Compact contextual commits in the Inspector

Traceability

• Spec ID: inspector-contextual-commit-compaction
• Status: Implemented
• Extends the evidence presentation contract in inspector-evidence-selection.

Intent

Date view can contain many local Git commits that have no directly linked coding-agent session. Merge commits commonly have no retained changed paths, so rendering every contextual commit as a fully open card spends most of the delivery lane on empty file panels and pushes useful evidence below the fold.

Keep those commits visible, but present weak contextual evidence in a compact form by default. Directly linked delivery evidence remains open so the default layout continues to prioritize what the Inspector can actually attribute.

Acceptance Scenarios

• AC-1: A commit whose lane evidence is contextual or file-context starts as a one-line disclosure containing its hash, subject, evidence kind, and stats; this includes ordinary unlinked and merge commits without relying on subject text to classify them.
• AC-2: Opening a compact commit reveals the same retained file tree or bounded empty state that the existing full card exposes.
• AC-3: Selecting the compact commit still selects that commit and opens its explainable evidence path; disclosure state does not change evidence meaning.
• AC-4: Direct, observed, candidate, and declared commit evidence starts expanded, but every commit card can be collapsed independently so a long changed-file list cannot dominate the delivery lane.
• AC-5: The compact disclosure exposes native keyboard and expanded-state semantics, and the delivery lane labels how many commits start compact.
• AC-6: Opening Checkpoint Activity automatically collapses that workbench's delivery lane so the timeline receives the available width. The reviewer can reopen Commits / files while Activity stays open, and closing Activity does not force another layout change.
• AC-7: While the page scrolls, the sticky workspace header paints above the workbench lanes with an opaque surface, so lane dividers and resizers never show through or overlap the header boundary.

Non-goals

• Inferring the current developer's identity from a Git author name.
• Hiding, deleting, or filtering contextual commits from the report.
• Changing commit-session correlation or upgrading contextual evidence.
• Remembering disclosure state across page reloads.

Plan and Tasks

• Keep evidence classification in the existing delivery-lane projection.
• Render every commit card as a details disclosure: contextual and same-file evidence starts closed, while stronger evidence starts open.
• Add compact layout styles and a visible compact-count label.
• Reuse the delivery-lane collapse owner when Checkpoint Activity opens; keep a manual delivery-lane toggle authoritative after that open transition.
• Give the sticky workspace header a higher stacking layer than workbench lane resizers and an opaque background that cannot reveal scrolled content.
• Add focused behavior coverage for the evidence-kind presentation policy and verify the real self-contained report in a browser at desktop width.

Test and Review Evidence

• AC-1/AC-4: focused tests call the commit presentation policy with contextual, same-file, direct, observed, candidate, and declared evidence kinds.
• AC-2/AC-3/AC-5: browser verification inspects the generated report's native disclosure state, expansion, commit selection, Evidence Drawer, and layout.
• AC-7: browser verification scrolls a three-lane workbench beneath the sticky header and checks the visible boundary plus computed stacking/background.
• Regression: run the focused Inspector test file, the documentation-link graph test, npm test, and git diff --check.

Risks

• Discoverability: every compact row retains hash, subject, evidence label, and stats, while the delivery header reports the compact count.
• Evidence semantics: compaction follows the evidence kind, not merge-subject or author-name heuristics, so presentation cannot imply authorship.
• Accessibility: native details/summary behavior supplies keyboard toggling and the expanded-state contract without a parallel custom state machine.