6e04f6c7af
Phase 2 of docs/member-archive.md. Two kinds, three tags, a codec and two caps.
Nothing sends or applies one yet -- that is phases 3 and 4 -- so this changes no
behaviour at all.
`ArchiveEvent` (30327) carries a page of the group's signed events, each whole,
keeping its own id, author and signature so the receiver checks it rather than
believing it. `ArchiveRequestEvent` (30328) is how a device with none of it asks.
**Why not one `SubmissionEvent` per event.** The envelope fits and the meaning
does not. A submission is an *act* -- this member is putting this event in front
of this group -- and an archive asserts nothing; it re-delivers what the group
already agreed. On one kind a four-hundred-event backfill is indistinguishable
from four hundred new submissions and every device has to guess which it is
reading. It would also be one inner event and one kind:445 per payload where a
page is one, and the submission arm of `applyInnerEvent` files a chat line per
payload, which an archive must not.
**Why 3032x and not 30313.** 30313 is free beside the nip30303 document kinds
and is not used, on `FrostSigningEvents`' own advice: the DKG's 30310-30316
already overlap that range and are told apart only by living in NIP-17 gift wraps
instead, which it calls "an accident of routing rather than a decision, and the
next family added should not rely on it." This is that next family. 30327 is also
the right neighbourhood on the merits, next to `GroupKeyStateEvent` at 30326 --
an archive is a statement about the record rather than a document kind.
**One list is the apply order and the allowlist both**, because a separate
allowlist is one more thing that can disagree with the order it is applied in.
The order is Room's rather than nostr's: every archivable kind has a foreign key
on the one before it, and kind order is not dependency order -- a dialect (30304)
has to land before an artifact (30300), and a translation chapter (30308) hangs
off a translation artifact version (30306) which hangs off an artifact version
(30301). So it is a list, not a `sortedBy { kind }`, and there is a test that
fails if anybody makes it one.
It is an allowlist first. Verification admits an event to the apply path on the
strength of the group's signature, which makes every kind the group has ever
signed replayable by any member at any time. A `GroupKeyStateEvent` is
group-signed and passes verification perfectly, so an archive carrying an old one
is a validly signed statement about what the room signs with, replayed by whoever
kept a copy. Nothing but this list stops it. The contributor-list kinds (30305,
30307, 30310) are left out on the same principle from the other side:
`applyInnerEvent` has no arm that writes a row for any of them, so archiving them
would cost bytes and restore nothing.
**All-or-nothing parsing, per-payload verification.** These are not in tension;
they answer different questions. A page that will not parse has lost its framing,
and one silently shortened by an element would report a complete archive on its
page count while holding less than it says. A payload whose signature does not
verify is a well-framed page with one bad event in it, and costing its honest
neighbours would let a single forgery deny an entire archive.
**The count cap was 256 and 256 can never fire.** An event carries 64 characters
of id, 64 of pubkey and 128 of signature before it says anything, so the floor is
about 370 bytes and a 64 KB page cannot hold much past 170 of them -- the byte
cap always binds first and the count cap is a check that never runs. Found by
writing the test that a page at exactly the cap still decodes, which failed. Now
128, where both bind something: the count stops a page of many small payloads,
the bytes stop a page of few large ones. That test is what fails if somebody
later raises one number without the other, and the doc comment says they have to
move together.
**The `p` tag is a hint, not access control**, and `ArchiveRecipientTag` says so
where it is defined. The page is an ordinary group message and every member can
read it, which is right, because it is their own history going back to them. What
it decides is who *acts*: a device that is not named applies nothing, since it
already holds the work and re-applying would rewrite every one of its rows to
point at an archive page rather than at the event that introduced it.
`ArchivePageTag` refuses an index outside its own count rather than clamping it.
The pair is how a receiver decides it has everything, so a repaired one would let
a truncated archive read as complete.
Twenty-one tests over the codec, both caps, the allowlist, the order and the
tags. Also corrects the phase-2 section of the plan, which still said 256.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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 |
| 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-archive.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 |
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 archive 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.