Open folder and Clone from URL change or drop what you typed without saying so #615

Adding a project can quietly do something other than what was typed. Open folder climbs to an enclosing repository, and Clone from URL drops a second copy and keeps showing errors for fields that have since changed.

What was seen

• Open folder… with …/projects/other, a plain folder inside an empty repository at ~/code/ace-study-2, added and selected ace-study-2, two levels up. "Ace never said the folder had been swapped for a parent." It then said "Initialize a Git repository to get started" about a folder that already has .git (no commits yet). The same happened at phone width (^808). On Canary 0.0.51.85 the native panel picked sub and opened open-test, with the full path only in a tooltip (^304).
• Opening a second checkout of a repository that's already a project (projects/other/Hello-World) closed the dialog with no message and changed nothing.
• Clone from URL into projects/other/Hello-World cloned to disk but didn't add the copy as a project, with no toast. The picker still pointed at the first copy.
• gitlab.com/foo/bar left Clone disabled with no reason. The map expects Ace clones GitHub repositories….
• Clone errors ("…already has other files. Choose an empty or new folder.", "GitHub didn't find octocat/… for this host's Git credentials…") stay on screen after the fields change, and long paths run past the dialog's right edge. Once the whole dialog scrolled sideways and hid Cancel. Open a folder keeps a stale "Choose a folder to open as a project" the same way.
• After a commit made outside Ace, the Initialize Git card stayed through a switch to another project and back. Only a reload cleared it (^314).

Steps

1. mkdir -p ~/r/sub && git -C ~/r init, then Open folder… ~/r/sub.
2. Clone https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World to one folder, then again to another.
3. Type gitlab.com/foo/bar into Clone from URL.

Expected: Ace says when it opens the enclosing repository instead of the folder, says "Hello-World is already a project at …" for a second copy, gives a reason for a non-GitHub URL, and clears errors when the fields change.

Rig: web (loopback source host from origin/main, 0.0.53 code); ^304 on mac (Canary 0.0.51.85).

Map: ^302, ^325, ^326, ^314, ^304, ^808.

Found in the 2026-10-22 map study.