[uNyanda]

Summary

The New note form's footer told the user which keys to press, and in most of the states it offered, that was wrong.

The form has three fields, Name, Folder, Tags, so a footer reading ↑↓ pick reads as though ↑↓ moves between them. It does not. ↑↓ only ever moved through the choice rows under Folder or Tags. Moving between fields is Tab alone, and Tab appeared nowhere in the footer.

↵ create named the wrong action in three of the four states where it appeared: it picks a highlighted row, in Tags it commits the typed tag as a chip, and in Tags with invalid text Enter does nothing at all.

On arrival the form is focused in Name, which renders no list, so the footer claimed ↑↓ pick while nothing it referred to was on screen.

Fixes #932.

The change

The two hints are now derived from state the component already holds rather than hard-coded:

• ↑↓ pick appears only when a choice list is actually rendered under the focused field.
• The ↵ label names the action rather than the field: choose folder, add tag, or create note.

Two details carry the fix:

• A stale highlight. Folder preselects row 0 on typing so Enter picks without an arrow key first (Improve keyboard navigation in the "Pick a folder" dialog #467), but that index outlives the row once the text filters the list away. The hint has to check that a row is still standing behind the highlight, not just that the index is non-negative. Without this, a filtered-to-nothing folder said choose while Enter was creating the note.
• A fourth state. In Tags, typed text that is not a valid tag leaves Enter with nothing to do. No ↵ hint is offered there, since any label would promise an action it cannot take; the status line already explains why.

No key handling changed, no new imports, and Tab order is untouched. data-keyboard-hints stays on the container so a touch shell still drops the hints while keeping Back and Create.

Tests

SearchCreateForm.test.ts, the first test for this component. 11/11 passed.

It is .ts rather than .tsx because vitest.config.ts includes only *.test.ts. A .tsx test would silently never run.

Each case asserts the full hint list rather than one substring, so a hint that should be absent is proven absent: Name on mount, Folder with and without a highlight, Folder filtered to nothing, Tags with and without a highlight, Tags in a tagless vault, invalid tag text, the hint hook in every state, and the buttons remaining reachable throughout.

Existing suites unchanged: search-create 21 passed, palette-nav 9 passed. Verified manually in the running app across every state.

Known gaps

• Shift+Tab is not advertised. It walks the fields backwards, free from the browser rather than the component, so tab next field describes half the traversal. Left out deliberately because the footer already reaches five hints at its widest and wraps on a narrow window. One-line change with a matching test if wanted.
• ↵ in Tags with text typed still commits the tag. The label is now honest, but the behaviour is arguably redundant since a tag can be added three other ways. Removing it is a behaviour change and was left as its own decision.

Review focus

The one judgement call worth a look: the ↵ label describes the action, not the field. add tag covers both "a row is highlighted" and "a valid tag is typed", because both add a tag. The earlier choose / create split was by field, which is exactly what made create ambiguous.

[adibhanna]

Thanks @uNyanda, this is a careful fix, and #932 made the review easy: every state you listed is exactly what the form does.

Merged into the v2.69.0 release branch as b25eadb8, shipping in 2.69.0. GitHub will mark this PR merged once that branch reaches main at release.

I added one follow-up commit on top, fb9c6fcc, kept separate so your commit stands as yours:

• CI. The new test file seeded the store with vaultSettings: null, which the store's type doesn't allow. Vitest doesn't typecheck, so your tests passed while every CI build failed at the app-core typecheck (npm run typecheck catches it locally too). It seeds DEFAULT_VAULT_SETTINGS now.
• The highlight check. Your comment says the highlight only counts while a row stands behind it, but the code counted any row in the list. The two only part ways when a list shrinks under the highlight without typing, and that can happen: the form follows the vault's notes, so a sync or another window can drop a tag while it's open, and the footer then said ↵ add tag while Enter created the note. The hint now reads the row exactly the way the Enter handlers do, with a test that shrinks the tag list under a highlight.
• House style. Two comments lost their long dashes, which the project avoids everywhere, and typedTag is already trimmed, so its extra .trim() went.

On your review focus: agreed. Naming the action rather than the field is what makes ↵ honest in every state.

On the known gaps: leaving Shift+Tab out keeps the footer from wrapping, which I'd rather keep. Enter committing a typed tag in Tags stays as it is in this release; it matches Space, comma and leaving the field, and changing it is its own decision.

Checked: app-core typecheck; the form, search-create and palette-nav suites (42 tests); and the built app over CDP, reading the footer in Name, Folder (with and without a highlight, and filtered to nothing) and Tags (with a highlight, and with invalid text). Every state matched your description.

[uNyanda]

I forgot to run npm run typecheck. Sorry about that