Per-session status v1 — and why you can't scrape it from a TUI

What I built

The connective layer already runs the augmentor (StreamParser.feed) on every pane's PTY output — but the events went nowhere. Layer 1 of per-session viz routes them into a small external store (sessionStatus.ts) and a live strip on top of each pane (SessionStatusBar.tsx): 🟢 working · Tool / ⛔ needs you / ✓ done, hidden on plain shells. Per-startup-then-per-session is the scope the founder asked for.

Where it broke

Dogfooded across three real Claude Code panes. Only ONE showed a strip — and that one was wrong twice over:

8u9i:  🟢 working · Yourhomedirectory   ← stale + a misparse
oa37:  (no strip)                       ← but the screen clearly showed "Worked for 7s"
6tnc:  (no strip)

"Yourhomedirectory" isn't a tool — it's Claude's prose "Your home directory (" with the space eaten by a TUI redraw, matched by the tool-call regex by accident.

Root cause (verified)

A normal terminal is a printer: it emits newline-terminated lines we can read. Claude Code's TUI is a whiteboard: it repaints its spinner in place ("Crunched for 1s", "Worked for 7s") using cursor moves, never emitting those as real lines. StreamParser splits on \n, so the status text — though visible on screen — never arrives as a parseable line. A pane lights up only if some prose happens to flush as a clean line that matches. That's luck, not detection.

I broadened the patterns anyway (<Word> for <N>s, esc to interrupt) — no help, because the bytes never come through as lines. Confirmed it's a dead end, not a tuning problem.

The real fix (next)

Stop scraping the rendered output; use Claude Code's structured event channel — hooks. Claude emits tool start/stop, prompt, and stop events; we tag each with the pane via an injected DALKKAK_PANE_ID env var and route them to the app. That's reliable, per-session, and it's the same foundation the Layer-2 rich cards need. The sibling viz-agents project reached the same conclusion (install_hooks.py).

Also (small UX)

The startup-delete feature already existed but was hidden behind right-click — a non-engineer would never find it. Added a visible ⋯ button to every sidebar startup (rename / change emoji / grant folder / delete). The feature wasn't missing; its discoverability was.

Lesson

Never derive program state by scraping a full-screen TUI's byte stream — it repaints in place, so a line parser sees a fraction of what's on screen. Use the program's structured events (hooks / IPC), not its pixels.

Commit: 04b995e