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mantra-kmp/docs
Kgothatso Ngako 0be31803f2 docs: record phase 10, and the deferred decision it carries out
`docs/subgroups.md` was written as ten phases of reasoning kept in the order they
were argued, and phase 4 spent forty lines on why the child's ceremony was *not*
held in the parent's Marmot room -- explicitly so the decision would not be
re-litigated without its price attached. That section is now a shopping list that
has been carried out, so it keeps its argument and gains a pointer forward, and
the three costs it enumerated are checked off one by one in a new phase 10.

The parts of the note that state the old arrangement as present-tense fact are
updated rather than annotated: the three-ceremonies table now reads one room,
three ceremonies, two quorums, and says the thing that needs saying twice -- an
MLS message reaches the whole tree, so a ceremony in the parent's room has to name
who it is with.

Phase 10 itself is written the way the others are, around what fails silently:

- `DkgSession.chatRoomId` stopped identifying a ceremony, and the place that
  matters is `completedKey`'s last fallback, which every member welcomed after a
  group's own ceremony lands on;
- `signingPath` had to admit a Marmot room, which widens the one function whose
  contract is that a path never comes off a proposal;
- the p-tags had to stay on both transports, which is the opposite of what
  `FrostSigningManager` correctly does.

The two sections that argued the old collision -- "The collision this buys" and
"Why a subgroup cannot be the whole group was withdrawn" -- keep their reasoning
and gain the end of it: `(room, parent)` stopped telling two subgroups of one
parent apart, so the lookup moved to `(room, parent, admins)`, and the permanent
half of the refusal disappeared with the derived room. The limitation and the
appendix entry are struck through rather than deleted, since what they were
weighing is why the phase exists.

`docs/shared-key-ceremony.md` no longer says a ceremony runs over a NIP-17 chat.
The participant set is the proposal's p-tags on both transports, and that
distinction is the whole reason it is stated that way rather than as "the group".

`docs/mls-skipped-keys.md` keeps `proposeRitual` in its table of reliable
triggers and now says what changed about it: it reached that table on gift wraps,
where the bug does not apply, and a subgroup's ceremony now rides group events. It
is the entry with the worst consequence -- a ChillDKG cannot finish until every
participant takes part, so one lost round-1 message stalls it permanently for
everybody rather than costing one member a line of chat. That is the thing the
quartz fix in that note is now load-bearing for.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-09-09 16:28:28 +02:00
..

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 ChillDKG over NIP-17: the rounds, the approval gates, the chat transcript, participant ordering
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 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
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 how members join an MLS group, and the epoch race that makes a missing member look like a successful invite
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 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 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 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 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
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
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

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 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.