CommandPalette

Live

Behavior

• ·⌘K opens it from anywhere and toggles it closed; Esc clears the query first, then closes — so a mistyped search never costs the surface.
• ·One input, two intents: the query is read as a QUESTION (4+ words, a leading interrogative, or a trailing ?) or as navigation. Questions put "Ask ambientui" first; anything else ranks matching pages.
• ·Sections are a flat, keyboard-navigable model — Recent chats, Suggested for this page, Jump to — with ↑↓ moving across section boundaries and ↵ running the selected row.
• ·WHAT IT CAN DO IS REGISTERED BY THE APP (see CommandRegistry): components, documentation, demos and the assistant's own form factors, each with a `run` the palette calls without knowing what it means. That is the context-chip contract pointed the other way — a surface hands the layer a chip, the app hands it a command — and it is why the palette can reach a product the layer knows nothing about. The lists are DERIVED from the registry that documents them, so a command for something that does not exist is impossible to write.
• ·Matches are CAPPED PER SECTION, not overall: one cap across the whole list let the first family spend the entire budget, so forty components matching "panel" pushed Switch form off the end — the one command the word most obviously meant was the one you could not reach.
• ·AT REST IT SAYS WHAT IT CAN DO. Switch form shows in full because five rows are small enough and always relevant; the big families are advertised by a counted hint ("50 components, 10 documents, 5 demos") derived from what is actually registered. A capability nobody can see is one that does not exist as far as the user is concerned — and a hint written by hand would outlive the family it describes.
• ·WHAT IT OFFERS COMES FROM THE PAGE. setPageIntel supplies the suggestions, the recents, where "Jump to" goes, and the input's own invitation; pages that stay quiet get the app-wide defaults. The dev tool publishes its LIVE problem inventory there, so every suggestion is a question one of its errors deserves — and a problem that gets fixed leaves the palette, because the list is derived from workspace state rather than written twice.
• ·A page with its own workspace takes over "Jump to" entirely: inside the dev tool it lists open files, each subtitled with its actual problem, instead of the app's routes.
• ·The page's own context rides along as a chip in the header band; right-clicking anything on the page attaches it as another chip.
• ·A chip may carry its own `icon`: every page is kind "page", which is too coarse to tell an editor from a colour map, and the page is the only thing that knows which. Omitted, the kind's icon stands in. Sparkles is never one of them — in this system that mark means the assistant, and a chip is what the assistant can SEE, not the assistant itself.
• ·Asking transitions the surface in place into the AI Overview — the answer arrives where the question was asked, with a follow-up form replacing the search input.
• ·A glass-tinted scrim dims the product behind it — the scrim token with a whisper of backdrop blur — so the palette reads as the hero of the moment while the page stays legible through the veil.
• ·Ambient state is live: typing a question turns the layer to listening before send; the border and background field follow.
• ·Selection and keycaps use the neutral glass wash, not the accent — on glass, accent marks actions, not focus position.
• ·Dragging the floating panel to the top-center zone becomes this mode; dragging out of it returns to a panel.

When to use

• ·The product's primary entry point for both finding and asking — one keystroke from anywhere.
• ·When the answer and the destination are the same question: "where is X" and "what is X" resolve in one surface.

When not to

• ·A conversation the user wants to keep while working — that's the panel or dock; the palette is for a single exchange.
• ·Scoped search inside a page's own data — a local filter belongs in the page, not in the global palette.
• ·Confirming or undoing an action — use a toast or the save reminder.