[Feedback]: Confusing relationship between projects, chats, and sessions — terminology and sync between TUI/CLI and Desktop

[dthyresson]

What problem are you trying to solve?

Summary

I'm confused about how projects, chats, sessions, and transcripts relate in the Desktop app, and how they map to (or fail to map to) CLI/TUI concepts. The naming and behavior feel inconsistent between surfaces, and sessions started in one place don't show up in the other.

Observations

• A project seems to be tied to a directory, and new chats appear underneath it.
• Opening a folder I've used before with the TUI/CLI shows no chats — chats appear to be tracked only from within Desktop and do not pull in prior TUI sessions for that directory.
• When I create a project for an existing directory, the prior chats are hidden under "History."
• Search shows "chats," but only project-associated chats appear — general/standalone chat items don't show up. Not sure if that's expected or stale data from very early Desktop versions.
• In 1.9 there's a terminal window. Launching cmd inside it lets me interact with the same project/directory shown in the GUI, but sessions started (prompting/chatting) in that terminal don't appear in the project sidebar as chats.

Questions

1. Is "project" a Desktop-only concept? Is there a CLI equivalent?
2. Can I have a chat that isn't associated with a project? What's the use case?
3. When does a new chat become "history"? Is a session "historic" just because its transcript predates the Desktop project — i.e. anything before project creation is history, and anything new is a "new chat"?
4. Are the general chat items from older TUI sessions, or stray data from early Desktop versions?

What would improve it?

Expectations / friction

• Creating a project for an existing directory should find the sessions for that directory, giving comprehensive history.
• A session started in the in-app terminal (1.9) should show up in the project sidebar as a chat, since it's the same directory/project.
• Consistent terminology (project / directory / chat / session / transcript) and behavior across Desktop, TUI, headless, and future UI formats would make it much easier to move between surfaces.

What do you do today?

Use the CLI/TUI

BTW - Even here in "Project Area" for GH issues it refers to "projects and sessions" not "chats" so some terminology inconsistency demonstrated.

Product area

Projects and sessions

[claell]

Potentially related to #4