Learn and Research modes

Nuclei is one app with two workspaces over a shared core: Learn (everything Nuclei has always been) and Research (a workspace for parameter sweeps, reproducible runs, and run comparison). Picking one doesn’t change the binary you downloaded or the kernel you’re talking to — it changes which panels are registered and how Dirac talks to you.

Learn is unchanged and is still the default

Every Research-mode feature is additive and gated. A student who never switches modes sees byte-identical Learn mode — enforced by a panel-registry snapshot test, not just a design intention. If you’ve used Nuclei before v0.6.0, nothing about your workflow changes unless you explicitly switch.

What each mode shows

	Learn	Research
Audience	Students taking a first quantum computing course	People doing quantum computing: multi-file projects, sweeps, hardware comparison
Activity bar	Files, Learning, Challenges, Launch, (Settings) — plus Search/Circuit/Plugins/Hardware/Community behind the experimental-features setting	Files, Experiments, Hardware, Launch, Settings
Lessons, challenges, community, onboarding/playground, educator panels	Present	Hidden entirely
Dirac’s persona	Patient tutor — explains in plain English first, never condescending	Terse collaborator — assumes graduate-level QM, states uncertainty precisely, no hand-holding
uiModeStore (beginner → advanced progressive disclosure)	Governs Learn’s own UI	Ignored — Research is always “advanced”

Panel visibility is computed once, in one place — src/components/layout/panelRegistry.ts’s activityViewsForMode(mode, options) — rather than as scattered if (mode === ...) conditionals through the component tree. Nothing else in the codebase is allowed to re-derive that list.

Switching modes

There is no buried settings toggle. Three surfaces do it:

1. First launch / no project open — a two-card chooser: “Learn quantum computing” (guided lessons, challenges, Dirac as tutor) or “Research workspace” (multi-file workspace, experiments, Dirac as collaborator). Shown before the existing Learn onboarding for first-time users only.
2. Command palette — “Switch workspace mode (Learn/Research)”, under the View category.
3. Status bar — a small Learn / Research pill on the right side of the status bar. Click it to toggle; its color follows the active mode (Dirac purple in Research, dim otherwise).

Persistence

The mode preference is the only new app-level persistence this feature introduces (see reproducibility for why everything else stays in project files). Two localStorage keys:

• nuclei:workspace_mode — the global default: what a brand-new project, or the no-project chooser, opens into.
• nuclei:workspace_mode_by_project — a { [projectRoot]: mode } map. A project you’ve explicitly flipped to Research reopens in Research next time, without changing what other projects (or new ones) default to.

Switching mode while no project is open updates the global default. Switching mode while a project is open updates only that project’s entry — flipping one project to Research doesn’t silently make every future new project open in Research too.

Dirac’s persona per mode

Every Dirac surface (chat panel, error rewriting, narration, ghost completions) threads a persona preamble through src/services/diracPersona.ts’s personaPreamble(mode):

• Learn — reproduced verbatim from the tutor persona that shipped before this PRD: patient, encouraging, explains plain English before math.
• Research — a collaborator preamble: assumes graduate-level quantum mechanics, doesn’t re-derive basics unless asked, is terse, and says “that’s not measurable from this data” instead of guessing.

This is tone and assumptions only. Dirac doesn’t gain new tools or autonomy in Research mode — it can read the active experiment and selected runs (see experiments), but designing or launching experiments autonomously is out of scope here (a later PRD in the series covers an agentic research Dirac).

What Research mode adds

• Explorer, open by default, for multi-file project navigation (this reuses the existing project/file infrastructure — Research mode doesn’t introduce a new file model).
• Experiments panel — list experiments, create new ones, run sweeps, see a live progress indicator in the status bar while a sweep runs. See experiments.
• Runs table and run detail for one experiment at a time, and a compare view across two or more selected runs.
• Hardware and the terminal stay available, same as Learn.

What Research mode is not

• Not a different app build, install, or kernel — one Nuclei, one kernel protocol (v1.1 as of this release — see the kernel API changelog).
• Not available on the web build (/try) in this release — Research mode is desktop-only; the web build only ever shows Learn.
• Not a new persistence layer — experiments and runs are plain files in the project directory, not a database. See experiments for the file layout.