WF-0108: Jim Command Provenance And :why

[flyingrobots]

Hill

By the end of this cycle, selected Vim-powered edits record and expose enough causal metadata to explain what command ran, what syntax parsed, what basis it used, what target resolved, what range changed, what register changed, what receipt/result reading proved it, and why the user sees the resulting text.

Initial Slice Budget

• Trust preflight for open/edit/save/quit/search/dirty-state posture.
• Command event model.
• Five-command provenance for dw, ciw, d%, n/N, and gUap.
• Lower-mode summary after meaningful edits.
• Detail command such as :why or :explain.
• JSON witness for command provenance facts.
• Echo History drawer integration.
• Typed obstruction behavior for unsupported or stale basis cases.

Product Thesis

Jim is a modal editor for people and agents who need edits to be explainable, recoverable, and reviewable.

This issue anchors the next design cycle after WF-0105 search/structural motion work landed.

[coderabbitai]

🔗 Related PRs

#1 - Refine jedit pane shell [merged]
#23 - feat(echo): add Echo release gate witness [merged]
#115 - Define Vim target usability workflows [merged]
#122 - Add Vim power move execution [merged]
#129 - Add Vim paragraph motion resolution [merged]

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[flyingrobots]

Post-#160 kickoff note:

PR #160 made the projection/materialization boundary safe enough to move back to product proof instead of more substrate hardening. The next WF-0108 implementation slice should stay narrow:

last meaningful Vim edit
-> command event record
-> :why explanation
-> lower-mode text
-> JSON witness
-> Echo History drawer row

Recommended first command coverage:

• dw
• ciw
• dd
• gUap

Hold n/N until / and ? search entry is product-complete. Hold :%s for WF-0110 Search Sets And Substitute Strand Preview.

Related post-#160 follow-ups were split out of #158/#159:

• WF-0124: Restart recovery UI for inactive and unmaterialized buffers #161 Restart recovery UI
• WF-0125: External Edit intake and canonical frontier events #162 External Edit intake
• WF-0126: Braid and diff reconciliation UX #163 Braid/diff reconciliation UX
• WF-0127: Native Echo speculative intent runtime #164 Native Echo speculative intent runtime
• WF-0128: File watcher and external move detection #165 File watcher and external move detection