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LoomWeaver

Tabs

This is a guide, not the contract. What the platform guarantees is specified under openspec/specs/. For this page: content-tabs · host-services. Where this page and a specification disagree, the specification is right, and that is a defect in this page: change the behaviour there, then explain it here.

The content area is router-addressed, so most navigation is just routing. This service is for the things routing alone cannot express: the tab strip’s own state.

Do it

const tabs = inject(ContentTabsService);


tabs.navigateTo('doc/readme');                 // navigate, fire-and-forget
tabs.open({ path: 'doc/readme', title: 'README.md', titleIsLiteral: true });  // a titled dynamic tab
tabs.open({ path: 'doc/readme', badge: { text: 'Draft', textIsLiteral: true } });  // refine it with a badge; null removes it
tabs.keep('doc/readme');                       // promote a preview tab
tabs.pin('doc/readme'); tabs.unpin('doc/readme');
tabs.close('doc/readme'); tabs.closeOthers('doc/readme');
tabs.closeToRight('doc/readme'); tabs.closeAll();
tabs.revealContentTab('doc/readme');           // focus the tab where it already lives
tabs.update('doc/readme', { badge: null });    // change an open tab's label in place, never bringing it forward

Use navigateTo when the address alone says what to show; use open when the tab needs a title the address does not carry, or should open as a preview.

Read it

tabs.activeContent();                          // { surfaceId, path, params } | null
tabs.tabs();                                   // the visible strip
tabs.quickOpenTargets();                       // everything `mod+p` can reach
tabs.hasUnsavedWork('doc/42');                 // boolean, read reactively

What is active is activeContent(): the surface, its path and its parameters, or null, as a plugin reads it through ctx.activeContent. The strip is tabs(), in strip order. What quick-open can reach is quickOpenTargets(): the open tabs, and the unopened routes the session may open.

Whether an address holds unsaved work is hasUnsavedWork(path): the fact behind the mark the workbench draws on the tab. Draw your own with it where the workbench does not reach, a badge in your status bar or a count beside a module. Read it in a computed or a template and it follows the work being saved. An arrangement answers for what is inside it, and the answer covers every pane the address is open in.

What asks about unsaved work

close, closeOthers, closeToRight and closeAll ask about unsaved work exactly as the × and the tab menu do, through the same guard. They close only what the answer allows.

Switched off

content.close, content.pin, content.preview and content.escalate take the user’s controls away; every method here keeps working for you.

In depth

Reveal, do not duplicate. revealContentTab is the one to reach for when a tab may live in a split pane. It activates the tab in place and that pane takes the address, instead of opening a second copy in the address pane.

Scope. This page is about what the panes hold. The content area’s arrangement, splits and panes, is Panes.

Where the story is told