scrubber must always be visible (sticky bottom, not clipped by overflow).

Chat & Communication

• User messages highest priority — always visible, never buried.
• Virtual scrolling for performance with large message histories.
• Group chats persist per project — don't lose them on session change.

General Philosophy

• Prefer showing real data with estimation disclaimers over showing "not available".
• Curate what's shown — less noise is better than more data.
• Consistent UX patterns everywhere — if one page uses tabs, all pages use tabs.

Typography

• JetBrains Mono for all monospace text, with ligatures enabled (liga + calt).
• Font stack: 'JetBrains Mono', ui-monospace, monospace — ui-monospace handles CJK fallback natively.
• Always bundle fonts locally — no CDN dependencies. Must work offline.

Removed / Unwanted Features

• No predictions panel (agent stall/cost/context handled automatically).
• No model effectiveness chart (can't compare models across varying task sizes).
• No role contribution chart (not a meaningful metric).
• No session score stars (subjective, not useful).
• No monetary cost estimates — token counts only.

Release Process

• NEVER touch git tags — no create, no delete, no push. Tags are 100% user-managed. Only prepare version bumps in package.json and CHANGELOG updates. This caused an issue when v0.3.0 tag was pushed by an agent — user had to bump to 0.3.1. HARD RULE, no exceptions.