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Existing-file picker: same-name files appear as indistinguishable options without metadata or previews

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
70/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
typescript
Domain
frontend

Research direction

Start at the table File cell's existing-file picker and reproduce the search with two same-name resources, using the distinct sizes and content markers described. Compare the picker results with global search, then verify that the choices expose enough secondary information or a preview/open action to distinguish the resources before attachment.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

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

Persona: a family historian selecting source transcriptions for an archive record. A student with separate experiments each producing a file named data.csv would encounter the same ambiguity.

Environment: https://app.atomic.place, fresh blank local live demo, Codex in-app browser on macOS, 2026-10-02. Synthetic text files only.

Steps to reproduce
  1. Upload two different text files named register.txt from separate local directories. My fixtures had different content markers and sizes: 183 bytes (ARCHIVE-1900-ADA) and 232 bytes (ARCHIVE-2000-CORA).
  2. Confirm both exist as separate resources; global search can preview their distinct contents.
  3. In a table File cell, open the existing-file picker and search for register.
  4. Try to choose the Cora/2000 register.
Actual behavior

The picker displays two identical file icons and register.txt labels. No size, source context, date, content preview or preview/open action distinguishes the choices. Read-only DOM inspection also found no title or accessible description on either result button.

The files are separate and their contents are correct. The confusion is deciding which result to select, not a filename collision that overwrote data.

Expected behavior

Expose enough secondary information or a preview action to distinguish same-name files before attaching one. Filename reuse is common when collecting files from separate sources or lab runs.

Verified workaround

I opened the correct file through global search, renamed its resource title to Cora register (2000 sample).txt, then searched for that title in the cell picker. It returned a unique result and replacing the attachment worked with the correct resource identifier.

Evidence and related issue

Local screenshot: /tmp/atomic-place-same-name-file-picker.jpg, showing the two identical choices.

Related #2010 concerns a chooser accepting a batch while the cell attaches only the first file. This report concerns distinguishing already-uploaded resources in the existing-file picker.

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