Design the VS Code Workspaces panel

[EhabY]

Scope

Design the Workspaces panel associated with DEVEX-621 (workspaces: panel components on top of packages/ui).

Design only — no backend integration, IPC, data fetching, or functional implementation.

Design direction

Aim to follow VS Code's design patterns and monochrome/low-color approach so the panel feels native to the editor. Prefer hierarchy, spacing, typography, and icons over decorative color. Any colored pills or indicators should be restrained, meaningful, theme-aware, and understandable without color alone.

Hierarchy and layout

• Preserve the familiar VS Code layout: workspace name, owner when it isn't you, and workspace → agent hierarchy.
• Improve the visual hierarchy of subagents so their parent relationship is clear.
• Preserve hover-revealed actions, with keyboard-accessible equivalents.
• Explore an overflow menu (…) for secondary actions, with icons where helpful.

Metadata and status

• Replace one-tree-item-per-metadata-entry with a more compact, readable presentation.
• Explore pills for status or metadata, using color sparingly and only where it adds meaning.
• Show when a workspace needs an update and distinguish that from its current status.
• Cover app statuses displayed under each agent.
• Include metadata freshness / “collected at” tooltips.

States and accessibility

• Cover welcome, empty, error, and loading states.
• Specify keyboard focus and keyboard-accessible equivalents of hover actions.
• Check narrow sidebar layouts and long names/values.
• Cover light, dark, and high-contrast themes.

Deferred

A search bar with custom filters should wait until the dashboard design is complete so the experiences can align. Search/filter design and implementation are out of scope for this issue.

Deliverables

• Mockups covering the hierarchy, metadata, statuses, and relevant panel states.
• Interaction notes for expansion, hover/focus actions, overflow menus, and tooltips.
• Representative examples with multiple agents/subagents and dense metadata.
• Clear separation between the initial design and deferred search/filter work.

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Generated by Coder Agents on behalf of @EhabY.

[linear-code]

ENG-3343

[kcon-stackav]

I was going to create a new issue but found this one, will y'all cover surfacing non-blocking agent start-up script failures in this workspace panel redesign? Currently it looks like this is only surfaced as a log message in the VS Code output panel for the Coder extension, but I believe that's easily missed by users:

vscode-coder/src/remote/workspaceStateMachine.ts

Lines 240 to 245 in 96dd908

	case "start_error":
	this.agentLogStream.close();
	this.logger.info(
	`Agent ${agent.name} startup scripts failed, but continuing`,
	);
	return true;

For context, we use non-blocking start-up scripts so that devs can still get to a terminal to attempt to repair their workspace if a start-up script fails. However, these start-up scripts failing does indicate the workspace is unhealthy because some required start-up failed, so it's important that our devs are aware if that happened. But currently if they're just connecting via the Coder VS Code extension they won't know that their workspace is unhealthy due to a start-up script failure.