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Help Integration (Route → Help Topic)

This document describes the high-level approach for context-sensitive help: the UI derives a help topic from the current route and uses that topic to open the correct help content.

Why route-based help?

  • Users expect help to be relevant to the screen they are currently viewing.
  • Routing is already a stable “source of context” for the application.
  • A route → topic mapping keeps help integration consistent and testable.

Conceptual model

graph LR Route["Current route"] --> Mapper["Route → Topic mapping"] Mapper --> Topic["Help topicId"] Topic --> HelpUI["Help button / panel"]

Architectural responsibilities

  • The mapping from route to topic is centralized (so it can be updated without touching UI chrome everywhere).
  • The shell determines the active topic from the current route.
  • Shell chrome exposes help entry points (header and/or sidebar actions) using the active topic.

Boundaries

Included: - How the help topic is derived (route-based mapping) - How the topic is passed into shell chrome

Excluded: - Help content authoring, formatting, or storage (documented under the Help section) - Feature-specific help copy (documented with the corresponding feature)

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