workflow: a refused dialog edit is announced twice — the page keeps its own role="alert" copy beside the dialog's #2202

Implementation: FlyBot (ours) — PR follows within 24h. Do not pick up without a pickup-ok comment on this issue.

Written-by: FlyBot Lead
Claimed-by: FlyBot Lead
Claim-Id: c72b3131ad0140a8b3dfd681f98e9d00
Branch: dev/1-single-refusal-alert
Base: 77a6b4d
At: 2026-11-02T16:26:46Z
Owner: Dev-1
Tier: T2

What happens today

A refused Rename / Delete / Create now keeps its dialog and shows the host's sentence inside it (#2193, fixed in the PR that this issue follows). But the page keeps its own copy of the same sentence in a page-level role="alert", so one refusal produces two live-region announcements of the same words.

Measured by FlyBot Test on 3f8e951312ecf1bb9a3c28b30a3358d6df14861d: RENAME_ALL=2, BEFORE_REOPEN_ALL=2, with one of each pair living in the sidebar's .wf-err. role="alert" is a live region — a visual mask does not hide it from the accessibility tree, so a screen-reader user hears the same refusal twice.

This is not the same as "the old node is still drawn but covered": the covered copy is still in the DOM and still announced. The write target of #2193 was "readable inside the dialog"; this issue is "exactly once, in the accessibility tree".

Expected behaviour

One refusal is announced once. Either the page-level copy stops rendering for a refusal the dialog is showing, or it stays in the DOM with aria-hidden="true" — decided by whichever keeps the page's own error reporting intact for refusals that have no dialog. Visual masking is not an answer.

Scope

• plugins/workflow/client.js — the page-level wf-err (the one around :2205-2206 at the tip) and the dialog's copies (:1394, :1408, :1516, :1659) must not both announce the same refusal. The existing refusal and success paths are otherwise unchanged, and a refusal that has no dialog still reports as it does today.
• plugins/workflow/test/client.test.js — the red-first test below.
• docs/subsystems/workflow.md and changelog.d/<this issue>-single-refusal-alert.fixed.md.

Reproduction (red first)

Count role="alert" over the whole rendered tree, not inside the dialog. At the tip, opening Delete and letting the host refuse yields two nodes carrying the same sentence; the test asserts exactly one.

The shape matters and is part of the acceptance: the existing assertions introduced by #2193 all search inside role="dialog", which is precisely why the duplicate was not caught. This test must use the whole-tree helper (alertsOf(settings)-style) and assert:

1. the whole tree carries exactly one role="alert" for the refusal;
2. its text is the host's sentence verbatim;
3. it is inside the open dialog (the dialog is where the action happened).

A second test covers the case that must not regress: a refusal with no dialog open still produces exactly one announcement, as it does today.

Three criteria (binding)

1. In the whole tree — not only inside the dialog — a refusal may carry only one role="alert".
2. A node that is under a mask must be aria-hidden="true" or not rendered at all; visual occlusion alone is not acceptable.
3. The red-first assertion counts alerts over the whole tree shape, never findAll(dialog, …).

Prior art / duplicates

Searched before opening (announced twice, duplicate role=alert, wf-err alert screen reader):

• #2193 — the refusal being invisible inside the dialog; this issue is the opposite face of the same refusal (announced twice), filed while the fix was in review, per the rule that a known gap lives in the issue thread rather than in a pull-request body edited after CI started.
• #1521 / #1522 — a stage control reporting silently; different surface, closed.
• #2187 — the read-only edit surface; unrelated.

No open or closed issue counts role="alert" over the whole tree for a refused Workflow edit.

Acceptance

1. One refusal, one role="alert" in the whole tree, carrying the host's sentence verbatim.
2. The covered page-level node is either absent or aria-hidden="true"; the test proves it through the accessibility-relevant attribute, not through geometry.
3. A refusal without a dialog still announces exactly once.
4. The new test fails before the fix and passes after; plugins/workflow suite green, npm run verify green, arch-docs: OK.