Shared conversation UI is confusing - unclear navigation and generic message labels

[newtechmitch]

Description

Description

The shared conversation viewer (opncd.ai/share/*) has a confusing UX that makes it difficult/impossible to navigate through messages in shared conversation.

Issues

1. Landing on oldest message: User lands on the first/oldest message with no indication there are more messages
2. Generic labels: Left sidebar shows "message message message" without any preview or context of what each message contains
3. Non-obvious navigation: It's not clear that you need to click these labels to view different messages
4. No message count: No indication of how many messages are in the conversation

Suggested Improvements

1. Show message previews in the sidebar (first line or summary)
2. Add message numbers/timestamps (e.g., "Message 1 - 2:30pm")
3. Add visual affordances (hover states, icons) to indicate messages are clickable
4. Show message count: "Conversation (12 messages)"
5. Consider defaulting to newest message or showing all messages in scrollable view
6. Add keyboard navigation (arrow keys to move between messages)

Example

https://opncd.ai/share/h3ul6AGq
When you open this link, it's not immediately obvious:

• That this is a multi-message conversation
• How to navigate to other messages
• What each message in the sidebar contains

Expected Behavior

Users should be able to easily:

• See there are multiple messages
• Understand how to navigate between them
• Preview what each message contains before clicking

Environment

• OpenCode version: 1.2.27
• Browser: Chrome - Version 146.0.7680.153 (Official Build) (arm64)
• OS: MacOS Sequoia 15.6.1

Plugins

No response

OpenCode version

1.2.27

Steps to reproduce

1. have a conversation with multiple message in opencode
2. type /share -> a link is created to share the convo
3. paste the link the browser, to view the conversation
4. Navigating the convo is not really possible. see detailed suggestion in the issue

Screenshot and/or share link

Operating System

MacOS Sequoia 15.6.1

Terminal

ghostty

[github-actions]

This issue doesn't fully meet our contributing guidelines.

What needs to be fixed:

• The issue does not use one of the three required templates (Bug Report, Feature Request, or Question). The title uses [UX] which is not a recognized template prefix. Please resubmit using the appropriate template — this appears to be a Bug Report or Feature Request.

Please edit this issue to address the above within 2 hours, or it will be automatically closed.

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This issue might be a duplicate of existing issues. Please check:

• HTML page for /share: no way to navigate to recent messages if list of messages gets long #6576: Same problem — no way to navigate the shared conversation message list on the share page (sidebar navigation not working/unclear)
• Share pages should support linking to specific messages via query parameter #11808: Related — share pages lack linking to specific messages, which partly overlaps with the navigation/discoverability issues described here

If you believe this was flagged incorrectly, please let a maintainer know.

[github-actions]

Thanks for updating the issue! It now meets our contributing guidelines — the description is clear, steps to reproduce are included, and environment details are provided. The needs:compliance label has been removed.

[newtechmitch]

This is related to #6576 which reports scrolling issues with the sidebar.
This issue focuses on broader UX problems with the shared conversation viewer (generic labels, unclear navigation affordances, no message count) that exist independently of the scrolling bug.
Seems also based on screenshots in both issues that there have been additional regressions in the left message panel that appears on hover. In my case there are now specific titles - vs in #6576 there seem to be message titles/summaries?