"Command palette" is a flattened term. It can mean Cmd+K in Notion, Cmd+Shift+P in VS Code, Alfred, Raycast, the iOS share sheet, the macOS Spotlight. The good ones all share five details.
1. The hotkey works from anywhere
A palette you have to click is not a palette. Vehla's default ⌥ Space shortcut is global and rebindable. It is designed for the normal places you write and work on macOS: Mail, Notes, browsers, editors, chat apps, and documents.
2. Type-ahead is fuzzy but predictable
"Rewrite — Professional" should be findable as rew prof, rwprof, or pro. It should never be findable as casual. The fuzzy match has to prefer prefix matches, then word-boundary matches, then in-order subsequence matches — in that order, never blended.
3. The first row is always actionable
Hit enter on launch and something useful should happen. Not a settings screen. Not a "pick a provider" prompt. A useful default row is pre-selected so the palette feels ready immediately.
4. Footer hints, not toolbar buttons
↑↓ navigate. ↵ run. / for snippets. Esc closes the result view first, then the palette. All shown in 11-pt mono in the footer. Never a button. Buttons say "this is for mouse users". Hints say "you already know this, but here's a reminder".
5. The escape is generous
Esc closes. So does clicking outside. So does pressing the hotkey again. The palette should disappear faster than you can wonder if you should close it.
What we got wrong before getting right
v0.4 had tabs across the top of the palette — All / Rewrite / Code / etc. They felt useful in the design but were a trap. They forced users into a mode. We removed them in v0.6 and replaced them with badge labels per row. Filtering moved entirely into the search field where it belongs.