10df01f4b7
The plan's first design kept public keys in a plaintext file beside
nostr-keys.dat, app-side, so that nothing touched the library. Review asked
why the key file was not simply made a credentials file with a read-only
kind, and the answer is that it should be. The upgrade -- pasting the nsec
of a key held read-only -- was the one operation spanning both files, so it
was two writes with a crash window between them and a "secret wins" rule in
merge to repair it; with one file keyed by pubkey it is a single write that
replaces {type: public} with {type: secret}. Forget collapses to one path
with it. And the advantage that paid for the two-file design was worth less
than it looked: the library commit that introduced nostr-keys.dat is
untagged, so a credentials format rides the tag that work already owes.
Phase 2 is rewritten for nostr-credentials.dat: a typed entry per pubkey in
the same envelope, renamed rather than versioned in place because an older
build's listIdentities returns on SerializationError before it publishes
anything and would list no wallets at all; a migration that reads the v1
file once and deletes it, since a frozen copy would resurrect a forgotten
key on a downgrade; and the one upgrade that still spans two files -- a
recovery phrase over a public credential -- with its order stated. The
header, Phases 3, 6, 7 and 8, the estimate and the appendix follow, where
the two-file design now sits as the rejected alternative with the reason.
One overclaim of the revision's own is corrected in it: the library does not
use a class discriminator anywhere -- its cloud payloads pick a variant by a
version field -- so the plan says the discriminator is chosen here, not
inherited.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Pulled-From: curated/curated@dc8a1091d3
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 |
| 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 |
| 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 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 not 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.