2 actions - 1 keybinding

[FloppyDisco]

unless i am missing something.

there is not currently a way to have one keybinding execute a sequence of actions.

i see a comment about this in #30410

workspace::SendKeystrokes is a pretty grossly inadequate workaround.

for SendKeystrokes to work the secondary action i want to do must be defined with a keybinding in the current scope.
AND the secondary action must be doing something in the same scope.

for instance, i can use

["workspace::SendKeystrokes", "cmd-a" "cmd-c" ]

because both of them are already keybindings in my editor context, and both actions involve the editor.

however

lets say i want to search the selection in the editor.

 {
    "context": "Editor && mode == full",
    "bindings": {
      "cmd-f" : "buffer_search::Deploy",
  }
},
  {
    "context": "BufferSearchBar > Editor",
    "bindings": {
        "cmd-alt-l": "search::ToggleSelection",
    }
},

i have to press ⌘F and then ⌘⌥L
however i would like to do this with one keybinding.

if i set

"cmd-alt-l" : ["workspace::SendKeystrokes", "cmd-f cmd-alt-l"]

it does not work because ⌘⌥L is trying to do something in a different scope.

essentially.
SendKeystrokes sends everything to the same context. instead of switching context between each keystroke if the keystroke happens to change the context or 'Focus'.

To me being able to pass an actual 'action' instead of a 'keystroke' is a bug, not a feature request.

just some thoughts on it:

there are currently multiple ways to pass an action and arguments.
having multiple ways is confusing and limiting, particularly because you are using an array.

from the docs:

"ctrl-a": "language_selector::Toggle". Some require a single argument and must be bound as an array: "cmd-1": ["workspace::ActivatePane", 0]. Some actions require multiple arguments and are bound as an array of a string and an object: "ctrl-a": ["pane::DeploySearch", { "replace_enabled": true }].

so:

"thing::Action"
// -or-
["thing::Action", <argument>]
// -or-
["thing::Action", {argument_name: <argument>}]

My hunch would be that trying to accommodate this syntax is making it harder to figure out how to support multiple actions... lol.

The array should be used for passing a sequence of actions. not for arguments.
the different syntaxes are necessary for passing different types of arguments, either named, or positional, but i think my suggestion would be to make all actions either a String or an Obj and if the arguments need to be positional or named, make the "args" parameter either a list or an object. that is where it makes sense.

"thing::Action"
// -or-
{
  "action": "thing::Action",
  // positional arguments
  "args": [<argument>]
}
// -or-
{
  "action": "thing::Action",
  // keyword arguments
  "args": {
    <name>: <argument>
  }  
}

then you could use the array for sequences of actions and the actions could either be strings or objects, based on the needs of the particular action.

"cmd-alt-l": [
  "buffer_search::Deploy",
  "search::ToggleSelection"
],

"cmd-y": [
  "thing::Action",
  {
    "action": "thing::ActionWithArg",
    "args": [<arg>]
  },
]

this is more or less how commandsCommands extension works for vscode.
and to me it feels alot more intuitive.

separate question.
anyone know if there is an action to deploy the buffer_search with search selection already on? lol.

[Zertsov]

I like this idea, I'll see if I can get something rough implemented over the next day or so to see how it might work

[FloppyDisco]

amazing!

[Zertsov]

ok I think I got something, there's probably bugs but is this kind of what you envisioned? I haven't tested with actions that take arguments, mostly because I'm newer to this codebase so I'm not aware of every action, so more testing needs to happen, but I've attached a video that does the chained actions you put in the description, and then a silly one that toggles my bottom dock and then opens the outline to show that two distinct actions can be taken sequentially.

Had to do some edits to the keybind loader. I created an ActionSequence and did some hacky stuff to register it as an action in gpui, or at least I think it's hacky. You can check out what I did here, just know it's got some cleanup to do 😭

Screen.Recording.2025-09-10.at.12.22.00.PM.mov

Note that the type checker here doesn't like the new stuff but I haven't found where I'd need to edit to make it happy.

Wonder what the maintainers think of something like this 🤔

[FloppyDisco]

this is great.

feels intuitive and looks like it is working as expected!

[Zertsov]

While my exact PR wasn't merged, this feature did get added! @FloppyDisco