Rift-CLI: Troubleshooting Window Title Changes

by Alex Johnson 47 views

Hey there!

It looks like you're diving deep into the window_title_changed event subscription with rift-cli, and you've hit a bit of a snag. It's totally understandable; getting these event-driven systems to fire consistently can sometimes feel like chasing a ghost! You've done some excellent groundwork by converting your Hammerspoon script to Zsh and meticulously logging the JSON input. The fact that your script works perfectly when you manually trigger it is a huge clue – it means your Zsh script itself is solid, and the issue likely lies in how rift-cli is invoking or detecting these window_title_changed events.

Let's break down what's happening and explore some avenues to get this subscription working reliably for you. It's awesome that you're so close to getting this functionality hammered out, and this article will hopefully shed some light on those tricky bits!

Understanding the window_title_changed Event

Alright, let's dive into the window_title_changed event subscription and why it might be acting a little shy. This event is designed to be a powerful tool, allowing your scripts to react in real-time as the title of your active window changes. Think about the possibilities: automatically organizing your windows, triggering specific actions based on the application you're using, or even updating status bars with relevant information. In your case, you're aiming to use it to move Visual Studio Code windows to specific workspaces based on the project name embedded in the window title. That's a fantastic use-case, and it highlights the potential of this event!

When rift-cli detects that a window's title has been modified, it's supposed to broadcast this information. This broadcast is essentially a signal, carrying data about the event – like the previous title, the new title, the window ID, and the workspace it belongs to. Your Zsh script is configured to listen for this signal. It receives the JSON payload containing all this juicy detail and then proceeds to parse it. Based on the new_title, it attempts to identify the project and then uses rift-cli execute workspace move-window to relocate the window to the correct workspace. It's a beautifully crafted workflow!

The fact that you've tested this by subscribing a simple bash script (~/log_window_title_changed.sh) that just appends "$@" >> ~/rift_title_changed.log and found that even this simple logging doesn't consistently work is the key piece of information here. This strongly suggests that the problem isn't within your Zsh script's logic for parsing or acting on the data, but rather in the initial triggering or reliable delivery of the window_title_changed event itself by rift-cli. It's like the mailman isn't always delivering the package, even if the address on the package is perfect.

Why Might the Event Not Fire Consistently?

Several factors could be at play when an event subscription isn't firing reliably:

  • Application Focus and State: Sometimes, events are tied to specific application states or focus changes. If an application isn't in the foreground, or if the title change happens very rapidly or in a way that doesn't trigger the OS-level event rift-cli is listening for, it might be missed.
  • Timing Issues: There could be subtle timing differences. Perhaps rift-cli initializes its event listeners slightly after an application has already changed its title upon opening, or maybe there are race conditions involved.
  • Specific Application Behavior: Some applications might change their window titles in unique ways that rift-cli's underlying mechanism doesn't fully capture. This could be due to how the application communicates its title changes to the operating system.
  • rift-cli Internal Logic: There might be an edge case or a bug within rift-cli itself related to how it monitors and dispatches the window_title_changed event. The fact that it worked initially and then stopped could point to a change in rift-cli's behavior or an interaction with another system.
  • System Resources: While less likely for a consistent issue like this, very high system load could theoretically cause event processing delays or missed events, though this usually manifests more erratically.

Your manual test, where you directly pass the JSON payload to your script (`/bin/zsh /Users/briankaplan/.config/rift/rift_title_changed.sh '{