Dear ImGui — Fitting More Features

Brainstorm for expanding the Win32 + DirectX 11 dashboard (Gui.cpp / Gui.hpp) without turning the main thread into an unmaintainable monolith.

Current surface (already sketched in code): camera/OD panes, audio waveform, thread terminals, HUD, command palette, timeline, node graph, inspector, profiles, plugin panels, quick controls.

Design principles

1. One data bus, many views — widgets only read thread-safe snapshots; never call long work on the ImGui thread.
2. Commands stay commands — GUI buttons enqueue the same strings as typed / speech (SubmitCommandFromGui / CommandQueue).
3. Docking + layouts — use ImGui docking (and optional imgui.ini layouts) so dense features stay discoverable.
4. Lazy panels — register panels in a catalog; only tick visible windows.
5. Feature flags — match build configs (AI_CPU_ONLY, CUDA, etc.) so panels hide when subsystems are absent.

Information architecture

Suggested top-level: dockspace with named layouts: Ops, Train, World, Math, Debug.

Feature ideas by density ROI

A. Command & control (high ROI)

B. Live telemetry (high ROI)

C. Math lab panels (medium ROI, unique)

Use ImPlot (companion to ImGui) for trajectories; keep samples capped (e.g. 2k points) from ring buffers filled by worker threads.

D. RL / Life / curriculum

E. Worlds & bridges

F. Perception upgrades

G. Agent & Lua studio

H. Accessibility & UX density

How to fit without clutter

1. Panel registry

struct GuiPanel {
  id, title, category, default_open, draw_fn, enabled_fn
};

DrawPluginPanelsWindow already leans this way via _UiRuntime::GetPanels() — extend that registry for first-party panels too.

2. Background workers only

• ODE runs, PINN fit, RL smoke → CommandQueue or std::async
• UI reads shared_ptr<const Snapshot> updated under mutex
• Never block RenderFrame on MySQL or network

3. Progressive disclosure

• Collapsed “Advanced” trees for matrix pads / raw JSON
• Novice layout: Command + Camera + Status
• Expert layout: Math lab + Agents + Bridges

4. ImPlot + tables over free text

Prefer:

• ImGui::BeginTable for OD / catalog / eval results
• ImPlot::PlotLine for trajectories
• Color-coded chips for status

over multi-kilobyte TextUnformatted log dumps (keep those in Terminals).

5. Time budgets

Per frame:

• UI logic < 2 ms
• Texture upload budget for cameras
• Defer spectrogram FFT to audio thread

6. Optional modules

Compile-time:

• AI_GUI_MATHLAB — math panels
• AI_GUI_WORLDS — MC/SE/RC
• AI_GUI_IMPLOT — plot dependency

Keeps Linux/headless builds free of DX11.

Implementation phases (suggested)

Risks

Implementation status (shipped)

Implemented in GuiDashboard.hpp / GuiDashboard.cpp, wired from Gui::RunGui:

Not in this ImGui build: docking branch (ImGuiConfigFlags_DockingEnable). Layouts are presets + free-floating windows instead of a dockspace.

How to use

1. Launch with --gui or --gui-only (or AI_ENABLE_GUI=1).
2. Window title: _AugmentedIntelligence - Dear ImGui Dashboard.
3. View menu → pick a layout.
4. Ctrl+K → command palette (includes math/de verbs).
5. Math Lab → pick model → Run catalog integrate (short in-process plot) or Enqueue.
6. Toasts appear top-right for RSI/eval/math events.

Troubleshooting (--gui does nothing)

Code path: AugmentedIntelligence.cpp → _Gui::StartBackground() → RunGui() in Gui.cpp.