[nplez1]

	Files	Added	Deleted	Net
Test	14	$\color{#1a7f37}{\Huge{\mathbf{+}}}$​757	$\color{#cf222e}{\Huge{\mathbf{−}}}$​100	$\color{#1a7f37}{\Huge{\mathbf{+}}}$​657
Prod	25	$\color{#1a7f37}{\Huge{\mathbf{+}}}$​792	$\color{#cf222e}{\Huge{\mathbf{−}}}$​363	$\color{#1a7f37}{\Huge{\mathbf{+}}}$​429

ELI5

New worktrees usually link configured shared folders back to the primary checkout. This change lets each project choose what Orca should do when creating those folders, including avoiding symlinks.

What Changed

• Added a Repository setting for worktree.sharedDirectories: keep symlinks, try an APFS clone and fall back to symlinks or copies, or skip if cloning is unavailable.
• Kept the existing symlink behavior as the default for existing projects.
• Staged clones and copies before publishing them; checked directory targets and used exclusive file publication to avoid overwriting destinations. Paths that could not be materialized are surfaced in the create warning.
• Kept .worktreeinclude copies under their existing budget. The explicitly selected shared-directory copy fallback has no size or entry-count cap.

Why

Some projects cannot use symlinks, and APFS cloning is not always available. An explicit per-project choice avoids silently changing the sharing behavior. Copies and APFS clones are independent per worktree; symlinks continue to share writes with the primary checkout.

Linked Issue

Related to stablyai/orca#18213. This PR adds materialization choices and reports failures; it does not add workspace-monorepo symlink detection.

Visual Proof

Default behavior — symlink selected:

After — APFS clone with copy fallback selected:

Testing

• Manually checked the Repository setting in the hidden Electron renderer through CDP on macOS.
• Added/updated automated tests for settings persistence and validation, clone/copy/symlink/skip behavior, partial-clone cleanup, copy-budget isolation, destination races, and staging cleanup.
• Focused changed-test run after the module split: 191 tests across all 13 changed test files passed.
• pnpm tc passed.
• pnpm run check:code-quality:changed passed.
• git diff --check passed.
• Windows was not available for runtime testing. SSH worktrees intentionally do not materialize these paths yet.

AI Disclosure

AI-assisted with GitHub Copilot GPT-6 Luna and Mimo v2.6 Pro adversarial review.

Review

Mimo's review found no blockers. The documented residuals are the narrow POSIX empty-directory publish race, crash-leftover staging paths when configuration has changed or ownership cannot be verified, and untested Windows runtime behavior.

Agent skill upstream boundary

• Not applicable. This change does not copy or modify agent-skill installer source.

Notes

• The explicit copy fallback can take a long time and use substantial disk space because it is not size- or entry-count-limited.
• SSH worktrees skip shared path materialization.

Checklist

• Automated tests added/updated.
• Cross-platform, SSH/remote, and backward-compatibility impact considered; Windows runtime verification remains for CI/a Windows host.
• Full pnpm lint and pnpm build were not run locally; CI will cover them.