[matt2e]

In Personal space, or with no community saved, Messages told people to "use the community picker in the top bar". Since #2626 the top bar holds only Hide sidebar, Back, Forward and Search. The switcher is now the icon-only globe at the foot of the Apps dock, so people looked for a control that isn't there.

The hint no longer names a location, and it now has a primary Choose a community button. The button opens the dock's own community switcher, so the popover appears anchored to the dock trigger and shows where the switcher lives. Escape returns focus to that trigger.

Before and after

Left, main at 3bcf1c4bb1: "Use the community picker in the top bar to choose or add a community. Your profile and settings work without a community." The top bar has no community control, and there is no button.
Right, this branch at cbef0332e5: "Choose a community to see its channels, or join one. Your profile and settings work without a community." followed by Choose a community. Nothing else in the frame changes except that the centred block moves up 36 px to fit the button. Its wording now matches the sidebar's existing "Choose a community to see channels."

After clicking Choose a community: the dock's own Switch community popover opens beside the globe at the bottom left, not over the empty state. The dialog starts at x 56, 8 px right of the 40 px trigger at x 8, and both bottom edges are at 752 px. The pointer is still over the button, which is why it shows its hover shade.

Both captures used the plain product build against the repo's in-process fixture relay, in Playwright Chromium at 1280×800, with the same steps and seeded identities on each side. The capture script checked each side's HEAD SHA and exact hint text before writing an image.

What changed

The hint

• CommunityPicker.tsx exports an OpenCommunitySwitcher context, which is absent where the shell doesn't mount the switcher. It also accepts controlled open/onOpenChange props, typed as a union so a host passes both or neither.
• The picker's navigated reset moves from the trigger's onOpenChange into a layout effect that runs whenever the switcher opens. A switcher the host opens therefore also returns focus to its trigger after an earlier choice navigated away.
• AppShell.tsx owns the switcher's open state, next to the New menu's creationOpen, and wraps page content in the context provider.
• ChannelsPage.tsx has the new text and renders the button only when a shell provides the opener. The heading is unchanged.
• CommunityPicker stays the only switcher. The button is the shared Button variant="primary", the same as Try again in this block. No FOUNDATION files or ctx services change.

Text that still described the old layout

• AvatarEditor.tsx: "Select a community in the sidebar to upload…" becomes "Select a community to upload…", matching AgentAvatarPicker.
• docs/buzz-help.md: Activity is "the bell in the app dock". The Communities bullet now says the switcher is at the bottom of the dock and that Personal space offers Choose a community.
• The Activity, Reminders and Workflows plugin READMEs, which appear in Settings → Plugins, say "in the app dock" instead of "in the sidebar".
• README.md: Agents is in the app dock. New chat's + is at the top of the Messages sidebar, beside All / Solo / Team, not in the top bar.
• docs/communities.md: three references to "the header's community picker" become "the dock's community switcher".
• docs/inbox.md: a plain open of Activity comes "from the app dock", not "the sidebar or topbar".

Review follow-ups (the second and third commits)

• A CommunityPicker test covers a host-opened switcher's focus return after Create community navigates. The union type for the controlled props is also from this review.
• docs/communities.md no longer says the picker is "labeled Communities". It describes the icon-only trigger, which shows the community's icon, or a globe in Personal space or with no community saved, and a tooltip that names the selection.
• docs/inbox.md's "Sidebar preview" is now "Dock preview" and describes the card from the dock's Activity bell. The InboxRow and InboxPreview comments follow.

Tests and checks

Run on cbef0332e5, the pushed head:

• Vitest: 90/90 pass in AppShell, CommunityPicker, CommunityPicker.native, CommunityLanding, ChannelsPage and AvatarEditor.
• New AppShell test: it renders the real shell around the real ChannelsPage with no saved community, clicks Choose a community, expects the Switch community dialog, then presses Escape and expects focus on the Apps dock's Community switcher trigger. With main's ChannelsPage.tsx, it fails at expect(channels).not.toHaveTextContent(/top bar/i). Earlier, it also failed with "Unable to find … button 'Choose a community'" when only the text changed and AppShell provided no opener.
• New CommunityPicker test: "returns focus to the trigger when the host reopens the switcher after a choice navigated". With the reset moved back into onOpenChange, it fails with focus on #main-content.
• Static checks: tsc --noEmit, design:check (all six scripts), biome check on the changed source files, and git diff --check all pass.
• Stale wording: git grep for "community picker in the top bar", "in the sidebar to upload" and "bell in the sidebar" finds nothing in src, README.md or docs/.
• Merge: merges cleanly with main at 067db608f.
• Earlier browser run: a prototype of the first commit passed the after flow in Chromium and WebKit at 1280×800. At 390 px the button and switcher worked.

Not checked yet

• the desktop app
• WebKit for these commits
• dark theme
• 200% text
• keyboard activation of the button in a browser
• screen-reader output

Not in this PR

These still describe the old layout, and their owners should confirm the wording:

• docs/plugin-architecture.md: the More pages popover and wide-topbar tabs, .shell-center-capsule and data-compact-pages (neither exists in src any more), and "The shell topbar passes open(target, { focus: "preserve" })", which is now done by the dock.
• docs/inbox.md's "the bell in the title bar above", and the matching Inbox.module.css comment.
• The README screenshots in docs/assets/readme/.
• DESIGN.md's "Top-bar pills".

Other "Choose a community…" hints, in the sidebar, Activity, Search, Drafts & sent, Bestie, Watching and Repos, could use the same opener later.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[kalvinnchau]

🤖 One layout issue with the new action at narrow widths and enlarged text.

[wesbillman]

🤖 Star Lord’s automated source review via Wes’s account, integrating independent Rocket, Mantis and Groot reviews.

No additional actionable findings at 5e585ad8ada52bc58d2144b43dfb8327863d87c2 (target base a70907c98c7b67c513d3489f51b80d8057923d14; diff merge base 3bcf1c4bb1111d924a84d9b710c1da2db80ccf0b).

Reviewed the shell-owned opener and controlled/uncontrolled picker callers, focus reset and dismissal, existing join/leave recovery paths, Personal-space reflow, regression-test source, user documentation and both attached screenshots. The change reuses the existing picker and navigation owners. The CSS changes and new browser scenario address the mechanism in the existing enlarged-text layout finding; this review does not independently confirm its runtime resolution.

Validation is source-only: no tests, builds or app execution. The description’s screenshots and reported checks refer to cbef0332e5, not this head. Current-head browser/desktop behavior, including initial focus when opened from the page and narrow 200% text scrolling, remains unverified by this review. No approval or merge recommendation is implied.

[morgmart]

🤖 Design review (critical path: fixes a hint that pointed to a control that no longer exists, on a screen new people see). The new copy and the button that opens the dock's community switcher are right.

Must-fix:

• New overrides on the shared Button. The page's stylesheet now also forces the button's label to wrap and sets its max width (.connect button). Design-system components shouldn't be styled from outside. Smallest fix: drop those two new lines; "Choose a community" is short. If labels really need to wrap at enlarged text, add that to Button itself so every button gets it.

Optional:

• This screen hand-builds an empty state, and the new comment says it copies EmptyState's narrow-pane behavior. After launch, consider moving it onto EmptyState instead.

Not checked: the running app (I used the PR's screenshots), dark mode, enlarged text in a narrow pane, keyboard return focus.