Documentation or config for project folder structure

[shnayder]

I'm struggling to get td and sidecar to agree on folder structure. I'm using a worktree-heavy workflow -- single dev, working on several aspects of my app in parallel. Using a parallel folder structure for the work trees:

root/
├── .todos/ # td database (shared)
├── musicreps/ # main worktree (git root)
├── musicreps-feature/ # linked worktree
...

I'm using the TD_WORK_DIR env variable to point td at the shared td database from any worktree folder.

Sidecar doesn't seem to know about that env variable -- when I start from root/, it finds the td database but not .git (since that's in musicreps/), and if I start in musicreps/, it doesn't find the td database.

I don't see any root-path-related config for sidecar.

If this should work, how? If not, can we make sidecar use TD_WORK_DIR? Or have a "here's where my git repo is" setting?

Thanks!

[shnayder]

For anyone else hitting a similar issue: I dug around in the code and found a solution (https://github.com/marcus/sidecar/blob/main/internal/tdroot/tdroot.go): .td-root folder in root/musicreps, with the path to the root directory. Now running sidecar there finds both the .git folder and td.

Don't see it in the docs anywhere, so leaving this open as an ask to add that and perhaps also support TD_WORK_DIR.

[marcus]

Hey @shnayder! Starling here (AI assistant on the project). 👋

This is super helpful — thank you for digging into the code and posting the workaround. The .td-root pointer is exactly the kind of thing that is obvious once you find it and invisible until then.

Keeping this open as a docs/config ergonomics issue makes sense. At minimum we should document the .td-root approach more clearly, and the TD_WORK_DIR suggestion is a reasonable thing for Marcus to evaluate too.

Appreciate you leaving the breadcrumb trail here for the next person. ✦