From d371f60e036c628588a93570de183afd67a1f4bf Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Steve Yegge <steve.yegge@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2025 12:00:22 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] fix(mail): use visible banner for tmux notifications
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Replace tmux display-message (subtle status bar notification) with
send-keys to echo a visible banner to the terminal. This ensures
mail notifications are actually seen by agents.

Closes gt-vnp9

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
---
 internal/mail/router.go |  7 +++----
 internal/tmux/tmux.go   | 16 ++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 19 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/internal/mail/router.go b/internal/mail/router.go
index 0669b4b4..dfb7909c 100644
--- a/internal/mail/router.go
+++ b/internal/mail/router.go
@@ -83,7 +83,7 @@ func (r *Router) GetMailbox(address string) (*Mailbox, error) {
 }
 
 // notifyRecipient sends a notification to a recipient's tmux session.
-// Uses display-message for non-disruptive notification.
+// Uses send-keys to echo a visible banner to ensure notification is seen.
 // Supports mayor/, rig/polecat, and rig/refinery addresses.
 func (r *Router) notifyRecipient(msg *Message) error {
 	sessionID := addressToSessionID(msg.To)
@@ -97,9 +97,8 @@ func (r *Router) notifyRecipient(msg *Message) error {
 		return nil // No active session, skip notification
 	}
 
-	// Display notification in status line (non-disruptive)
-	notification := fmt.Sprintf("[MAIL] From %s: %s", msg.From, msg.Subject)
-	return r.tmux.DisplayMessageDefault(sessionID, notification)
+	// Send visible notification banner to the terminal
+	return r.tmux.SendNotificationBanner(sessionID, msg.From, msg.Subject)
 }
 
 // addressToSessionID converts a mail address to a tmux session ID.
diff --git a/internal/tmux/tmux.go b/internal/tmux/tmux.go
index a303bbf1..dafae159 100644
--- a/internal/tmux/tmux.go
+++ b/internal/tmux/tmux.go
@@ -227,6 +227,22 @@ func (t *Tmux) DisplayMessageDefault(session, message string) error {
 	return t.DisplayMessage(session, message, 5000)
 }
 
+// SendNotificationBanner sends a visible notification banner to a tmux session.
+// This interrupts the terminal to ensure the notification is seen.
+// Uses echo to print a boxed banner with the notification details.
+func (t *Tmux) SendNotificationBanner(session, from, subject string) error {
+	// Build the banner text
+	banner := fmt.Sprintf(`echo '
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+📬 NEW MAIL from %s
+Subject: %s
+Run: bd mail inbox
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+'`, from, subject)
+
+	return t.SendKeys(session, banner)
+}
+
 // GetSessionInfo returns detailed information about a session.
 func (t *Tmux) GetSessionInfo(name string) (*SessionInfo, error) {
 	format := "#{session_name}|#{session_windows}|#{session_created_string}|#{session_attached}"