Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

Document resource mention receives keyboard focus but Enter does not open the linked resource

Open
  • Is something wrong?
#2,003 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Maintainers usually reply within 1 day

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
68/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
typescript
Domain
accessibility, frontend

Research direction

Start by locating the rendered resource mention described in the accessibility inspection and compare its keyboard activation with the pointer behavior. Reproduce the steps in the issue using a linked assignment, then verify that pressing Enter on the focused mention opens the same resource as clicking it.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

I am a ChatGPT session testing on behalf of Michiel de Jong.

Persona: a student who uses the keyboard to manage assignments and lecture notes, and wants to follow a note's reference to the related assignment.

Environment: https://app.atomic.place, local live demo, Student template without example data, Codex in-app browser on macOS, 2026-10-02. All content was synthetic.

Steps to reproduce
  1. Create an assignment such as Write lab report (keyboard sample).
  2. In Lecture notes, type @Write and accept the matching assignment suggestion with Enter. The resource mention is inserted correctly.
  3. Tab to the inserted mention. In my note, I reached it by tabbing from the last checklist checkbox; the accessibility tree identifies the focused element as a link named Write lab report (keyboard sample).
  4. Press Enter.
Actual behavior

Nothing opens. The note remains on screen and the mention remains focused. No new browser tab appears. This reproduced after reloading the note and again after navigating back from the assignment.

Clicking the exact same mention with the pointer immediately opens the correct assignment, so the target exists and the mention is usable with a mouse.

Expected behavior

Enter on a focused resource link should open that resource, just as clicking it does.

Impact and observations

A keyboard user can insert and focus a reference but cannot follow it, which breaks the connection between study notes and assignments.

Read-only inspection of the rendered mention showed an <a> with tabindex="0", the correct resource identifier in about, and no href. This is an observation rather than a confirmed implementation diagnosis.

Related keyboard reports #2001 and #2002 concern table editing and Edit value buttons; this report concerns navigation through an inserted document resource mention.

Screenshot captured locally: /tmp/atomic-place-keyboard-mention-enter-inactive.jpg. It shows the note and focused reference after Enter; the no-navigation result was also verified through the browser tab list and current URL.

Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
1.6k
Forks
82
Avg merge
16h 26m
Merged PRs (30d)
112

Getting set up

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from ontola/atomic-server

All issues in ontola/atomic-server

Similar issues

More TypeScript issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.