Sidebar search: sort results by recent activity or by what needs attention

[Rhinomcd]

Note

opus-5.5 responding on behalf of Ryan.

Problem

I usually search the sidebar for a thread I know is active right now. Today it was one on my vecna machine, stuck in a device-code login loop and waiting on me. I typed vecna and got 30+ results: about 20 title matches spanning 1 day to 113 days old, followed by message-content matches. The thread I wanted was in that list, but nothing put it near the top. I had to read every row to find it.

Results are currently ranked by match strength (title, branch, and PR, with some recency weighting), and then content-only matches are appended. That works for "find the thread about X". It does not work for "find the thread about X that I'm in the middle of", and that's most of my searches.

Proposal

Add a sort control to sidebar search, next to the existing filter button:

• Best match: today's order, kept as the default.
• Recent activity: newest last activity first, using the same timestamp the sidebar's recent-activity sort uses (#6342, #6964).
• Needs attention: threads waiting on me (approval, user input, a pending question) first, then working threads, then recently completed unread threads, then everything else by recent activity.

Within each bucket, keep match strength as the tiebreaker so a weak content match doesn't jump a strong title match.

Remembering the last choice per client is enough. Each sort only reorders the results that already match, so it costs nothing extra on the server.

Smaller version

If a sort control is too much UI, a fixed rule would cover most of this: among equally strong matches, rank waiting and working threads above settled ones. #26456 asks for exactly this in the composer @ picker. Sidebar search, the @ picker, and the command palette should share one rule so the same query gives the same order everywhere.

Related

• #26456: prioritize working threads in the @ picker
• #6342 / #6964: sort the Sidebar V2 thread list by recent activity
• #8576: shortcut to jump to the latest unread completed thread