Onboarding overlay subsumes the boot card now that it mounts from frame 1 and renders boot progress inline. The standalone DesktopBootOverlay is unreachable in every flow (yields whenever onboarding has not confirmed configured, dismisses once it has).
The "Start a chat to build your history." empty state used a min-h-35 grid place-items-center container, which floated the text in a tall dead zone. Render it as a flat paragraph that sits right under the section header like the empty pinned state does.
setup.status returned True whenever any provider auth state was discoverable, including indirect fallbacks like a gh-CLI Copilot token. That made desktop think the user was set up while the agent's actual resolve_runtime_provider call still raised AuthError, leaving the user with a useless toast and no onboarding.
Add a setup.runtime_check gateway method that runs the same resolver the agent uses on session creation, and switch the desktop onboarding overlay and prompt precheck to use it.
The "No inference provider configured" auth error reaches the renderer through gateway error events, not the prompt.submit promise; the previous patch only caught the latter, so the error toast still surfaced and onboarding never opened.
Also strip credential-shaped env vars from the test:desktop:fresh sandbox so the packaged backend can't see provider keys leaking from the launching shell.
Propagate credential warnings through session runtime info and open desktop onboarding whenever a session reports no usable provider, so unconfigured installs cannot fall through to prompt errors.
Show the desktop provider onboarding flow before prompt submission when no inference provider is configured, preventing fresh installs from falling through to backend credential errors.
Solid foreground-on-background send/voice-conversation circle (black-on-white
in light, white-on-black in dark) anchors the right edge as the primary CTA
instead of the orange theme primary. Bumps the primary control to 2.125rem so
it visually outranks the ghost mic/plus controls. Opens up the surface padding
(0.625rem x / 0.5rem y) so the input row breathes around its controls, and
nudges the corner radius from 20 to 24px for a slightly pill-ier silhouette.
LiquidGlass distortion is preserved.
Promote closeRightRailTab/closeActiveRightRailTab as the single
public entry point. Drops the activeTabRef + handleCloseDocument
indirection in ChatPreviewRail, the unused $rightRailHasContent
atom, and the legacy dismissFilePreviewTarget alias. -70 LOC.
Introduce the Electron desktop app with a split app/chat/settings structure and shared nanostore state so UI areas own their state instead of routing it through the root.