mantra-kmp/docs/README.md

# mantra docs

Notes on the parts of this app whose behaviour is not recoverable by reading the
code alone — where the reasoning lives in a protocol, a failure mode that is
silent, or a decision that looked arbitrary and was not.

| document | covers |
|---|---|
| [shared-key-ceremony.md](./shared-key-ceremony.md) | ChillDKG over NIP-17: the rounds, the approval gates, the chat transcript, participant ordering |
| [shared-key-derivation.md](./shared-key-derivation.md) | deriving further keys from the group's threshold key with FROST tweaks — why not BIP32, why no chain code, and the one rule that must not be broken |
| [subgroups.md](./subgroups.md) | a group making another group — the four ceremonies, what the parent's signature actually covers, and why the child's key is fresh rather than derived |
| [subgroups-multiple-parents.md](./subgroups-multiple-parents.md) | adding a parent to a group that already exists — two signings and no ceremony, why the child's consent is the whole gate, and the certificate a group can truthfully sign about itself |
| [frost-batch-signing.md](./frost-batch-signing.md) | signing several events in one ceremony — why one nonce can never cover two messages, and the phased schema, wire and UI work that follows from it |
| [marmot-membership.md](./marmot-membership.md) | how members join an MLS group, and the epoch race that makes a missing member look like a successful invite |
| [member-chronicle.md](./member-chronicle.md) | handing a member added after the work was done the group's signed record — why the events are not on the wire at all, and why the room's id is enough to verify them |
| [marmot-direct-messages.md](./marmot-direct-messages.md) | a one-to-one message inside a group as a stock NIP-59 gift wrap — what its MIP-03 carve-out costs, why the sender cannot read their own, and the one query that would broadcast it |
| [mls-skipped-keys.md](./mls-skipped-keys.md) | why a group event that arrives a moment late is dropped for good, which flows trigger it, the quartz fix, and the partial mitigation in this app |
| [long-running-sync.md](./long-running-sync.md) | the chat subscriptions that stay open instead of pulling once per screen — why the request queue could not simply hold one, and how the group filter follows the room list |
| [dead-code.md](./dead-code.md) | code in the sync and relay stack that nothing calls, why each piece is still there, and which of it is a bug rather than a leftover |
| [nsec-sign-in.md](./nsec-sign-in.md) | signing in with an existing nostr key — why an nsec can never have a wallet behind it, the ten call sites that make it small, and the sign-in machine that was already built and unreachable |
| [npub-sign-in.md](./npub-sign-in.md) | signing in with only a public key — what a key that cannot sign can still see here, why that is a preview rather than a browser, and the four decisions the word settles |
| [multiple-profiles.md](./multiple-profiles.md) | several profiles on one device — why a profile is a credential and a seed is a wallet attached to one, why a switch is a restart rather than a swap, the two entrances the app lacks, and the inbox a switch would silently lose |
| [jvm-target.md](./jvm-target.md) | what desktop support cost, phased — why the native chain was already done, why an empty source set in our phoenix fork was the real blocker, and why DAO tests need none of it |
| [npub-profile-preview.md](./npub-profile-preview.md) | showing the person before a direct message is started from a pasted npub — why the preview is a screen keyed by public key, what "found" means when a row can be a placeholder, and the phase that makes the button honest about a key package that never comes |
| [chapter-uploads.md](./chapter-uploads.md) | picking files off a device and having the group sign each one in as a chapter — why N files can never be one signing session, and the four things the single-chapter path gets away with |
| [african-dialect-catalogue.md](./african-dialect-catalogue.md) | filling a group's dialects from a bundled catalogue of the languages most spoken in Africa — why a dialect is a language *in a country*, why nothing in the schema makes one unique so duplication has to be stopped at proposal time, and the race two admins hit if the picker cannot see what is already being signed |
| [project-feature.md](./project-feature.md) | bringing the server schema's `project` and its two join models into a group that has no accounts and no server — a creator tag of its own and owners as a signed set of `p` tags, the role the parser has to be told about or every project lands ownerless, why a membership is its own signed event rather than a list, and the kind band that is already double-booked |
| [material-design-conformance.md](./material-design-conformance.md) | what the M3 foundations actually require, measured against all 43 screens — the colour pairing that renders the app's own proposals invisible, and eight phases that put the decisions back in the theme |
| [curated-to-mantra.md](./curated-to-mantra.md) | pulling the Curated fork's thirty-nine commits back under Mantra's names — which lines of work to take, the three decisions, and a measured way to replay a twice-rebranded history without touching seven hundred files by hand |
| [curated-to-mantra-profiles.md](./curated-to-mantra-profiles.md) | the second pull: the fork's several-profiles line, ten commits and its first schema migration — which of it is a fix Mantra has today, who allocates a schema version number when two trees share one history, and the one conflict, which was Mantra's own |
| [curated-to-mantra-preview.md](./curated-to-mantra-preview.md) | the third pull: the profile preview and the extended FAB, eleven commits — a brand token hidden in CamelCase, a commit half in a removed line taken as a partial pick, and the two conflicts the compiler found where git saw none |

Start with the ceremony if you are new to this area; the Marmot notes all assume it.
Read the skipped-keys note before debugging any "the other device never got it"
report — it is silent, and it looks like every other kind of delivery failure. The
sync note stands alone, and the dead-code inventory reads as a follow-up to it. The
batch-signing note is a phased plan that has been built: read it after the
derivation note, whose one rule is the same one it is built around. The member
chronicle note is a phased plan that has not been built, and reads as the
membership note's unanswered half: what a member who joins late can be given,
and the one thing they cannot. The
jvm-target note is unrelated to all of them: it is a build and packaging story.
The subgroups note is a phased plan that has been built; it assumes both
shared-key notes and reads as the ceremony's second half — what a group does
once it has a key, and what it can say about a group that does not yet. The
multiple-parents note is a phased plan that has been built, and reads only after
it: it takes the one assumption that note never had to state — that a lineage is
settled at founding — and finds that dropping it costs less than founding a
subgroup does, because no ceremony is involved.
The Material Design note is a phased plan that has not been built, and is the
only one about what the app looks like rather than what it does; read the
jvm-target note first if you want to know why its adaptive-layout phase exists.
The curated-to-mantra note is a phased plan that has been built, save for its last
phase, which is a decision: it is about the repository rather than the app, and reads
alone, except that its first decision leans on the derivation note's one rule. Two of
the lines it pulled -- the group's nostr identity and the curated lists -- were taken
out again the same day, and its record says what went and what stayed. The nsec and
npub sign-in notes arrived with it and record what they built. The profiles pull note
is the same exercise a second time, planned with its dry run already done and built
the same day; read it after the first, because it assumes the method and the three
decisions and only says what changed — chiefly that the tree is no longer a superset,
and what the check for an exact pull becomes when it is not. The preview pull note is
the third and shortest; read it for the two kinds of resolution the first two never needed.
The nsec sign-in note is a phased plan that has been built; it inherits the
key-storage decision from the jvm-target note and drives the navigation state
machine `NavigationViewModel.processLocalAccount` implements, so read it with the
code open, and read its table of where the build chose differently first.
The npub sign-in note is a phased plan that has been built, and reads as that
plan's out-of-scope note answered: it takes the `Identity` type and the sign-in
machine as given and asks what an identity with no secret is for, before it asks
how to build one; read its table of where the build chose differently first.
The multiple-profiles note is a phased plan that has been built, and reads as the
third of the sign-in notes: it asks what happens when the device holds two
identities, and its first phase changes one rule the other two share — a seed's
key becomes a credential like any other — so read it with `StoredIdentity.merge`,
`SovereignWalletViewModel.switchToIdentity` and the startup screen open, and read
its table of where the build chose differently first.
The npub profile preview note is a phased plan that has been built, and is the
smallest of the plans: it changes the entrance to the direct-message flow and
nothing past it, so read it with `StartDirectMessageToNpubOrNip05Dialog` and
`ChatRoomMessagingViewModel.initiateNewChat` open, its four decisions before its
four phases, and its table of where the build chose differently first.
The chapter uploads note is a phased plan that has been built, and is the
only one that starts from another codebase: it mirrors the mantra.press web app's
multi-file upload under this app's rule that the group, not the uploader, is the
author. Read the batch-signing note first — its three limits are the whole shape
of this one — and read its four-defects section even if the feature is never
built, because each of those is wrong in the single-chapter path today. Its two
splitter phases are separable from the rest and worth reading on their own: what
a chunk is, measured against the parser the web app translates with rather than
assumed.
The African dialect catalogue note is a phased plan that has been built. It is
the smallest of the nip30303 plans and the only one whose hard part is an
identity rule rather than a ceremony: a dialect's id is a content hash including
`createdAt`, there is no unique index, and the rows are quorum-signed, so two
proposals of the same dialect are two rows and neither is wrong by any rule the
schema knows. Read its two framing sections before its phases -- they are what
every phase is built to keep -- and read the batch-signing note first if the
all-or-nothing rule is not already familiar. Its last phase is a fix the feature
makes necessary rather than part of it, which is worth knowing before reading the
diff.

The projects note is a phased plan that has been built as far as its seventh
phase, and is the only one
whose starting point is outside this repository: the platform's server schema,
`mantra-db-models`, has had the three models for years. It reads as the
translation domain's unanswered question — the app can say what a chapter is and
who translated it, and cannot say what any of it is for — so read it after the
nip30303 conventions are familiar, its decisions before its phases, and its scope
fork before either, because that one changes the shape of the rest, and its
table of where the build chose differently first.