The same action should feel familiar wherever a person encounters it. Opening a record, working beside a list and returning from an edit should follow an intentional pattern.
Wildo separates what someone wants to open from how the application presents it. A shared navigation policy handles the ordinary moves; an operation can declare a deliberate exception without rebuilding the surrounding navigation.
Example: Keep a review workflow consistent
A product chooses to open record details beside a collection on a wide screen and in the primary area on a phone. New operations that follow that policy inherit the same movement, while a focused editing action can explicitly use an overlay.
For engineers
A destination is not a panel
The resource registry defines an operation and the context it needs. The layout chooses the transition, such as pushing a destination or opening an adjacent pane. Appearance chooses how that destination is presented. Keeping these decisions separate lets a product change its interaction style without declaring a second resource operation.
| Question | Owning contract |
|---|---|
| What can be opened? | Registered operation or view, including its addressability |
| Where does the move begin? | Navigation request context and source zone |
| How should it move? | Operation or relationship policy, then application defaults |
| Where does it render? | Structural zone or the implicit overlay destination |
| What can a link restore? | Addressable route and its serialized context |
Keep the runtime as the common path
Application shell launchers, resource links and custom controls should enter the navigation controller with the destination’s identity. The resolver combines that request with the active viewport and policy. The controller coordinates stacks and URL ownership; the host renders the resulting destination.
A component that opens its own local panel bypasses this contract even when it looks identical. Use local state for genuinely local interaction. Use navigation when the interaction needs a destination, back behavior, scope reconstruction or a declared placement policy.
The navigation policy guide shows the complete application layout declaration. Resource routes explains how addressability and parent context feed the router. These are complementary declarations, not competing routing systems.
Keep transient and restorable work distinct
An addressable destination can be restored from a link. An overlay or in-place edit is normally transient; dismissing it returns to the underlying work. A hosted pane may serialize its context alongside the host when that route family supports it. Choose the contract before choosing a visual container.