Creating a Mentions Function in within Comments Functionality (CMMS Project)

I'm working on building out a CMMS with Vision Windows for my team and as you might be able to tell from the photo, the way to mention someone is a little......clunky. Clicking a username in the list adds the username to a label component below the text area component where the comment goes. It gets the job done, but I need to start planning for MVP+.

I'd like to implement what most team-oriented applications do with mentions and utilize a dynamic popup menu when @ is pressed, while having it drill down as more keys are pressed.

I thought about exploring a keyReleased trigger in the text area component where @ would open a window that would essentially be a list component or something similar, but I haven't explored that option yet (and I don't particularly love the list component).

Anyone tried to tackle this before?

Sidenote: Before I even thought about creating a comments function, I looked up trying to integrate Microsoft Teams on this forum and unless I missed an article, it didn't look like a great option. So this is what I came up with. Any critiques/advice is 100% encouraged.