Merge branch 'mantra' into claude/marmot-direct-message-type-7a0473

Twenty-two commits had landed on mantra since this branch left it, several
of them in the same files. Merged this way round so mantra stayed untouched
until the result compiled and its tests passed.

The migration had to be renumbered, and this is the conflict that mattered.
mantra is at database version 7 and already has its own 5.json -- for
MarmotInnerEvent.payloadEventId, nothing to do with direct messages. This
branch had also written a 5.json, for a different schema. Resolved by
restoring mantra's 5.json untouched and moving the direct message columns
to an AutoMigration(7, 8) with a regenerated 8.json. Taking either 5.json
over the other would have left every device validating a migration chain
against a schema it was never built from; keeping version = 5 would have
made a v7 install refuse to open at all.

The regenerated 8.json is two ADD COLUMNs and nothing else, same as before.

fromGroupEventResult was restructured on mantra: the kind switch moved into
applyInnerEvent, and a SubmissionEvent envelope now wraps nip30303 payloads.
Took that structure and re-applied the direct message branch ahead of it
rather than inside it -- a gift wrap is not a nip30303 payload to apply, and
what happens to it depends only on whether this device's key opens it, so it
does not belong in a function about applying submissions.

The isUserMessage fix was re-applied to the eight call sites mantra's
version has, up from the six it had here.

ChatMessageListViewModel and ChatRoomMessagingScreen took mantra's versions
with the composer state, the two renderings and the reply action layered
back on.

docs/README.md keeps both new rows and mantra's closing note about the
skipped-keys document.

108 tests pass, up from 50 here and 83 on mantra.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Kgothatso Ngako
2026-09-05 23:45:08 +02:00
72 changed files with 22707 additions and 748 deletions

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@@ -10,5 +10,8 @@ silent, or a decision that looked arbitrary and was not.
| [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 |
| [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 |
| [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 |
Start with the ceremony if you are new to this area; everything else here assumes 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.

194
docs/mls-skipped-keys.md Normal file
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@@ -0,0 +1,194 @@
# Messages are lost when two arrive out of order
A group event that a relay hands back a moment late is dropped and cannot be
recovered. Two messages published in the same second reliably lose one of them.
This is a conformance gap in quartz's MLS implementation, not in this app. What
this app can do about it from outside the library is partial, and is described
at the end.
## Symptom
The receiver stores the kind:445 group event and produces nothing from it. No
inner event, no chat line, no error the user sees. `MarmotGroupEvent` is written
*before* the message is decrypted, so the row survives while everything
downstream of it silently does not:
```
receiver, room 6d8ec3ad ("Frosty (#admins)")
20:36:55 kind 9 chat message decrypted, applied
20:37:34 kind 30321 nonce decrypted, applied
20:37:34 kind 30320 proposal group event stored, no inner event
```
Both 20:37:34 events were published by the same sender in the same
`proposeSigning` call. Every message that arrived on its own decrypted fine; the
back-to-back pair lost exactly one.
Downstream the failure reads as something else entirely. In the case above a
FROST signing session never started on the receiver, because the proposal that
opens one never arrived — leaving a nonce filed against a session that will
never exist. An earlier instance of the same bug dropped a dialect, and the
artifact referencing it then failed a foreign key and rolled back its whole
transaction.
## Cause
MLS is specified to tolerate out-of-order delivery inside an epoch. RFC 9420
§9.1: a receiver that gets generation `N+1` before `N` derives the intermediate
keys and keeps them, so the older message can still be read when it turns up.
Quartz does implement this. `SecretTree` caches them:
```kotlin
// SecretTree.kt
private val skippedKeys = mutableMapOf<Pair<Int, Int>, KeyNonceGeneration>()
fun applicationKeyNonceForGeneration(leafIndex: Int, generation: Int): KeyNonceGeneration {
val cachedKey = skippedKeys.remove(Pair(leafIndex, generation))
if (cachedKey != null) { /* ...replay check... */ return cachedKey }
val state = getOrInitSender(leafIndex)
require(generation >= state.applicationGeneration) {
"Generation $generation already consumed (current: ${state.applicationGeneration})"
}
...
}
```
The gap is that the cache is never persisted:
```kotlin
// SecretTree.kt
fun exportSenderStates(): Map<Int, SenderRatchetState> = senderState.toMap()
fun importSenderStates(states: Map<Int, SenderRatchetState>) {
senderState.putAll(states)
}
```
`exportSenderStates()` returns the ratchet *positions* only. `MlsGroup.saveState()`
calls it (`senderRatchetStates = secretTree.exportSenderStates()`) and
`MlsGroup.restore()` calls `importSenderStates`. So `skippedKeys` exists only in
one `SecretTree` instance's memory.
That would be harmless if the group instance outlived the messages. It does not:
`NostrDao` rebuilds it from stored state for every inbound event and saves it
back afterwards. So the sequence is
1. generation 1 arrives, ratchet advances 0 → 2, generation 0's key goes into
`skippedKeys`
2. `saveState()``skippedKeys` is dropped on the floor
3. generation 0 arrives, a fresh tree is restored with
`applicationGeneration = 2`, the cache is empty, `require` fails
4. the exception is swallowed, the event yields no `ApplicationMessage`
Step 3 is terminal. The key is derived from a ratchet that has moved past it and
cannot be recovered, and nothing asks the sender to resend.
Verified against the published artifact rather than a checkout:
`quartz-1.14.0-sources.jar`, `commonMain/com/vitorpamplona/quartz/marmot/mls/schedule/SecretTree.kt`.
## Why it is not an edge case here
Nostr relays make no ordering guarantee at all, and negentropy reconciliation
hands back a room's backlog in whatever order it likes. Any two messages close
enough together can swap.
Several flows publish in bursts, and each of them is a reliable trigger:
| flow | messages in one pass |
|---|---|
| `FrostSigningManager.proposeSigning` | proposal, then the proposer's nonce |
| `ChillDkgRitualManager.proposeRitual` | proposal, then the host key |
| `MantraDao.addArtifact` | the artifact, then its first version |
| `MantraDao.addChapter` | the chapter, then one per paragraph chunk |
`addChapter` is the worst of these: a chapter with twenty paragraphs publishes
twenty-one events at once, and only the ones that happen to arrive in ascending
generation order survive.
## The fix, in quartz
Carry the skipped keys through `saveState`/`restore` alongside the ratchet
positions.
**1. Export and import them.** In `SecretTree`:
```kotlin
fun exportSkippedKeys(): Map<Pair<Int, Int>, KeyNonceGeneration> = skippedKeys.toMap()
fun importSkippedKeys(keys: Map<Pair<Int, Int>, KeyNonceGeneration>) {
skippedKeys.putAll(keys)
}
```
`MAX_SKIPPED_KEYS` already bounds the map, so the serialised size is bounded by
the same constant and needs no separate cap.
**2. Put them in the group state.** `MlsGroup.saveState()` already writes
`senderRatchetStates = secretTree.exportSenderStates()`; add a sibling field, and
have `restore()` call `importSkippedKeys` next to its existing
`importSenderStates`.
**3. Keep old state readable.** The persisted state is a TLS-encoded struct that
existing installs already hold, so the new field has to be optional: absent means
an empty map, which is exactly the behaviour today. Without that, every device
with a stored group is broken by the upgrade.
**4. Consumed-generation replay protection.** `consumedGenerations` guards
against a replayed message re-using a cached key. It is in-memory too, so it
should travel with the skipped keys or the guard weakens across restarts. Worth
deciding deliberately rather than by omission.
A test worth having with it: save and restore a group between the two messages
of an out-of-order pair, and assert the older one still decrypts. That is the
property, and it is invisible to any test that keeps one instance alive.
### Getting the change into this build
Quartz is **not** a local fork. It is `com.vitorpamplona.quartz:quartz`, pinned
in `gradle/libs.versions.toml` and resolved from mavenCentral;
`settings.gradle.kts` only `includeBuild`s `lightning-kmp-app`. Nothing in this
repository can change it.
There is a full amethyst clone at `~/Documents/development/nostr/amethyst` whose
`SecretTree.kt` was byte-identical to published 1.14.0 when this was written, so
the patch itself is a small delta against a known-good base. Landing it means one
of:
- **Upstream it.** It is a genuine RFC 9420 conformance gap and affects any
client that reloads group state per message, which is the ordinary shape for a
mobile app. Slowest, and the only option that leaves this repo's build
reproducible.
- **Patch the clone and publish to mavenLocal**, then add `mavenLocal()` here and
pin the patched version. Fast, but the build then depends on a patched crypto
library built from one machine's filesystem.
- **Wire quartz as a composite build**, the way `lightning-kmp-app` is. Same
coupling to a path outside the repo, but the source is at least visible.
## What this app does in the meantime
`MlsGroupCache` keeps a room's `MlsGroup` instance alive between messages instead
of rebuilding it from stored state each time, so `skippedKeys` survives for as
long as the process does. The inbound path in `NostrDao` goes through it.
This covers the case that actually bites — a burst arriving in one sync, decrypted
one after another against the same tree — and it is what makes the flows in the
table above work.
It is not the fix, and it is worth being precise about what it leaves broken:
- **A restart loses the cache.** Messages skipped before the app closed cannot be
read after it reopens.
- **Another writer invalidates it.** Sending a message advances the sender ratchet
and saves the room's state; adding a member does too. The cache reuses its
instance only while the stored state is still exactly what it last wrote, and
rebuilds otherwise — dropping the skipped keys at that point, exactly as before.
- **Nothing helps a long reorder.** A message the relay holds back until after a
restart or an outbound send is gone.
The staleness check is what keeps the cache from being *worse* than no cache: a
group that has been overtaken by another writer is never carried on with, so the
fallback is always the old behaviour rather than a diverged ratchet.