TUI detail view: epic/child management, navigation, and edit-menu gaps from a week of daily use

[Edke]

After a week using aven as my daily driver — migrating from Linear, running work / life / dev workspaces with several projects each, and exercising skills and prime throughout — these are the rough edges I kept hitting, all in the TUI detail view and edit flows. Each one maps to something the CLI already covers or to a partial TUI implementation that doesn't reach the detail view.

I'm posting these as a single issue rather than five separate ones because they share the same area and would benefit from a single design pass. I didn't find an issue template or a contribution guide in the repo, so I'm bundling findings here — happy to split them out if that's preferred.

1. No way to create epic→child links from the TUI

The CLI has aven epic add <child-ref> <epic-ref> and aven epic remove <child-ref> <epic-ref>, but the TUI has no action to create a link — I've been dropping to the shell every time. The TUI does have t c d (detach) and t c p (promote), but those only work from the Epics list view; pressing them from the detail view silently does nothing, even though the detail view already shows the CHILD TASKS section and lets me select one with Tab / j / k. An "add child to epic" action in the TUI, plus making detach/promote reach the detail view, would let the whole epic workflow stay inside one context.

2. Opening a child's detail is a one-way trip

In an epic's detail view, Tab enters the child list, j/k selects, Enter opens the child's detail. From there, Esc returns all the way to the task list — there's no way to step back to the parent epic's detail. That's jarring when drilling through a few children. It looks like there's back-navigation machinery under the hood that just isn't wired to a key. Even reusing Esc to pop one level — and only reaching the list when there's nothing left to pop — would make drill-down feel like a stack rather than a teleport.

3. Linked tasks in the detail view aren't navigable

The detail view renders a WHY BLOCKED section listing dependencies, but those refs aren't navigable — no Tab entry, no Enter to open them, unlike CHILD TASKS. If any linked task shown in the detail view (epic children, blockers, blocked-by) were reachable the same way — select and Enter to open its detail, with back-navigation to return — the detail view would feel like a connected graph rather than a leaf I keep falling off.

4. The add-note composer discards content on Esc with no confirmation

The add-task composer asks before discarding a mutated draft; the add-note composer doesn't. A non-empty note body is dropped unconditionally on Esc. Coming from vim, hitting Esc is a reflex to leave insert mode, and I lost a half-written note more than once before noticing the asymmetry. Reusing the same discard-confirmation guard the add-task composer has — applied to add-note when the body is non-empty — would bring the two composers into parity.

5. The edit menu targets one task even when several are marked

When more than one task is marked, the edit actions still target the single selected task. Title and description are inherently single-task, but --due, --available-at, --priority, and --project are trivially batchable — aven edit already does them per-task, and status / priority / project / labels already work on the marked set elsewhere in the TUI. When more than one task is marked, the edit menu could hide the single-task entries (title, description) and show only the batch-capable ones, so the marked set behaves consistently across the whole edit surface.

[raine]

Thank you, this is great actionable feedback. Super useful. I've done following changes:

1. No way to create epic → child links from the TUI

The TUI supports adding and removing children from both the task list and epic detail views:

• t c a adds an existing task or creates a new child.
• t c r removes the selected child.
• Child search is scoped to the epic’s project.
• Creation and linking happen in one transaction.
• Remove operations support undo.
• Detail focus remains stable after adding, removing, or restoring a child.

2. Opening a child’s detail is a one-way trip

Task detail navigation uses a history stack:

• Esc returns to the parent detail when one exists.
• Esc returns to the task list at the root.
• q closes the complete detail session and returns directly to the task list.
• Scroll position and focused relationship are restored when returning.
• Missing or deleted history entries are skipped with a warning.

3. Linked tasks in the detail view aren’t navigable

Relationships in task details share one navigation model:

• Epic children, blockers, and blocked tasks are selectable.
• Tab, Shift-Tab, j, and k move through relationship rows.
• Enter opens the focused task.
• Esc returns to the previous detail.
• Linked tasks remain reachable even when they fall outside the active list filter or are deleted.
• Relationship sections are expandable and support keyboard and mouse navigation.

4. The add-note composer discards content on Esc with no confirmation

Add-note uses the same discard protection as task authoring:

• Esc requests confirmation when the draft contains meaningful text.
• Canceling the confirmation preserves every line and the cursor position.
• Blank drafts close immediately.
• Submission is blocked while discard confirmation is active.
• Repeated Esc, confirmation, cancellation, task-list notes, and detail-view notes have regression coverage.

5. The edit menu targets one task even when several are marked

Edit actions consistently capture the visible marked set:

• Project, priority, availability, due date, and labels support batch editing.
• Title and description remain single-task operations. The shortcut menu labels them as “1 task only,” and attempting them with multiple marks produces a clear message.
• Mixed values have an explicit keep state, so opening an editor does not overwrite differing values.
• Clearing dates across multiple tasks requires confirmation.
• Batch updates run in one transaction and create one undo group. A conflict rolls back the complete batch.
• Marks and cursor selection remain intact after refresh, allowing consecutive edits on the same set.

Released soon in v0.1.17

[Edke]

This was fun :) As I missed task comment update, aven notified new version, so went to cloned repo, update, inspect with agent changes .. one two three.. wooow there are all mine :) thank you @raine updating and starting to test, will report back but looks great !