The feature I deleted that became the one I use most

The thing I run most in a day is !folder. It lists a folder, each file with its icon and last-edited time and a clickable link, newest first, instantly, no model turn. Deeply boring. I’d fight someone for it. It started as a feature I tore out.

I’d built a little docs region into my statusline. The idea was the statusline could be interactive: click a thing, it does something, click the date, open the calendar. Some of it worked. The docs region didn’t earn its space, so I pulled it. But the look of it, a clean scannable clickable list, was the good part, and I didn’t want to throw that out with the rest.

So: what if that same look pointed at any folder. That became /folder. Then I wanted it to feel like talking instead of a command, so /folder desktop/personal takes loose paths. Then I noticed running it inline with a bang skips the model entirely and comes back instantly, so !folder became the real way I use it. Then I got annoyed it felt slow and swapped the runtime, 0.63 seconds down to 0.14.

The look outlived the feature so completely I built a second thing on it. !todo is the same viewer pointed at a checklist. The original docs region is dead and I don’t miss it.

Most of my good tools are salvaged organs of bad ones.