ADR-0006: Multi-repo scope and task discovery

Date: 2026-04-02 Status: Accepted

Context

ADR-0004 established that task files live in <repo>/.tide/ and are discovered globally via com.tide.*.plist files, each carrying a TIDE_TASK_FILE pointer back to its source .md. This works well for running tasks, but two problems emerged:

1. Scope detection was cwd-only. findRepoRoot only checked the exact process.cwd() directory — it didn't walk up to the git root. Running Tide from a subdirectory silently disabled sync detection for that repo.

2. Pending creates were single-repo. computePending only scanned .md files under the cwd-derived repo root. Tasks moved to a different .tide/ directory (or placed in a bare .tide/ directory with no .git) never appeared as pending creates, making it impossible to register them from the UI.

3. Orphaned tasks were invisible. When a plist's TIDE_TASK_FILE no longer existed (e.g. after moving a .md file), readTasks() returned null for that entry and it was filtered out — the user had no way to clean up the stale plist.

4. No repo context in the UI. When viewing tasks from multiple repos in the list, there was no visual indication of which repo each task belonged to.

Decision

1. findRepoRoot walks up to .tide/, stops at .git

Walk up from cwd looking for a .tide/ directory. Stop if a .git boundary is crossed without finding one. This handles:

• Subdirectory launches within a git repo
• Bare .tide/ directories outside of any git repo (e.g. ~/tasks/.tide/)

2. computePending scans all known .tide/ roots

In addition to the cwd-derived repoRoot, computePending collects all .tide/ roots inferred from existing plists' TIDE_TASK_FILE paths (path.dirname(path.dirname(TIDE_TASK_FILE))). This makes pending-create detection global — the same scope as orphan detection — so tasks moved between repos always appear correctly.

3. Orphaned tasks appear in the task list

loadTasks() now adds ghost entries for orphans (in addition to pending-creates). An orphan is rendered with syncStatus: 'orphan' and can be synced away with [Ctrl+S] or [S].

4. Scope selector in the TUI header

The task list header shows the current scope as a subtitle (▾ <repo-name> or ▾ all repos). Tab cycles through all known repo roots (derived from task sourcePath fields) followed by "all repos". The toggle is hidden when only one scope exists.

When viewing "all repos", tasks are grouped visually by repo with a section header between groups — no REPO column in the row itself.

Consequences

• Tide can be launched from any subdirectory of a git repo and will detect its .tide/ correctly.
• Moving .md files between .tide/ directories produces the expected orphan + pending-create pair in a single poll cycle.
• A bare .tide/ directory (no .git ancestor) is a valid task root.
• Sync detection is fully global; no .tide/ root is ever missed after its first task is registered.
• The UI always shows which repo a task belongs to when multiple repos are visible.