ADR 0067: ChatGPT-inspired empty-home starter guidance

• Status: Superseded by D206
• Date: 2026-08-07
• Deciders: PI-Desktop core
• Amends: D204 and the card-specific clause of ADR 0066

This historical decision is retained for traceability. The starter grid was removed after review; D206 restores the empty home to the hero, optional onboarding checklist, and direct bottom composer.

Context

The direct bottom composer introduced by D204 fixed the empty-home layout, but left the center of the conversation surface visually sparse. A first-time developer still had to invent a prompt before seeing what PI-Desktop could do. The requested direction is the approachable hierarchy of ChatGPT's empty conversation surface, adapted for local coding work rather than consumer content or promotional templates.

Decision

1. Add a four-card starter grid between the empty-home hero and optional onboarding checklist: Explore a codebase, Build a feature, Fix a bug, and Review a change.
2. Keep the cards compact, monochrome, localized, and developer-specific. They use the shared icon, border, surface, shadow, and motion tokens.
3. Activating a card only prefills and focuses the existing bottom composer. It never sends a prompt, creates a session turn, or changes the current session mode.
4. Keep D204's single scrollable home content region and bottom-reserved composer unchanged. Short windows must still scroll the content instead of allowing the composer to cover it.

Consequences

• Empty home has useful visual hierarchy without moving or duplicating the primary composer action.
• Starter prompts remain editable, so users can add project-specific context before sending.
• The four cards add only renderer-local presentation and localized copy; no IPC, storage, or protocol changes are required.
• The starter grid collapses to one column on narrow windows and remains inside the existing home scroller.

Alternatives considered

Keep the hero-only empty state

Rejected. It preserves direct entry but leaves the middle surface needlessly sparse and gives new users no task vocabulary.

Automatically submit a selected starter

Rejected. A starter is guidance, not an implicit action. Prefilling preserves user control and lets the user add paths, constraints, or acceptance criteria.

Restore the former ambient suggestion row

Rejected. The former row was too decorative and used a different prompt selection model. The new grid is compact, explicitly developer-focused, and keeps the composer as the only send surface.

References

• docs/adr/0066-empty-home-direct-bottom-composer.md
• docs/spec/04-ux/01-ui-ia.md
• docs/spec/04-ux/07-ui-design-system.md
• docs/spec/04-ux/08-component-spec.md
• docs/spec/04-ux/10-workbuddy-benchmark-ux.md
• docs/spec/06-delivery/04-e2e-test-plan.md (E2E-063, US-UI-31, US-UI-34, US-UI-48, US-UI-64)
• docs/spec/08-meta/decisions-log.md (D204, D205, D206)