macOS Finder's 'Copy as Pathname' (Cmd+Option+C) wraps paths in single
quotes by default — '/Users/x/Documents/foo' — and users routinely paste
those quoted strings into the Add Space input expecting them to work.
Other shells and OS file managers do similar things with double quotes.
Today the path is taken via .strip() only, so the literal quote
characters become part of the resolved Path and the validator rejects
the result as 'not a directory'. cygnus reported this on Discord
(2026-05-01) — she had to manually un-quote her paths to register a
new Space.
Fix:
- New api.workspace._strip_surrounding_quotes() helper. Removes only
the outermost paired single or double quotes; preserves unpaired or
mismatched quotes (a path may legitimately contain a literal quote).
- validate_workspace_to_add() calls it before resolution so every
code path that registers a workspace benefits, not just the HTTP
route.
- _handle_workspace_add() also calls it at the route entry so the
blocked-system-path check and the duplicate-detection check both
see the cleaned form.
14 regression tests pin the behavior matrix:
- Unwrapped path unchanged
- Single quotes stripped
- Double quotes stripped
- Whitespace outside quotes handled (trim-then-strip)
- Only outermost pair removed (internal quotes preserved)
- Unpaired / mismatched quotes preserved
- Empty string + just-a-pair edge cases
- Validate_workspace_to_add accepts quoted form for existing dir
4610 tests pass (+14 from this PR), 0 regressions, ~2:27 full suite.
Reported by Cygnus on Discord, May 1 2026.
ff0d25fd0e