feat(web): improve session sidebar with pinning, sorting, and unread indicators

[hqhq1025]

Feature Request

The session list sidebar in the web UI currently has limited management capabilities. Several improvements would make it more practical for users managing multiple sessions.

Suggested Improvements

1. Pin / Favorite sessions

• Allow users to pin important sessions to the top of the list
• Pinned sessions should stay at the top regardless of activity

2. Customizable sort order

• Currently, sessions auto-sort by most recent activity (the session that receives a new message jumps to the top), which can feel disorienting
• Offer sorting options: by last activity, by creation date, alphabetical, or manual order
• Consider making the auto-reorder behavior optional, as it can be confusing when a session suddenly jumps to the top just because a message was sent

3. Unread message indicators

• Show a badge or dot on sessions that have new/unread messages
• Distinguish between "new assistant reply" and "no new activity"
• This is especially important when running multiple sessions in parallel — users need to know which sessions have new responses

4. Better activity sorting behavior

• The current "most recently active session goes to top" behavior can be disorienting
• Consider a less aggressive approach: highlight the session with new activity but keep the list order stable, or only reorder on user-initiated actions

Context

When working with HAPI across multiple sessions simultaneously, the sidebar is the primary navigation tool. These improvements would significantly help users manage and track their active sessions.

[github-actions]

I checked the current web sidebar implementation, and the requested features are not implemented today.

Pin/favorite state, custom sort modes/manual ordering, and unread message indicators are not found in the current session summary model or sidebar UI. The current ordering is activity-driven: the hub returns /sessions sorted by active, then pending request count for active sessions, then updatedAt, and the web client re-sorts session summaries on live SSE updates using the same criteria. In the sidebar itself, session groups and machine groups are also ordered by active status and most recent updatedAt, so new activity can move items toward the top.

There are already a few sidebar management actions: each session item opens an action menu with rename plus archive/delete, depending on whether the session is active.

Relevant code:

• shared/src/sessionSummary.ts:13 - current SessionSummary fields; no pin/favorite/read/unread state
• hub/src/web/routes/sessions.ts:55 - /sessions API sorts by active status, pending requests, then updatedAt
• web/src/hooks/useSSE.ts:35 - client-side live re-sorting of session summaries on updates
• web/src/components/SessionList.tsx:94 - within each directory group, sessions are ordered by active/pending/updatedAt
• web/src/components/SessionList.tsx:117 - project groups are sorted by active status, then latest updatedAt
• web/src/components/SessionActionMenu.tsx:232 - existing sidebar actions are rename and archive/delete

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HAPI Bot