Opening apps and previews

Where an app or preview opens, the buttons in its header, why a preview's address cannot be shared, and what happens when the agent updates an app you have open.

Opening an app or a preview link on a computer puts it where the chat was, in the middle of the window. The search bar stays at the top and the chat list narrows to icons to give the app more room. The app itself runs edge to edge in that space, and everything you can do to it sits in the header above it. For a published app that is its address, which you can read and copy or click to open the app in a new browser tab, a button that opens it in a new tab, Refresh to reload it, Share, and Open in workspace, which takes you to the app's own page on the Apps and Files tab, where it opens with the list of apps and files folded away so the app still has the whole pane. Close it with the X in that header or by pressing Escape, and the chat comes back with the chat list as it was. Anything else you open from a chat lands in the same place, whether you open it from the message or from its card in the artifacts panel on the right: a widget, a document, a text file, a diagram, a presentation. On a phone an app fills the screen, with the same header stacked above it. Presenting a deck still goes full screen, since that is the point of presenting.

You may see fewer of those buttons than someone else does. Open in workspace appears only if you are a member of the workspace that owns the app, and Share only if you can change that app's sharing settings, which means a workspace owner or admin. Refresh is always there.

A preview that is not a published app shows none of the address controls. It carries a Preview label next to its name instead, and only Refresh beside it. This is now the exception rather than the rule: an agent pinning a running server gets an app, and a preview means Bolter could not make one. A preview runs on the agent's own computer and opens only for you, here in Bolter, so its address is not a link you can pass to anyone: sending it to a colleague gets them nothing. Point at the Preview label and it says so, and offers the one route to something you can share, a button that asks the agent in that chat to convert the preview into an app. The agent replies in the chat as usual, and once it publishes the app you get the address, the new tab button, Share and Open in workspace with it. The preview's card in the artifacts panel agrees with all of this: it offers Refresh, but no way to open the preview in a browser tab. A published app's card still does.

When the agent changes an app you have open

An app or preview you have open is never reloaded underneath you. A Bolter-built app notices by itself when the agent, or a code run, has rebuilt it. For a plain page that cannot tell, the agent tells Bolter it changed it. Either way:

• If you have not clicked or typed in the app since it loaded, it updates straight away. A Bolter-built app keeps the page you were on and your place on it.
• If you have been using it, nothing moves. A "Reload for the new version" button appears over the app, and the update waits until you press it, so a half-filled form or the run you were watching stays put.

The agent reading or writing the app's data, running tests, restarting the app without changing it, or checking on a running process does not reload anything. Refresh in the header always loads the latest version.