ADR 0013: Consolidate settings navigation into four destinations

• Status: Superseded in part by ADR 0026
• Date: 2026-07-26

Context

Baseline 0.4.0 froze the broad Codex-aligned settings rail in D062–D065. That directory exposed Personal, Integrations, and Coding groups containing standalone Appearance and Providers destinations plus numerous placeholder rows. The shipped local-first workflows need fewer top-level choices, while the existing full-page shell, content cards, provider management, session import, and diagnostics must remain available. Plugin management already has a dedicated destination in the primary app shell and does not need a duplicate Settings entry.

Changing these frozen visual-parity decisions requires an explicit baseline decision rather than silently rewriting the historical rows.

Decision

Keep the full-page settings shell, Back to app action, search control, rail metrics, content cards, and theme behavior from D063/D070.

Replace the broad grouped directory with exactly four destinations in this order:

1. General
2. Configuration
3. Import sessions
4. About

Appearance becomes a card inside General. Providers becomes a card inside Configuration. Neither appears as a standalone rail destination. No placeholder settings destinations are rendered.

Provider setup deep links and built-in commands target the Providers card inside Configuration. Import sessions retains its dedicated Settings destination. Plugin management remains on the app shell's existing Plugins destination, where users can load, enable, disable, and uninstall plugins.

Consequences

• The settings rail is shorter and contains only implemented, useful destinations.
• Theme controls remain discoverable under General.
• Provider management remains reachable from model setup flows without consuming another rail row.
• Plugin management remains reachable from the app shell without duplicating it in Settings.
• The full-page shell and established light/dark visual metrics do not change.
• Specs and E2E scenarios must assert the exact four-item order and the two merged sections.
• D090 supersedes the navigation/content-location portions of D062–D065, including their Settings/Integrations placement for Plugins, plus the Account-specific metric in D070.

Alternatives

Keep the broad Codex directory

Rejected because empty and low-value destinations obscure the implemented local workflows.

Remove Appearance or Providers entirely

Rejected because theme selection and provider configuration are required product capabilities; consolidation preserves them without separate destinations.

References

• docs/spec/00-baseline.md
• docs/spec/04-ux/01-ui-ia.md
• docs/spec/04-ux/06-settings-ia.md
• docs/spec/06-delivery/04-e2e-test-plan.md
• docs/spec/08-meta/decisions-log.md (D090)