An nsec is a BIP32 leaf of the seed at m/44'/1237'/0'/0/0, and the derivation runs one way, so an nsec can never have a wallet behind it. What makes the feature tractable anyway is that nothing in the app reads the wallet except the nostr key -- ten sites, all the same expression -- so the plan puts an Identity in front of the wallet and gives an nsec an identity with no node behind it. Eight phases: the identity type; a sibling key file in the library under the one keystore alias Android will accept; listing and starting both kinds; the sign-in screen for a phrase or an nsec, deduped on pubkey rather than wallet id; indexer relays and a not-found exit for the sync that today asks one relay and never finishes; recovery for a key with no phrase; tests; rollout. Two findings along the way are recorded as pre-existing rather than new: loadNostrProfile(startupRoute) keys off a Profile row a placeholder account does not have and answers Landing while observeProfile answers the sync screen, and the library's LocalKeyManager.nostrPublicKey() returns the 33-byte compressed key, not a nostr key. Replayed onto Mantra by docs/curated-to-mantra.md: README.md: line-set three-way merge, both sides' additions kept and this commit's deletions applied. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Pulled-From: curated/curated@daae63d5c5
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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
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.
The curated-to-mantra note is a phased plan that has not been built, though its dry
run has: 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.
The nsec sign-in note is a phased plan that has not 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.