focus-return¶
A transient overlay returns the focus it took — never leaves it on .
The twin of keyboard-nav's a modal owns the keys: a modal returns the focus. Like a notes app, the board always keeps focus on some input region — closing a search box or popup can never drop you onto an unfocused void.
the gap this closes¶
Focus was managed by acquisition without return: every input and every overlay grabs focus when it mounts, but giving it back was nobody's job. Each surface privately keeps itself focused — the session interface's docked ❯ box re-grabs focus after a click or context menu — but the transient overlays that float above every surface (the search palette, the help and settings modals, the node popup) took focus on open and, on close, dropped it to <body>. Nothing pulled it back, so the next stray re-render's focus effect — or none — decided where it landed. Escaping search felt like focus was stolen; it was simply never returned.
the boundary¶
One decoupled mechanism, so an overlay need not know where focus belongs and the destination need not know the overlays exist:
- The return ticket. A single listener remembers the last element focused outside any overlay. An overlay marks its root so focus landing inside it is never recorded as the ticket — a modal's own input is transient, never a return target.
- Return on close. When the last transient overlay closes, focus goes back to the ticket if it is still on-screen and focusable, else to the declared sink — the surface's always-focused input (the session board's docked box). Never
<body>. The return is deferred one frame and reads the ticket live, so it converges on the latest stable focus rather than fighting a sibling that is also settling focus (e.g. opening the session interface from a search pick).
The sink is the notes-app axiom made concrete: a surface names where focus rests when nothing else claims it. The session interface is a surface, not a transient overlay — it owns its own focus discipline and hosts the sink, so it stays outside this boundary; the boundary governs only the modals that float over it.
why decoupled, not a focus stack¶
A global push/pop focus stack would buy nesting this board never has — every transient overlay is mutually exclusive and sits exactly one layer above a surface. The ticket-plus-sink boundary spends no shared singleton or lifecycle: the only state is one remembered element, and the only contract two DOM markers (an overlay root, the sink input). Add an overlay → mark its root and it inherits the guarantee.