Edit Mode silently falls back to dictation in Electron (VSCode) & Chromium (Gmail) — overwrites selection instead of transforming

[ruleslide]

Summary

Edit Mode works in native Accessibility (AX) apps like TextEdit, but in Electron/Chromium apps it just transcribes the spoken instruction and overwrites the selected text with the literal transcript instead of transforming it.

Environment

• FreeFlow 1.1.0 (stable) — reproduced
• FreeFlow Dev build — same behavior
• macOS Sonoma 14.3.1
• Edit Mode: Auto
• Accessibility permission re-granted + app restarted

Steps to reproduce

1. Select text in VSCode (or Gmail in a browser)
2. Trigger the normal dictation shortcut
3. Say e.g. "make this shorter"

Expected: the selection is transformed per the instruction.
Actual: the instruction is transcribed and replaces the selection verbatim.

Works / doesn't

• TextEdit (native AX): works
• VSCode (Electron): fails
• Gmail web (Chromium): fails
• Plain dictation works everywhere.

Notes

Consistent with the known AX limitation — Electron/Chromium don't expose the current selection via the Accessibility API, so the Edit Mode intent resolver falls through to dictation. The clipboard-fallback work in #104 that would have addressed this was closed/abandoned, and there's no shipped toggle or fix in stable or the Dev build. Could a clipboard-read fallback (or a manual Edit-Mode trigger that forces Cmd+C capture) be reconsidered for these apps?