Fix Excel add-in '+' tab and /new command hanging on init
Session from pi-for-excel-sessions on Hugging Face by thomasmustier · MIT · condensed by Coders Talk
Debug why the new-session tab button and /new slash command weren't working in the Pi for Excel add-in, and get the dev server/taskpane initializing reliably again.
- +0Prompt · +0The + session tab and /new aren't working
- +0mPrompt · +0mdon't f with parallel local changes btw
- +0mAgent did · +0mTraced tab/session creation code paths and added createRuntimeFromUi() wrapper plus tool normalization/dedup in init.ts to harden new-tab creation for both the '+' button and /new command.
- +6mPrompt · +6mlet's ff main when we can btw / no like now, rn it's just endlessly initialising btw
- +9mAgent did · +9mAdded startup timeouts to bootstrap.ts/init.ts so init fails visibly instead of hanging, stopped blocking on welcome login, and updated AGENTS.md to document using agent-browser for live debugging.
- +11mIntervention · +11mStill spinning after the fix; developer told the agent to use agent-browser to inspect the live page directly and document that approach in AGENTS.md.Why: It said it fixed it but the spinner was still there, so I told it to actually check the rendered page instead of guessing, and to write that down for next time.
- +11mAgent did · +11mUsed agent-browser CLI to open the taskpane URL headlessly, confirmed the app rendered with no console errors, verified + and /new worked in-browser, and recopied the sideload manifest to Excel's wef folder.
- +21mFail · +21mDev server crashed with 'Port 3000 already in use'; developer's own kill/pkill attempts failed with illegal pid and permission errors.
- +21mAgent did · +21mDiagnosed the port conflict, started the dev server in the background via a script, and confirmed it was listening and serving the taskpane HTML with a 200 response.
- +29mAgent did · +29mCommitted the taskpane fix to main, resolved a non-fast-forward push rejection by rebasing onto origin/main, pushed successfully, then closed GitHub issue #13 with a summary comment after confirming its sub-issues were done.
- +46mOutcome · +46mFix for + tab/new command committed and pushed to main (rebased onto origin/main), dev server running cleanly on port 3000, issue #13 closed; developer moving on to next backlog item (#19).
Next time I'd start by telling it to actually load the running page with agent-browser instead of trusting typecheck/build passing as proof the UI worked — that's what actually surfaced the real state and let it self-verify. The 'don't touch parallel local changes' warning up front was necessary since there were a lot of uncommitted files scattered across the repo, and it did respect that. The push rejection and port-in-use hiccups were just normal friction, not real agent mistakes.