fix(preview): failed floating previews show retry controls

[ashx-j]

failed navigations leave the floating preview as a blank rectangle with no explanation. show loading and failure states with retry and close controls for native and streamed previews. keep viewer ownership controls available and restore the preview after successful navigation. preview_status also reports navigation errors.

fixes #7212.

validation: 100 focused tests across the affected ui, server, and contract suites; scoped web/server/contracts typechecks; targeted lint; formatting checks. isolated browser verification reproduced the blank page and confirmed retry restores the preview after restarting the test server. native behavior has focused test coverage; browser screenshots show the streamed runtime.

before	after

preview restored after retry. the before image uses the baseline floating component against the same isolated failed navigation.

implemented by gpt-6.1-sol at xhigh and reviewed by gpt-6.1-sol, through the codex harness in t3 code.

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 27319f9 and 32ef4e0.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• apps/web/src/components/preview/ThreadPreviewMiniPlayer.test.tsx
• apps/web/src/components/preview/ThreadPreviewMiniPlayer.tsx

🚧 Files skipped from review as they are similar to previous changes (2)

• apps/web/src/components/preview/ThreadPreviewMiniPlayer.test.tsx
• apps/web/src/components/preview/ThreadPreviewMiniPlayer.tsx

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Server and desktop previews now retain navigation failure details. The floating mini-player displays loading or failure status and provides retry and close controls. Automation status includes server navigation failure details.

Changes

Preview navigation failure handling

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Track and expose server navigation failures packages/contracts/src/previewAutomation.ts, packages/contracts/src/preview.test.ts, apps/server/src/preview/ServerBrowser.ts, apps/server/src/preview/ServerBrowser.test.ts	Server tabs retain main-frame navigation failures and include their URL, error code, and description in automation status. Tests cover failure transitions and serialization.
Project failure state into desktop overlays apps/web/src/previewStateStore.ts, apps/web/src/components/preview/usePreviewBridge.ts, apps/web/src/browser/ServerBrowserSurface.tsx, apps/web/src/previewStateStore.test.ts, apps/web/src/components/RightPanelTabs.test.tsx	Desktop overlay state carries navigation failure details. Browser surfaces can display an overlay above the canvas while keeping stream and ownership controls connected.
Display mini-player status and actions apps/web/src/components/preview/ThreadPreviewMiniPlayer.tsx, apps/web/src/components/preview/ThreadPreviewMiniPlayer.test.tsx	The mini-player displays loading, reconnecting, or failure status. Retry uses the server stream or desktop preview bridge, and Close remains available. Tests cover these states and actions.

Priority: ➖ Normal

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~25 minutes

Change: Bug fix · Severity of issue fixed: Medium

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant BrowserMiniPlayer
  participant ServerBrowserSurface
  participant ServerPreviewStream
  participant previewBridge
  participant RuntimeTab
  BrowserMiniPlayer->>ServerBrowserSurface: Render loading or failure overlay
  alt Server preview
    BrowserMiniPlayer->>ServerPreviewStream: Send navigation retry when control is available
  else Desktop preview
    BrowserMiniPlayer->>previewBridge: Navigate to failed URL
    previewBridge->>RuntimeTab: Retry navigation
  end

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Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to 32ef4

The reviewed preview changes are mergeable after normal checks; no unresolved issue was identified in the selected changes.

Security Architecture Review

Security architecture risk: 🔵 Low · up to 27319

The recovery controls preserve existing access boundaries, and no new privilege gain was established. Remaining risk concerns stale failure state during overlapping navigations and whether Retry restores the intended destination.

Retained concerns

• Low · reliability · inferred: Retained failure state is keyed to the tab, not the navigation request. If an older non-aborted failure arrives after a newer navigation starts, it can replace the newer state and cause the unconfirmed load-success path to preserve that failure. This can strand recovery presentation and expose stale navigationError through automation status. Abort filtering and asynchronous title guards provide counterevidence, but neither rejects an older request. The problematic runtime ordering has not been demonstrated.

Security review details

Security Blast Radius

• observed — The inspected failure and recovery paths operate on the selected thread/tab and its viewers. Failure details become visible in the floating presentation and automation status; the main preview panel already presented navigation-failure URLs and descriptions before this PR.

Trust Boundaries and Controls

• observed — Streamed Retry requires controller=you in the UI. Independently, server input rejects non-operating viewers and checks current ownership and generation before queued human commands execute, containing stale UI ownership state.
• observed — Native Retry does not gate refresh on desktop controller metadata. The same native refresh authority already existed in the main panel, and desktop refresh resolves the selected tab's WebContents. The inspected change does not establish a new backend capability; whether controller metadata should restrict native refresh remains an undocumented policy question.

Resilience and Maintainability Implications

• observed — Normal recovery clears retained failure when a new main-frame request starts. Aborted and subframe failures do not replace it, and success reporting checks failure identity, loading state, and URL after reading the title. The focused source test covers ordinary failure, retry, and successful recovery, but does not resolve late overlapping-request behavior.

Hardening Proposals

• proposed — Carry navigation identity through request events and asynchronous status publication, rejecting obsolete updates so retained failures and recovery presentation remain associated with the navigation that produced them.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Issue #7212 requires a visible failure state with Retry and Close controls and navigation failure details in preview_status. The reviewed changes add those states and details for floating previews. …
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Changes cover floating-preview failure handling, retry behavior, navigation status, contracts, and related tests. These changes support Issue #7212. No unrelated changes are identified.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly summarizes the main change: failed floating previews now show retry controls.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description covers the problem, change, linked issue, verification, and visual evidence. It does not state maintainer approval or explain why the change qualifies for the small-obvious-bug exempti…

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Actionable comments posted: 2

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• 🪄 Fix CodeRabbit comments on this PR

🤖 Prompt to fix review comments

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Inline comments:
Review comments at @apps/web/src/components/preview/ThreadPreviewMiniPlayer.tsx:
- Line 169: Update the server-tab Retry handling in ThreadPreviewMiniPlayer so
that, when a load failure is present, it navigates to loadFailure.url;
otherwise, keep the existing serverSurfaceRef reload behavior.
- Around line 173-179: Update the desktop retry branch in
ThreadPreviewMiniPlayer to call previewBridge.navigate with runtimeTabId and
loadFailure.url instead of refreshing the currently displayed page; require
loadFailure before invoking the navigation, and preserve the existing error
handling.

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ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

• Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.config.ts
• Review profile: CHILL
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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 17c0878 and 27319f9.

📒 Files selected for processing (11)

• apps/server/src/preview/ServerBrowser.test.ts
• apps/server/src/preview/ServerBrowser.ts
• apps/web/src/browser/ServerBrowserSurface.tsx
• apps/web/src/components/RightPanelTabs.test.tsx
• apps/web/src/components/preview/ThreadPreviewMiniPlayer.test.tsx
• apps/web/src/components/preview/ThreadPreviewMiniPlayer.tsx
• apps/web/src/components/preview/usePreviewBridge.ts
• apps/web/src/previewStateStore.test.ts
• apps/web/src/previewStateStore.ts
• packages/contracts/src/preview.test.ts
• packages/contracts/src/previewAutomation.ts

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