A chapter you can see, in the colour you chose

A chapter did not show until the notebook had a note in it. "Nothing
here" was asked of the notes alone, so a notebook whose only contents
were chapters showed the empty-list panel with the chapters hidden
behind it — making a chapter in a fresh notebook appeared to do nothing
at all. It is asked of every row now, and a notebook with chapters but
no loose notes says so in one line rather than looking like a list that
failed to load.

The colour is chosen while the chapter is being made, in the dialog that
asks for its name. It is what tells one chapter from the next, and
having to right-click a fresh one to say which it is meant two visits
for one decision. Renaming and recolouring afterwards are one entry in
its menu and one write; the server already took the colour on create,
the client simply never sent it.

The word "here" is gone. The line along the top of the pane says which
of the two places you are in, and saying it twice was noise.

Thirteen suites green: 338 browser checks, 241 unit tests.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

readme.md

@@ -440,7 +440,7 @@ docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d --build   # must be running
 | `conflict` | 10 | a late write wins but the state it buries survives as a version |
 | `export` | 21 | the downloaded bytes are real Markdown, ZIP and PNG, unpacked and read back |
 | `organise` | 53 | a hand-made order survives a search; separators hold their place; a note exported and imported comes back whole |
-| `chapters` | 31 | a filed note stays filed across a sync; the notebook's separators survive a chapter being opened; handles appear only while rearranging |
+| `chapters` | 34 | a filed note stays filed across a sync; the notebook's separators survive a chapter being opened; handles appear only while rearranging |
 | `offline` | 17 | a cold page load with the network off still opens notes and searches them — and a note made, written and drawn on offline arrives whole once there is a connection |
 | `sync` | 7 | a PDF written on one device — document, drawing and pinned notes — reaches a second one, which can find it by its contents without opening it |
 
@@ -996,11 +996,17 @@ Three rules that keep the two levels honest:
   the others back untouched.
 
 A note made while a chapter is open is filed there without being moved. A chapter
-is named when it is created, unlike a separator: a separator is a line and reads
-perfectly well unnamed, while an unnamed chapter is a row nobody can tell from
-the next one. Each can be given **its own colour** — the point of having chapters
-is that they are different places, and eight named colours tell them apart where
-twenty near-identical blues would not.
+is **named and coloured when it is created**, unlike a separator: a separator is a
+line and reads perfectly well unnamed, while an unnamed chapter is a row nobody
+can tell from the next one. The colour is in the same dialog because it is the
+same decision — the point of having chapters is that they are different places,
+and eight named colours tell them apart where twenty near-identical blues would
+not. Both can be changed later from the chapter's own menu.
+
+A chapter shows even when the notebook holds nothing else. "Nothing here" is
+asked of every row, not of the notes alone — asked of the notes, a notebook whose
+only contents were chapters showed the empty-list panel with the chapters hidden
+behind it, and making a chapter in a fresh notebook appeared to do nothing.
 
 ### How a chapter opens
 
@@ -1027,9 +1033,9 @@ own separators were filtered out and a drag in that list wrote nothing at all.
 **Which of the two you are in is a separate question again**, because both are on
 screen at once. Opening a chapter puts you in it; pressing in the notebook's own
 list puts you back in the notebook without closing the chapter. Whichever it is
-wears a line along its top and the word *here*, and the + button names the place
-it would make the note in. Before, a new note went into the chapter however far
-away you had since clicked, and nothing on screen said so.
+wears a line along its top, and the + button names the place it would make the
+note in. Before, a new note went into the chapter however far away you had since
+clicked, and nothing on screen said so.
 
 ### A chapter is a row like any other