Summary of Changes

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This pull request significantly improves the Board user experience by implementing priority-based sorting and deferred task filtering, allowing users to focus on the most relevant tasks. It also refines the display of epic cards to provide a clearer overview of their child tasks. Additionally, the PR addresses two critical UI regressions, ensuring consistent visibility of the task board button and a more intuitive label for revealing closed tasks, thereby enhancing overall usability and adherence to design specifications.

Highlights

• Board UX Enhancements: Board columns now sort issues by priority first, then by recency, making triage more efficient.
• Deferred Task Filtering: Deferred tasks are now hidden from the default board view, reducing clutter.
• Epic Card Treatment: Epics are displayed as first-class cards with child counts, replacing the previous inline child expansion.
• UI Regression Fixes: The closed-column progressive reveal text was updated to 'Show more', and the task board access button is now always visible in the session title bar.
• New Regression Tests: Added dedicated frontend regression tests to cover the UI fixes for the task board button and closed column reveal text.
• Backend Logic Updates: Implemented backend changes in tdReader to support priority-first sorting and deferred issue filtering.

Code Review — Board UX: priority sorting, epic cards, deferred filtering

Overall this is clean, well-scoped work. The backend changes in tdReader.ts are solid and the targeted fixes hit the acceptance criteria. A few issues worth addressing before merging.

Bugs

1. childCountByEpicId doesn't exclude deleted children (TaskBoard.tsx:225-229)

tdIssues.forEach(issue => {
  if (issue.parent_id && issue.status !== 'closed') {
    counts.set(issue.parent_id, (counts.get(issue.parent_id) ?? 0) + 1)
  }
})

Soft-deleted children (deleted_at != null) are still counted, so the badge can overcount. The board cards themselves filter !i.deleted_at at render time — the count map should match:

if (issue.parent_id && issue.status !== 'closed' && !issue.deleted_at) {

2. All columns start collapsed on initial load (TaskBoard.tsx:132,135-137)

const [isCollapsed, setIsCollapsed] = useState(issues.length === 0)

useEffect(() => {
  if (issues.length === 0) setIsCollapsed(true)
}, [issues.length])

tdBoardView is likely empty on first mount, so every StatusColumn initialises with isCollapsed = true. The useEffect only collapses on empty — it doesn't expand when data arrives. In practice this means the board is all collapsed tabs until the user manually expands each column. The fix is either to also expand in the effect when issues appear, or to not initialise collapsed based on async data:

// Only collapse empty columns; let populated ones start expanded
useEffect(() => {
  setIsCollapsed(issues.length === 0)
}, [issues.length])

Medium issues

3. searchIssues doesn't apply the new priority sort (tdReader.ts:370-378)

listIssues now sorts by priority-first, but searchIssues still uses ORDER BY updated_at DESC. Inconsistency will be noticeable when search results return a different order than the board. Should apply the same CASE priority ... clause.

4. BoardUxRegression.test.ts is fragile source-text matching (BoardUxRegression.test.ts:10-20)

expect(source).not.toContain('{tdStatus?.projectState?.enabled && (')

This breaks on any whitespace or formatting change, and doesn't test actual rendered behaviour. It's also coupled to process.cwd() which assumes tests always run from the project root. These are "did someone accidentally revert my change" guards, not real regression tests. If you want to keep them as a temporary safety net, that's fine — but they should eventually be replaced with actual component tests (React Testing Library render + assertion on what's visible).

Minor

5. closed_at = null issues are hidden in the 3-day filter (TaskBoard.tsx:141)

issues.filter(i => (i.closed_at ?? '') >= threeDaysAgo)

An issue in closed status with a null closed_at gets the empty-string fallback, which fails the comparison and hides the issue until "Show more" is clicked. Probably fine in practice, but worth a comment so it's not a surprise.

6. threeDaysAgo recalculates on every render (TaskBoard.tsx:139)

Move it inside a useMemo to avoid the Date.now() call on every render of StatusColumn. Low impact but free:

const threeDaysAgo = useMemo(
  () => new Date(Date.now() - 3 * 86_400_000).toISOString(),
  []
)

Positives

• The backend deferred-filtering SQL is correct and tested well.
• Priority CASE sort in SQL is the right approach — keeps the sort in the DB layer where it belongs.
• getBoard() defaulting to hideDeferred: true is a clean API decision.
• Removing the inline epic expand/collapse in the board view simplifies the component meaningfully.
• The childCountByEpicId useMemo being computed at the TaskBoard level and passed down is the right architecture (avoids per-column redundant computation).
• The unconditional task board button fix is correct — the "TD not enabled" empty state is the appropriate fallback.

Items 1 and 2 are the most important to address before merging. The rest are polish.