Sidebar

In v2.0 the left side of the workbench has two layers — the thin rail on the very left for mode switching, and the sidebar next to it for the list of things in the active mode. The sidebar reshapes per rail mode; the rail itself stays put.

Bowire sidebar in Discover mode — title strip with filter + new-request buttons, services tree grouped by protocol, name-filter input below Bowire sidebar in Discover mode — title strip with filter + new-request buttons, services tree grouped by protocol, name-filter input below

Rail (the left strip)

13 rail-mode icons drive what the sidebar shows. Click an icon to swap modes; the active mode lights up the icon in the accent colour. Order top to bottom:

  • Home — Continue / Start / Favorites / Recent activity launchpad.
  • Discover — services / methods tree (this page's main subject).
  • Workspaces — the named contexts that bundle URLs, environments, collections, AI config (#116).
  • Sources — discovery URLs + uploaded schema files (#92).
  • Collections — named bundles of saved requests.
  • Environments — variable / secret sets the resolver pulls from (#125).
  • Recordings — captured request/response sessions you can replay or mock (#94, #144).
  • Mocks — running mock servers (#94 Phase 2).
  • Benchmarks — envelope-architecture load tests (#131).
  • Flows — visual request chains.
  • Proxy — MITM-captured live traffic (#99 / #153).
  • Security — threat model + per-endpoint scan templates (#112).
  • Burger / App-Drawer — secondary actions (Settings, About, Theme, Help — opens from the top left when you click the B-Logo).

Every mode renders into a unified toolbar row at the top of the sidebar plus a list below. The toolbar carries:

  • Title — Discover, Workspaces, Mocks, etc. Click-to-overview where it makes sense.
  • Spacer — pushes the trailing actions to the right.
  • Action buttons — square 26 px icon buttons specific to the mode (e.g. a filter ⛛ in Discover; replay in Mocks).
  • Primary + button — accent-coloured, opens the create flow for the mode (new request / workspace / collection / recording / mock host / envelope / flow).
  • Overflow ⋮ — dropdown for less-common actions (delete all, edit settings…).

Each list item follows the hover-reveal pattern: name + meta visible at rest, secondary tools (rename pencil, settings gear, danger trash) materialise on row hover. State markers (active checkmark, default-star) occupy a reserved-width slot so the row doesn't reflow.

Discover sidebar specifics

The Discover sidebar is the only one that walks a tree (services → methods) instead of a flat list, so it grows a few extra controls:

  • Filter button (⛛) in the toolbar opens a popup with three sections — Favorites only, Filter by protocol, Filter by type (Unary / Server-Streaming / Client-Streaming / Duplex), Filter by URL (when ≥ 2 discovery URLs are loaded). The favorites toggle lives inside this popup as its first option — there's no separate star button on the strip.
  • Name-filter input below the toolbar — types narrow the visible tree in real time. Esc clears.
  • Chip strip appears only when at least one filter is active — visualises the current narrowing as removable pills.
  • Service groups are expandable tree nodes per protocol. Each method row shows its call-type badge (Unary, Server-Streaming, Client-Streaming, Duplex), name, and a hover-reveal star for favoriting. Drag a method to drop it into a Collection picker (#431).

The protocol-tab strip from v1.x has been retired in favour of the filter-popup-with-multi-select approach — one place to slice the tree by any dimension, not three competing strips.

Search across the workbench

Cmd/Ctrl+K opens the omnibox (#124) — a single search line that ranks methods, recordings, collections, settings, and ?-prefixed AI prompts uniformly across every rail. This replaces the sidebar-local / search from v1.x.

Favorites

Favoriting is a per-method toggle on the Discover tree row (the hover-reveal star). Favorites surface in two places:

  • Home rail — top section "Favorites", a 3×3 capped grid; click the section title to open a right-side drawer with the full list.
  • Discover sidebar — turn on "Favorites only" inside the filter popup to narrow the tree.

Favorites persist per-workspace in localStorage (browser mode) or in the workspace's .bww (git-backed mode).

Drawer-Modus auf schmalen Viewports

Bei < 1400 px wird die rechte Drawer-Familie (Assistant, Help, Tests, Activity) automatisch zu einem position: fixed-Overlay. Die linke Sidebar bleibt im Flex-Flow.

See also: Action bar, Request pane, Response pane, Favorites & History, Keyboard Shortcuts

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