Slack Feature Parity — Implementation Plan #9

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opened 2026-04-14 10:50:22 +00:00 by sameh-farouk · 26 comments
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Context

Hero Collab is a markdown-centric collaboration platform built as a Hero OS service. The backend is ~95% complete (65 RPC methods, 18 DB tables, group-based permissions), but the user-facing experience has critical gaps that prevent production use as a Slack alternative.

Current State

What Works

  • Backend: 65 RPC methods across 13 domains (workspace, user, channel, message, thread, document, attachment, room, presence, read cursors, mentions, groups, permissions)
  • Chat UI: Message send/edit/delete, thread panel with replies, emoji picker with reactions, @mention autocomplete, channel creation, DM creation, context menu, keyboard shortcuts, markdown rendering with mermaid
  • Admin Dashboard (Dioxus): CRUD for all entities, metrics, API docs viewer
  • CLI: Full CRUD for all entities + lifecycle management
  • Infrastructure: Unix socket architecture, hero_proc integration, hero_router compatible

What's Broken (before this work)

  • Reaction toggle: toggleReaction() always called message.react first; server INSERT OR IGNORE silently succeeded on duplicates, so unreact never fired
  • Attachment button: Dead button with no onclick handler, zero upload code in JS
  • Authentication: No auth system. User picker is localStorage-based. caller_id is client-sent and optional (bypasses all permission checks if missing)
  • rpc_proxy drops identity headers: req.into_body() consumes the request, losing all X-Hero-User/Context/Claims headers before forwarding to rpc.sock

What's Missing (Slack Feature Map)

Feature Backend Chat UI Status
Auth (hero_proxy integration) Headers extracted but unused User picker MISSING
Unread counts/badges read.mark/get exist Not called from UI MISSING UI
Typing indicators No RPC needed (WS) Placeholder div exists MISSING
Presence (online/away) presence.update/list exist Not wired MISSING
Full-text search No search RPC Channel filter only MISSING
Pinned messages Not implemented Not in UI MISSING
Channel details panel channel.get/update exist Not in UI MISSING
User profile popover user.get exists Not in UI MISSING
Canvases/doc editor document.CRUD exists Empty template MISSING
Huddles (voice/video) room.CRUD (no tokens) No UI MISSING
Mention notifications mention.list/mark_read exist No notification UI MISSING
Channel browse/discovery channel.list exists No browse UI MISSING

Implementation Plan (7 Phases)

Phase 0: Critical Bug Fixes (1-2 days)

  • Database backup before changes
  • Fix reaction toggle + add message.toggle_react atomic RPC
  • Wire attachment button with compose-with-files flow (nullable message_id, workspace-scoped storage paths, pending uploads, attachment_ids in message.send, attachments in message.get/list)
  • Update OpenRPC spec (now 65 methods)

Phase 1: Authentication via hero_proxy (3-5 days)

  • Prerequisites: Install hero_proxy, verify X-Hero-User header end-to-end, add COLLAB_AUTH_MODE feature flag
  • Read X-Hero-User header, map to collab user via new external_id column, inject as caller_id
  • Forward identity headers in rpc_proxy (currently drops all headers)
  • WebSocket authentication
  • Add user.me RPC method
  • Validate user_id matches caller_id in all 14 handlers (9 self-operations + 3 target-other with permission checks)
  • User lookup from hero_proxy users.list RPC for invites
  • Claims-based authorization (optional, layered with existing workspace permissions)

Phase 2: Chat UI Completion (5-7 days)

  • Unread counts & read cursors (backend ready)
  • Typing indicators (via WebSocket relay)
  • Presence indicators with last_seen stale detection (5-min timeout)
  • Improved WebSocket events (all TECH_SPEC types: message.created/updated/deleted, message.reacted, typing, presence, read.updated)
  • Inline message editing
  • Channel details panel (slide-out, like thread panel)
  • User profile popover

Phase 3: Missing Core Features (5-7 days)

  • Full-text message search (SQLite FTS5 + Ctrl+K modal)
  • Mention-based notifications (parse @mentions on send, notification bell + badge)
  • Pinned messages (pin/unpin via context menu)
  • Channel browse/discovery modal

Phase 4: Canvases & Documents (5-7 days)

  • Document sidebar section
  • Functional markdown editor (split-pane, auto-save)
  • Share document in channel

Phase 5: Voice/Video Huddles (7-10 days, optional)

  • LiveKit token generation
  • Huddle UI (audio bar + headphone icon)

Phase 6: Hardening & Polish (3-4 days)

  • Missing DB indexes (workspace_members.user_id, channel_members.user_id, messages.user_id)
  • Input validation, rate limiting, activity log population
  • Error sanitization, CORS policy
  • Pending attachment cleanup (TTL for orphaned uploads)
  • Load testing, monitoring, integration tests, browser compat

TECH_SPEC Divergences

The original TECH_SPEC.md predates hero_proxy, hero_collab_app, and the CLI crate:

  • Auth: TECH_SPEC has no auth model. Plan uses hero_proxy headers (ecosystem standard).
  • Schema: TECH_SPEC shows column-per-field. Code uses JSON blob pattern. Plan follows code.
  • Crates: TECH_SPEC says 4 crates. Actual project has 6.
  • WebDAV: TECH_SPEC requires WebDAV. Code uses local filesystem. Deferred to post-MVP.
  • IDs: TECH_SPEC uses TEXT UUIDs. Code uses INTEGER AUTOINCREMENT. Plan follows code.

TECH_SPEC should be updated after Phase 2. Until then, plan/slack-feature-parity.md supersedes it.

Post-Implementation Updates

Each phase requires updating: openrpc.json (SDK auto-regenerates), CLI subcommands, Dioxus app types, and documentation. External repos: hero_proxy (configure roles/claims after Phase 1), hero_os (verify island after Phase 6).

## Context Hero Collab is a markdown-centric collaboration platform built as a Hero OS service. The backend is ~95% complete (65 RPC methods, 18 DB tables, group-based permissions), but the user-facing experience has critical gaps that prevent production use as a Slack alternative. ## Current State ### What Works - **Backend:** 65 RPC methods across 13 domains (workspace, user, channel, message, thread, document, attachment, room, presence, read cursors, mentions, groups, permissions) - **Chat UI:** Message send/edit/delete, thread panel with replies, emoji picker with reactions, @mention autocomplete, channel creation, DM creation, context menu, keyboard shortcuts, markdown rendering with mermaid - **Admin Dashboard (Dioxus):** CRUD for all entities, metrics, API docs viewer - **CLI:** Full CRUD for all entities + lifecycle management - **Infrastructure:** Unix socket architecture, hero_proc integration, hero_router compatible ### What's Broken (before this work) - **Reaction toggle:** `toggleReaction()` always called `message.react` first; server `INSERT OR IGNORE` silently succeeded on duplicates, so unreact never fired - **Attachment button:** Dead button with no onclick handler, zero upload code in JS - **Authentication:** No auth system. User picker is localStorage-based. `caller_id` is client-sent and optional (bypasses all permission checks if missing) - **`rpc_proxy` drops identity headers:** `req.into_body()` consumes the request, losing all `X-Hero-User/Context/Claims` headers before forwarding to rpc.sock ### What's Missing (Slack Feature Map) | Feature | Backend | Chat UI | Status | |---|---|---|---| | Auth (hero_proxy integration) | Headers extracted but unused | User picker | MISSING | | Unread counts/badges | read.mark/get exist | Not called from UI | MISSING UI | | Typing indicators | No RPC needed (WS) | Placeholder div exists | MISSING | | Presence (online/away) | presence.update/list exist | Not wired | MISSING | | Full-text search | No search RPC | Channel filter only | MISSING | | Pinned messages | Not implemented | Not in UI | MISSING | | Channel details panel | channel.get/update exist | Not in UI | MISSING | | User profile popover | user.get exists | Not in UI | MISSING | | Canvases/doc editor | document.CRUD exists | Empty template | MISSING | | Huddles (voice/video) | room.CRUD (no tokens) | No UI | MISSING | | Mention notifications | mention.list/mark_read exist | No notification UI | MISSING | | Channel browse/discovery | channel.list exists | No browse UI | MISSING | ## Implementation Plan (7 Phases) ### Phase 0: Critical Bug Fixes (1-2 days) - Database backup before changes - Fix reaction toggle + add `message.toggle_react` atomic RPC - Wire attachment button with compose-with-files flow (nullable message_id, workspace-scoped storage paths, pending uploads, attachment_ids in message.send, attachments in message.get/list) - Update OpenRPC spec (now 65 methods) ### Phase 1: Authentication via hero_proxy (3-5 days) - **Prerequisites:** Install hero_proxy, verify X-Hero-User header end-to-end, add `COLLAB_AUTH_MODE` feature flag - Read `X-Hero-User` header, map to collab user via new `external_id` column, inject as `caller_id` - Forward identity headers in rpc_proxy (currently drops all headers) - WebSocket authentication - Add `user.me` RPC method - Validate user_id matches caller_id in all 14 handlers (9 self-operations + 3 target-other with permission checks) - User lookup from hero_proxy `users.list` RPC for invites - Claims-based authorization (optional, layered with existing workspace permissions) ### Phase 2: Chat UI Completion (5-7 days) - Unread counts & read cursors (backend ready) - Typing indicators (via WebSocket relay) - Presence indicators with last_seen stale detection (5-min timeout) - Improved WebSocket events (all TECH_SPEC types: message.created/updated/deleted, message.reacted, typing, presence, read.updated) - Inline message editing - Channel details panel (slide-out, like thread panel) - User profile popover ### Phase 3: Missing Core Features (5-7 days) - Full-text message search (SQLite FTS5 + Ctrl+K modal) - Mention-based notifications (parse @mentions on send, notification bell + badge) - Pinned messages (pin/unpin via context menu) - Channel browse/discovery modal ### Phase 4: Canvases & Documents (5-7 days) - Document sidebar section - Functional markdown editor (split-pane, auto-save) - Share document in channel ### Phase 5: Voice/Video Huddles (7-10 days, optional) - LiveKit token generation - Huddle UI (audio bar + headphone icon) ### Phase 6: Hardening & Polish (3-4 days) - Missing DB indexes (workspace_members.user_id, channel_members.user_id, messages.user_id) - Input validation, rate limiting, activity log population - Error sanitization, CORS policy - Pending attachment cleanup (TTL for orphaned uploads) - Load testing, monitoring, integration tests, browser compat ## TECH_SPEC Divergences The original `TECH_SPEC.md` predates hero_proxy, hero_collab_app, and the CLI crate: - **Auth:** TECH_SPEC has no auth model. Plan uses hero_proxy headers (ecosystem standard). - **Schema:** TECH_SPEC shows column-per-field. Code uses JSON blob pattern. Plan follows code. - **Crates:** TECH_SPEC says 4 crates. Actual project has 6. - **WebDAV:** TECH_SPEC requires WebDAV. Code uses local filesystem. Deferred to post-MVP. - **IDs:** TECH_SPEC uses TEXT UUIDs. Code uses INTEGER AUTOINCREMENT. Plan follows code. TECH_SPEC should be updated after Phase 2. Until then, `plan/slack-feature-parity.md` supersedes it. ## Post-Implementation Updates Each phase requires updating: `openrpc.json` (SDK auto-regenerates), CLI subcommands, Dioxus app types, and documentation. External repos: hero_proxy (configure roles/claims after Phase 1), hero_os (verify island after Phase 6).
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Phase 0 Progress — Complete (not pushed yet)

Changes are on local development branch, pending push:

  • b541818 fix: add atomic reaction toggle and fix reaction bug
  • bc9a843 feat: compose-with-files attachment flow + DB migrations
  • 1bebdee chore: update OpenRPC spec for Phase 0 changes

What was done:

Reaction toggle fix:

  • Added message.toggle_react RPC — atomic server-side method that checks existence and does INSERT or DELETE, returns {action: "added"|"removed"}
  • Updated toggleReaction() in both chat-app.js (Dioxus island) and chat.html (standalone) to use the new method
  • Verified: react → added, same emoji again → removed, again → added

Attachment compose-with-files flow:

  • attachments.message_id made nullable via safe table recreation migration (PRAGMA check pattern)
  • Storage path decoupled from message_id: attachments/{workspace_id}/{attachment_id}/{filename}
  • attachment.upload accepts optional message_id + workspace_id, validates 25MB file size limit
  • message.send accepts optional attachment_ids array, associates pending attachments (syncs both DB column and data blob)
  • message.get/message.list now return attachments[] array (same JOIN pattern as reactions)
  • Frontend: paperclip button wired, file picker → base64 → upload as pending → chips in composer → send with attachment_ids
  • Path traversal protection: filename sanitized in storage path
  • Added external_id column to users table (for Phase 1 hero_proxy mapping)

OpenRPC spec updated:

  • Added message.toggle_react method
  • Updated attachment.upload (message_id optional, +workspace_id)
  • Updated message.send (+attachment_ids)
  • Total: 65 methods

Blocker for Phase 1+

WebSocket real-time sync is broken when accessed via hero_router. The proxy_to_socket function in hero_router:

  1. Buffers the entire response body (resp.into_body().collect()) — kills streaming
  2. Strips the Upgrade response header (line 556 in routes.rs) — kills WebSocket handshake

This affects ALL Hero services with WebSocket, not just hero_collab. hero_whiteboard has the identical pattern (/ws/{board_id} on ui.sock) and would have the same issue.

The WebSocket architecture (UI socket serves WS relay, browser connects via hero_router) is the standard Hero pattern — hero_collab's TECH_SPEC explicitly says it was "learned from hero_whiteboard's proven dual-channel pattern." The issue is in hero_router's proxy layer.

See hero_router issue for proposed fix.

## Phase 0 Progress — Complete ✅ (not pushed yet) Changes are on local `development` branch, pending push: - `b541818` fix: add atomic reaction toggle and fix reaction bug - `bc9a843` feat: compose-with-files attachment flow + DB migrations - `1bebdee` chore: update OpenRPC spec for Phase 0 changes ### What was done: **Reaction toggle fix:** - Added `message.toggle_react` RPC — atomic server-side method that checks existence and does INSERT or DELETE, returns `{action: "added"|"removed"}` - Updated `toggleReaction()` in both `chat-app.js` (Dioxus island) and `chat.html` (standalone) to use the new method - Verified: react → added, same emoji again → removed, again → added **Attachment compose-with-files flow:** - `attachments.message_id` made nullable via safe table recreation migration (PRAGMA check pattern) - Storage path decoupled from message_id: `attachments/{workspace_id}/{attachment_id}/{filename}` - `attachment.upload` accepts optional `message_id` + `workspace_id`, validates 25MB file size limit - `message.send` accepts optional `attachment_ids` array, associates pending attachments (syncs both DB column and data blob) - `message.get`/`message.list` now return `attachments[]` array (same JOIN pattern as reactions) - Frontend: paperclip button wired, file picker → base64 → upload as pending → chips in composer → send with attachment_ids - Path traversal protection: filename sanitized in storage path - Added `external_id` column to users table (for Phase 1 hero_proxy mapping) **OpenRPC spec updated:** - Added `message.toggle_react` method - Updated `attachment.upload` (message_id optional, +workspace_id) - Updated `message.send` (+attachment_ids) - Total: 65 methods ### Blocker for Phase 1+ **WebSocket real-time sync is broken when accessed via hero_router.** The `proxy_to_socket` function in hero_router: 1. Buffers the entire response body (`resp.into_body().collect()`) — kills streaming 2. Strips the `Upgrade` response header (line 556 in routes.rs) — kills WebSocket handshake This affects ALL Hero services with WebSocket, not just hero_collab. hero_whiteboard has the identical pattern (`/ws/{board_id}` on ui.sock) and would have the same issue. The WebSocket architecture (UI socket serves WS relay, browser connects via hero_router) is the standard Hero pattern — hero_collab's TECH_SPEC explicitly says it was "learned from hero_whiteboard's proven dual-channel pattern." The issue is in hero_router's proxy layer. **See hero_router issue for proposed fix.**
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WebSocket Blocker Resolved

The WebSocket issue was not a hero_router bug. hero_router already has WebSocket passthrough support (commit d1632cd — "feat: add WebSocket tunnel support to hero_router", April 13). The locally installed binary was simply built before that commit.

After rebuilding hero_router from latest development branch, WebSocket works correctly:

< HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols
< sec-websocket-accept: T3TQpOmnRqmZUfV9OrgZq2FJw54=

The hero_router issue (#35) has been closed. WebSocket real-time sync is no longer a blocker for Phase 1 and Phase 2.

Note: hero_collab's chat.html had a missing base-path prefix in the WebSocket URL (was /ws/{id}, fixed to {basePath}/ws/{id}). This has been fixed locally (not pushed yet).

## WebSocket Blocker Resolved ✅ The WebSocket issue was **not a hero_router bug**. hero_router already has WebSocket passthrough support (commit `d1632cd` — "feat: add WebSocket tunnel support to hero_router", April 13). The locally installed binary was simply built before that commit. After rebuilding hero_router from latest `development` branch, WebSocket works correctly: ``` < HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols < sec-websocket-accept: T3TQpOmnRqmZUfV9OrgZq2FJw54= ``` The hero_router issue (#35) has been closed. WebSocket real-time sync is no longer a blocker for Phase 1 and Phase 2. **Note:** hero_collab's `chat.html` had a missing base-path prefix in the WebSocket URL (was `/ws/{id}`, fixed to `{basePath}/ws/{id}`). This has been fixed locally (not pushed yet).
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Phase 0 pushed to development

4 commits pushed:

  • b541818 fix: add atomic reaction toggle and fix reaction bug
  • bc9a843 feat: compose-with-files attachment flow + DB migrations
  • 1bebdee chore: update OpenRPC spec for Phase 0 changes
  • b77429d fix: WebSocket base-path prefix and dual-codebase sync

Working: Reaction toggle, attachment upload/download, OpenRPC spec (65 methods).

Known issue: WebSocket connects (101 Switching Protocols via curl) but the browser sees the connection close immediately ("Finished" status, empty response). The WS tunnel in hero_router (proxy_ws_tunnel) may be dropping the connection after handshake. RPC-based features work fine — real-time sync via WebSocket needs further debugging. This does not block Phase 1 (auth) or Phase 2 UI work.

Proceeding to Phase 1 (authentication via hero_proxy).

## Phase 0 pushed to development ✅ 4 commits pushed: - `b541818` fix: add atomic reaction toggle and fix reaction bug - `bc9a843` feat: compose-with-files attachment flow + DB migrations - `1bebdee` chore: update OpenRPC spec for Phase 0 changes - `b77429d` fix: WebSocket base-path prefix and dual-codebase sync **Working:** Reaction toggle, attachment upload/download, OpenRPC spec (65 methods). **Known issue:** WebSocket connects (101 Switching Protocols via curl) but the browser sees the connection close immediately ("Finished" status, empty response). The WS tunnel in hero_router (`proxy_ws_tunnel`) may be dropping the connection after handshake. RPC-based features work fine — real-time sync via WebSocket needs further debugging. This does not block Phase 1 (auth) or Phase 2 UI work. Proceeding to Phase 1 (authentication via hero_proxy).
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Phase 1 (Auth) — Core Complete, pushed to development

Commits:

  • 9077493 feat: Phase 1 auth — hero_proxy header integration, user.me, rpc_proxy forwarding
  • 395cb70 feat: Phase 1E+1F — user_id validation, channel member permissions, auth-aware UI

What was done:

Auth header reading (1A): http_rpc() reads X-Hero-User, X-Hero-Context, X-Hero-Claims. handle_rpc() looks up user by external_id/email/alias, injects as caller_id. Verified e2e: hero_proxy → hero_router → hero_collab_server.

Feature flag (1-PRE-2): COLLAB_AUTH_MODE=proxy|dev env var. Default dev.

RPC proxy header forwarding (1B): rpc_proxy() extracts identity headers BEFORE consuming request body, forwards them to rpc.sock. Previously all headers were silently dropped.

user.me RPC (1D): Returns authenticated user or auto-creates from X-Hero-User. Returns {authenticated: false} in dev mode.

user_id validation (1E): 12 self-operation handlers use resolve_self_user_id() — blocks impersonation when authenticated, backward compatible in dev mode. Channel member add/remove got new permission checks (was zero before).

Chat UI auth (1F): init() calls user.me first. If authenticated, skips user picker. Falls back to dev mode picker otherwise.

Remaining Phase 1 items (deferred):

  • 1C: WebSocket auth (WS connects but drops — separate debugging needed)
  • 1G: User lookup from hero_proxy for invites (nice-to-have, not blocking)
  • 1H: Claims-based authorization (optional enhancement)

Next: Phase 2 (Chat UI Completion)

## Phase 1 (Auth) — Core Complete, pushed to development Commits: - `9077493` feat: Phase 1 auth — hero_proxy header integration, user.me, rpc_proxy forwarding - `395cb70` feat: Phase 1E+1F — user_id validation, channel member permissions, auth-aware UI ### What was done: **Auth header reading (1A):** `http_rpc()` reads `X-Hero-User`, `X-Hero-Context`, `X-Hero-Claims`. `handle_rpc()` looks up user by `external_id`/`email`/`alias`, injects as `caller_id`. Verified e2e: hero_proxy → hero_router → hero_collab_server. **Feature flag (1-PRE-2):** `COLLAB_AUTH_MODE=proxy|dev` env var. Default `dev`. **RPC proxy header forwarding (1B):** `rpc_proxy()` extracts identity headers BEFORE consuming request body, forwards them to rpc.sock. Previously all headers were silently dropped. **user.me RPC (1D):** Returns authenticated user or auto-creates from `X-Hero-User`. Returns `{authenticated: false}` in dev mode. **user_id validation (1E):** 12 self-operation handlers use `resolve_self_user_id()` — blocks impersonation when authenticated, backward compatible in dev mode. Channel member add/remove got new permission checks (was zero before). **Chat UI auth (1F):** `init()` calls `user.me` first. If authenticated, skips user picker. Falls back to dev mode picker otherwise. ### Remaining Phase 1 items (deferred): - 1C: WebSocket auth (WS connects but drops — separate debugging needed) - 1G: User lookup from hero_proxy for invites (nice-to-have, not blocking) - 1H: Claims-based authorization (optional enhancement) ### Next: Phase 2 (Chat UI Completion)
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Post-Phase 1 Fixes — Pushed to development

Commits since last update:

  • eb93d62 fix: switch hero_collab_ui to axum::serve() for WebSocket support
  • a513aed fix: consolidate dual JS codebase, image previews, message ordering, soft-delete filtering
  • 3c9645f fix: include attachments in message.send response for immediate preview
  • 5dc9417 fix: export missing global functions (selectChannel, startDm, pickUser, etc.)

WebSocket Fixed

Root cause: hero_collab_ui used manual hyper::server::conn::http1::Builder which didn't properly propagate WebSocket upgrades through hero_router's tunnel. Switched to axum::serve() (same as hero_proc_ui which has working WebSocket). Connection now stays open — "Connected" status in sidebar.

Dual Codebase Consolidated

  • Removed 1,655 lines of duplicated inline JavaScript from chat.html
  • chat.html is now a pure HTML template that loads chat-app.js via <script src>
  • Single source of truth — no more double-fixing bugs in both files
  • All onclick-referenced functions exported on window.* for HTML handlers
  • Auth detection (user.me call) added to chat-app.js (was only in the deleted inline copy)

Bug Fixes

  • Image attachment preview: Photos now render inline with async base64 loading. Previously showed "(attachment)" text.
  • Message ordering: message.list results reversed from DESC to chronological order. Messages now appear in same order before and after refresh.
  • Soft-delete filtering: Deleted messages filtered from message.list results (was showing deleted messages after refresh).
  • Attachment in send response: message.send now includes attachments[] in response so image previews appear immediately, not just after refresh.
  • Empty content for attachment-only messages: Server accepts empty content string.

Current state

All Phase 0 + Phase 1 core features working:

  • Reaction toggle, file attachments with image preview, WebSocket real-time sync
  • hero_proxy auth integration (X-Hero-User header reading, caller_id injection, user.me auto-create)
  • user_id validation (impersonation blocked), channel member permission checks
  • Single JS codebase, correct message ordering, proper soft-delete

Ready for Phase 2 (Chat UI Completion): unread counts, typing indicators, presence, inline editing.

## Post-Phase 1 Fixes — Pushed to development Commits since last update: - `eb93d62` fix: switch hero_collab_ui to axum::serve() for WebSocket support - `a513aed` fix: consolidate dual JS codebase, image previews, message ordering, soft-delete filtering - `3c9645f` fix: include attachments in message.send response for immediate preview - `5dc9417` fix: export missing global functions (selectChannel, startDm, pickUser, etc.) ### WebSocket Fixed Root cause: hero_collab_ui used manual `hyper::server::conn::http1::Builder` which didn't properly propagate WebSocket upgrades through hero_router's tunnel. Switched to `axum::serve()` (same as hero_proc_ui which has working WebSocket). Connection now stays open — "Connected" status in sidebar. ### Dual Codebase Consolidated - Removed **1,655 lines** of duplicated inline JavaScript from `chat.html` - `chat.html` is now a pure HTML template that loads `chat-app.js` via `<script src>` - Single source of truth — no more double-fixing bugs in both files - All onclick-referenced functions exported on `window.*` for HTML handlers - Auth detection (`user.me` call) added to `chat-app.js` (was only in the deleted inline copy) ### Bug Fixes - **Image attachment preview:** Photos now render inline with async base64 loading. Previously showed "(attachment)" text. - **Message ordering:** `message.list` results reversed from DESC to chronological order. Messages now appear in same order before and after refresh. - **Soft-delete filtering:** Deleted messages filtered from `message.list` results (was showing deleted messages after refresh). - **Attachment in send response:** `message.send` now includes `attachments[]` in response so image previews appear immediately, not just after refresh. - **Empty content for attachment-only messages:** Server accepts empty content string. ### Current state All Phase 0 + Phase 1 core features working: - Reaction toggle, file attachments with image preview, WebSocket real-time sync - hero_proxy auth integration (X-Hero-User header reading, caller_id injection, user.me auto-create) - user_id validation (impersonation blocked), channel member permission checks - Single JS codebase, correct message ordering, proper soft-delete **Ready for Phase 2 (Chat UI Completion):** unread counts, typing indicators, presence, inline editing.
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Comprehensive Review Complete — Fixes Pushed

Ran a full code review of all Phase 0+1 work. Found 12 issues, fixed the critical ones:

Fixed (pushed):

  • cb781efuser.me race condition: concurrent calls for new user could create duplicates. Fixed with existence check inside lock + INSERT OR IGNORE.
  • cb781ef — Send button stayed disabled when files attached but no text typed. Fixed button logic to check state.pendingAttachments.length.
  • 17059e4 — DM functions (pickDmUser, dmSearchKey, filterDmUsers) not exported to window after IIFE consolidation. Caused ReferenceError when clicking DM autocomplete entries.

Accepted (not blocking):

  • Dev mode default is intentionally insecure (logged at startup, production needs COLLAB_AUTH_MODE=proxy)
  • Soft-delete filter is post-fetch in Rust (perf, not correctness)
  • rpc_proxy always returns HTTP 200 (works for JSON-RPC)
  • toggle_react TOCTOU (safe under current Mutex)
  • Lock held across attachment loop (SQLite is single-writer anyway)

Review verified working:

  • Reaction toggle (add/remove/add cycle)
  • user.me (unauthenticated → null, authenticated → user, auto-create)
  • Impersonation blocked (user_id mismatch error)
  • WebSocket 101 handshake
  • Message ordering (chronological)
  • Soft-delete filtering

Starting Phase 2 (Chat UI Completion).

## Comprehensive Review Complete — Fixes Pushed Ran a full code review of all Phase 0+1 work. Found 12 issues, fixed the critical ones: **Fixed (pushed):** - `cb781ef` — `user.me` race condition: concurrent calls for new user could create duplicates. Fixed with existence check inside lock + INSERT OR IGNORE. - `cb781ef` — Send button stayed disabled when files attached but no text typed. Fixed button logic to check `state.pendingAttachments.length`. - `17059e4` — DM functions (`pickDmUser`, `dmSearchKey`, `filterDmUsers`) not exported to `window` after IIFE consolidation. Caused ReferenceError when clicking DM autocomplete entries. **Accepted (not blocking):** - Dev mode default is intentionally insecure (logged at startup, production needs `COLLAB_AUTH_MODE=proxy`) - Soft-delete filter is post-fetch in Rust (perf, not correctness) - rpc_proxy always returns HTTP 200 (works for JSON-RPC) - toggle_react TOCTOU (safe under current Mutex) - Lock held across attachment loop (SQLite is single-writer anyway) **Review verified working:** - Reaction toggle (add/remove/add cycle) - user.me (unauthenticated → null, authenticated → user, auto-create) - Impersonation blocked (user_id mismatch error) - WebSocket 101 handshake - Message ordering (chronological) - Soft-delete filtering **Starting Phase 2 (Chat UI Completion).**
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Phase 2 Complete + Security Fixes — Pushed

Commits since Phase 1 update:

Phase 2 features:

  • e76b5ca feat: Phase 2A-D — unread counts, typing indicators, presence, WebSocket events
  • 1c5f7f6 fix: Phase 2 review — WS broadcast, sendBeacon, typing cleanup, heartbeat leak

Review fixes:

  • edd697f fix: gate delete button to message owner, filter deleted messages in get
  • 17059e4 fix: export missing DM functions (pickDmUser, dmSearchKey, filterDmUsers)
  • cb781ef fix: review fixes — user.me race condition, send button with attachments

Security fixes:

  • 9897044 fix: path traversal protection in storage, channel membership check on attachments
  • 88ec970 feat: WebSocket auth — extract X-Hero-User on WS upgrade (Phase 1C)
  • b58cfe0 docs: add known deferred issues section to plan

Phase 2 features working:

  • Unread counts: Red badge on channels with unread messages, cleared on select
  • Typing indicators: "X is typing..." via WebSocket, debounced 3s, cleared on channel switch
  • Presence: last_seen timestamp, 5-min stale detection, 60s heartbeat, sendBeacon offline
  • WebSocket events: message.created/updated/deleted, message.reacted, typing.start/stop

Security hardening done:

  • Path traversal blocked in storage (canonicalization + base_path check)
  • Attachment get/delete checks channel membership
  • Delete button only shown to message author
  • message.get returns error for soft-deleted messages
  • WebSocket extracts X-Hero-User from upgrade request (Phase 1C — was deferred, now done)

Ecosystem research on WebSocket auth:

Checked hero_whiteboard and hero_proc — neither checks auth on WebSocket connections. The Hero pattern is: WebSocket relays are unauthenticated broadcast pipes, auth happens at hero_proxy edge. Our implementation (extracting X-Hero-User + logging) is ahead of the ecosystem standard.

Remaining deferred (Phase 6):

  • N+1 unread queries (perf — needs server-side batch RPC)
  • Attachment ownership validation (needs schema change)
  • hero_proxy user lookup for invites (UX enhancement)
  • Claims-based auth (optional enhancement)

Ready for Phase 3 (search, notifications, pins, channel browse).

## Phase 2 Complete + Security Fixes — Pushed Commits since Phase 1 update: **Phase 2 features:** - `e76b5ca` feat: Phase 2A-D — unread counts, typing indicators, presence, WebSocket events - `1c5f7f6` fix: Phase 2 review — WS broadcast, sendBeacon, typing cleanup, heartbeat leak **Review fixes:** - `edd697f` fix: gate delete button to message owner, filter deleted messages in get - `17059e4` fix: export missing DM functions (pickDmUser, dmSearchKey, filterDmUsers) - `cb781ef` fix: review fixes — user.me race condition, send button with attachments **Security fixes:** - `9897044` fix: path traversal protection in storage, channel membership check on attachments - `88ec970` feat: WebSocket auth — extract X-Hero-User on WS upgrade (Phase 1C) - `b58cfe0` docs: add known deferred issues section to plan ### Phase 2 features working: - **Unread counts:** Red badge on channels with unread messages, cleared on select - **Typing indicators:** "X is typing..." via WebSocket, debounced 3s, cleared on channel switch - **Presence:** last_seen timestamp, 5-min stale detection, 60s heartbeat, sendBeacon offline - **WebSocket events:** message.created/updated/deleted, message.reacted, typing.start/stop ### Security hardening done: - Path traversal blocked in storage (canonicalization + base_path check) - Attachment get/delete checks channel membership - Delete button only shown to message author - message.get returns error for soft-deleted messages - WebSocket extracts X-Hero-User from upgrade request (Phase 1C — was deferred, now done) ### Ecosystem research on WebSocket auth: Checked hero_whiteboard and hero_proc — neither checks auth on WebSocket connections. The Hero pattern is: WebSocket relays are unauthenticated broadcast pipes, auth happens at hero_proxy edge. Our implementation (extracting X-Hero-User + logging) is ahead of the ecosystem standard. ### Remaining deferred (Phase 6): - N+1 unread queries (perf — needs server-side batch RPC) - Attachment ownership validation (needs schema change) - hero_proxy user lookup for invites (UX enhancement) - Claims-based auth (optional enhancement) **Ready for Phase 3 (search, notifications, pins, channel browse).**
Author
Member

Deferred Items Resolved — Only 3 remain

Previously deferred 5 items from Phase 1+2 reviews. Resolved 2 more:

Now complete:

  • 1C: WebSocket authws_handler extracts X-Hero-User, calls user.me + channel.member.list via rpc.sock to verify channel membership. Non-members get 403 Forbidden. Dev mode (no auth header) still allows connections for backward compat. Goes beyond hero_whiteboard and hero_proc which have zero WS auth. (88ec970, 43dd7f9)
  • Path traversalLocalBackend.full_path() now canonicalizes paths and rejects traversal attempts. (9897044)
  • Attachment access controlattachment.get/delete check channel membership via check_attachment_access(). (9897044)
  • Delete button gated — Only shown to message author. (edd697f)
  • Soft-delete in message.get — Returns error for deleted messages. (edd697f)

Still deferred (Phase 6):

  • N+1 unread queries (perf — needs server-side batch RPC)
  • Attachment ownership validation (needs uploaded_by column + schema change)
  • Claims-based auth enhancement (optional, hero_collab's group/rights system handles workspace perms)

Starting Phase 3 (search, notifications, pins, channel browse).

## Deferred Items Resolved — Only 3 remain Previously deferred 5 items from Phase 1+2 reviews. Resolved 2 more: **Now complete:** - ✅ **1C: WebSocket auth** — `ws_handler` extracts `X-Hero-User`, calls `user.me` + `channel.member.list` via rpc.sock to verify channel membership. Non-members get 403 Forbidden. Dev mode (no auth header) still allows connections for backward compat. Goes beyond hero_whiteboard and hero_proc which have zero WS auth. (`88ec970`, `43dd7f9`) - ✅ **Path traversal** — `LocalBackend.full_path()` now canonicalizes paths and rejects traversal attempts. (`9897044`) - ✅ **Attachment access control** — `attachment.get/delete` check channel membership via `check_attachment_access()`. (`9897044`) - ✅ **Delete button gated** — Only shown to message author. (`edd697f`) - ✅ **Soft-delete in message.get** — Returns error for deleted messages. (`edd697f`) **Still deferred (Phase 6):** - N+1 unread queries (perf — needs server-side batch RPC) - Attachment ownership validation (needs `uploaded_by` column + schema change) - Claims-based auth enhancement (optional, hero_collab's group/rights system handles workspace perms) **Starting Phase 3 (search, notifications, pins, channel browse).**
Author
Member

Phase 3 Complete — Pushed to development

Initial implementation:

  • 9f774be feat: Phase 3 — search, notifications, pins, channel browse

Production hardening (13 issues fixed from code review):

  • b6e3948 fix: Phase 3 production hardening — 13 issues from code review

OpenRPC spec updated:

  • 33e00b6 chore: update OpenRPC spec — 70 methods (was 65)

Phase 3 features:

3A. Full-text search:

  • SQLite FTS5 virtual table, synced on send/update/delete
  • FTS backfill for pre-existing messages on startup
  • Query sanitized (double-quote wrapping prevents FTS syntax injection)
  • Search joins channel_members for access control
  • Ctrl+K opens search modal with debounced results

3B. Mention notifications:

  • @username/@alias parsed on message.send via regex
  • Mentions stored in DB with sender_id, channel_id, content
  • mention.list returns sender_name (JOIN users), proper mention ID
  • Notification bell icon with unread badge (polls every 30s)
  • Dropdown with mention list, click to navigate, mark-read

3C. Pinned messages:

  • message.pin/unpin/list_pinned RPC methods
  • Pin/unpin requires channel membership
  • list_pinned uses json_extract SQL filter (not O(N) Rust scan)
  • Pin toggle in right-click context menu
  • Pin icon in channel header opens pinned messages panel

3D. Channel browse/discovery:

  • Browse modal shows all public channels with Join button
  • Correct membership comparison with Number() type safety

Review hardening (13 fixes):

FTS sync on edit/delete, FTS query sanitization, FTS backfill, notification interval leak, sender_name in mentions, mention ID from PK not blob, list_pinned SQL filter, pin permission check, search access control, mention LIMIT, json_extract for name lookup, ID type safety

OpenRPC spec: 70 methods. Ready for Phase 4 (Canvases & Documents).

## Phase 3 Complete — Pushed to development **Initial implementation:** - `9f774be` feat: Phase 3 — search, notifications, pins, channel browse **Production hardening (13 issues fixed from code review):** - `b6e3948` fix: Phase 3 production hardening — 13 issues from code review **OpenRPC spec updated:** - `33e00b6` chore: update OpenRPC spec — 70 methods (was 65) ### Phase 3 features: **3A. Full-text search:** - SQLite FTS5 virtual table, synced on send/update/delete - FTS backfill for pre-existing messages on startup - Query sanitized (double-quote wrapping prevents FTS syntax injection) - Search joins channel_members for access control - Ctrl+K opens search modal with debounced results **3B. Mention notifications:** - @username/@alias parsed on message.send via regex - Mentions stored in DB with sender_id, channel_id, content - mention.list returns sender_name (JOIN users), proper mention ID - Notification bell icon with unread badge (polls every 30s) - Dropdown with mention list, click to navigate, mark-read **3C. Pinned messages:** - message.pin/unpin/list_pinned RPC methods - Pin/unpin requires channel membership - list_pinned uses json_extract SQL filter (not O(N) Rust scan) - Pin toggle in right-click context menu - Pin icon in channel header opens pinned messages panel **3D. Channel browse/discovery:** - Browse modal shows all public channels with Join button - Correct membership comparison with Number() type safety ### Review hardening (13 fixes): FTS sync on edit/delete, FTS query sanitization, FTS backfill, notification interval leak, sender_name in mentions, mention ID from PK not blob, list_pinned SQL filter, pin permission check, search access control, mention LIMIT, json_extract for name lookup, ID type safety **OpenRPC spec: 70 methods.** Ready for Phase 4 (Canvases & Documents).
Author
Member

UX Polish Round — Pushed

Multiple UX fixes after hands-on testing:

  • e0dc5fc Pin button in hover bar, editor 404 fix, thread composer buttons
  • e2ce56d Thread hover actions, emoji/attachment context-awareness
  • 56d2b73 Thread-aware emoji, attachments, pin, delete, reactions
  • 979c3c3 Soft-delete in thread.replies, pending attachment targeting
  • 613cd88 Proper separation of main and thread composer state (no workaround)
  • 70bbd11 Emoji picker positioned near triggering button
  • 5fd5d68 Thread reactions, inline editing, scroll to new message
  • d318235 Emoji picker viewport-aware positioning

Key improvements:

  • Pin button visible in message hover bar (was only in right-click menu)
  • Inline message editing (textarea + Save/Cancel) replaces separate editor tab
  • Thread composer has its own separate attachment and emoji state (no shared global)
  • Emoji picker positions near whichever button triggered it, clamped to viewport
  • Thread replies: soft-delete filtering, attachment rendering, reactions, hover actions
  • Scroll to bottom on new message send

OpenRPC: 70 methods. Starting Phase 4 (Canvases).

## UX Polish Round — Pushed Multiple UX fixes after hands-on testing: - `e0dc5fc` Pin button in hover bar, editor 404 fix, thread composer buttons - `e2ce56d` Thread hover actions, emoji/attachment context-awareness - `56d2b73` Thread-aware emoji, attachments, pin, delete, reactions - `979c3c3` Soft-delete in thread.replies, pending attachment targeting - `613cd88` Proper separation of main and thread composer state (no workaround) - `70bbd11` Emoji picker positioned near triggering button - `5fd5d68` Thread reactions, inline editing, scroll to new message - `d318235` Emoji picker viewport-aware positioning **Key improvements:** - Pin button visible in message hover bar (was only in right-click menu) - Inline message editing (textarea + Save/Cancel) replaces separate editor tab - Thread composer has its own separate attachment and emoji state (no shared global) - Emoji picker positions near whichever button triggered it, clamped to viewport - Thread replies: soft-delete filtering, attachment rendering, reactions, hover actions - Scroll to bottom on new message send **OpenRPC: 70 methods. Starting Phase 4 (Canvases).**
Author
Member

Phase 4 Research Complete — Architecture Redesigned

What changed

Original Phase 4 plan used Editor.js + last-write-wins per block. After research and verification, completely redesigned to use CRDT for proper real-time collaboration.

Research conducted

Open-source alternatives studied: Mattermost/Focalboard (block model), Zulip (event queues), Conduit (Rust Matrix), Rocket.Chat, Element/Matrix.

CRDT library evaluation (Rust):

Library Downloads Verdict
yrs (Yjs Rust) 1.3M Selected — wire-compatible with browser Yjs, pure Rust
Loro 97K Newer, smaller ecosystem
Automerge ~50K WASM JS dependency, harder CDN

Editor evaluation:

Editor Yjs support Verdict
Editor.js No bindings Rejected
Tiptap Native collaboration extension Selected

Verified against actual code and crates

  • yrs v0.25.0 compiles with our Rust 2024 edition
  • yrs-axum crate exists with working WebSocket examples
  • Tiptap works from CDN (esm.sh) — no bundler needed, vanilla JS
  • Tiptap collaboration extension provides real-time cursors
  • yrs persistence: encode_state_as_update_v1() → BLOB → SQLite
  • Current WS relay only handles Text (String broadcast) — canvas needs separate binary handler
  • Editor.js has NO Yjs bindings — cannot do CRDT collaboration

New architecture

Browser (Tiptap + Yjs)
    ↕ Binary WebSocket (yrs sync protocol)
hero_collab_ui (/ws/canvas/{id})
    ↕ yrs::Doc in memory per canvas
    ↕ Periodic BLOB flush to SQLite
hero_collab_server — canvas metadata CRUD (6 RPC methods)

Key difference from original plan:

  • No canvas_blocks table — yrs handles document structure as a CRDT
  • No last-write-wins — CRDT merges all edits automatically
  • Collaborative cursors built-in (see other users' positions)
  • Fewer RPC methods (6 metadata methods, no block CRUD — handled by CRDT sync)

What's NOT changing

  • Existing document.* system stays for simple markdown files
  • Canvas sidebar integration in chat UI (same plan)
  • [canvas:{id}] message cards (same plan)
  • Canvas collaborator permissions (same plan)

Plan updated and synced to plan/slack-feature-parity.md. Ready to implement.

## Phase 4 Research Complete — Architecture Redesigned ### What changed Original Phase 4 plan used Editor.js + last-write-wins per block. After research and verification, **completely redesigned** to use CRDT for proper real-time collaboration. ### Research conducted **Open-source alternatives studied:** Mattermost/Focalboard (block model), Zulip (event queues), Conduit (Rust Matrix), Rocket.Chat, Element/Matrix. **CRDT library evaluation (Rust):** | Library | Downloads | Verdict | |---|---|---| | **yrs** (Yjs Rust) | 1.3M | **Selected** — wire-compatible with browser Yjs, pure Rust | | Loro | 97K | Newer, smaller ecosystem | | Automerge | ~50K | WASM JS dependency, harder CDN | **Editor evaluation:** | Editor | Yjs support | Verdict | |---|---|---| | Editor.js | **No bindings** | **Rejected** | | **Tiptap** | **Native** collaboration extension | **Selected** | ### Verified against actual code and crates - ✅ yrs v0.25.0 compiles with our Rust 2024 edition - ✅ yrs-axum crate exists with working WebSocket examples - ✅ Tiptap works from CDN (`esm.sh`) — no bundler needed, vanilla JS - ✅ Tiptap collaboration extension provides real-time cursors - ✅ yrs persistence: `encode_state_as_update_v1()` → BLOB → SQLite - ❌ Current WS relay only handles Text (String broadcast) — canvas needs separate binary handler - ❌ Editor.js has NO Yjs bindings — cannot do CRDT collaboration ### New architecture ``` Browser (Tiptap + Yjs) ↕ Binary WebSocket (yrs sync protocol) hero_collab_ui (/ws/canvas/{id}) ↕ yrs::Doc in memory per canvas ↕ Periodic BLOB flush to SQLite hero_collab_server — canvas metadata CRUD (6 RPC methods) ``` **Key difference from original plan:** - No `canvas_blocks` table — yrs handles document structure as a CRDT - No last-write-wins — CRDT merges all edits automatically - Collaborative cursors built-in (see other users' positions) - Fewer RPC methods (6 metadata methods, no block CRUD — handled by CRDT sync) ### What's NOT changing - Existing `document.*` system stays for simple markdown files - Canvas sidebar integration in chat UI (same plan) - `[canvas:{id}]` message cards (same plan) - Canvas collaborator permissions (same plan) Plan updated and synced to `plan/slack-feature-parity.md`. Ready to implement.
Author
Member

Phase 4 Complete + Extended UX Redesign — Pushed to development

Phase 4 Core (Canvas Collaborative Editing)

Backend (11 RPC methods):

  • DB: canvases, canvas_state (yrs CRDT BLOB), canvas_collaborators
  • canvas.create/get/list/update/delete/share/unshare/update_role/get_preview/save_state/load_state
  • channel.find_dm — proper DM lookup by participant IDs
  • y-sync protocol: SyncStep1/2 handshake, Update broadcast, Awareness relay
  • Memory eviction on last WebSocket disconnect

Frontend:

  • Tiptap rich text editor + Yjs Collaboration + CollaborationCursor
  • Vendored 474KB bundle (no CDN) via scripts/vendor-bundle/build.sh
  • Canvas page at /canvas/{id} with toolbar, title editing, undo/redo
  • Canvas user picker in dev mode

OpenRPC: 82 methods. CLI: full canvas subcommands.

Extended Phase 4 — Slack-aligned UX

Share modal:

  • Role management (editor/viewer dropdown + remove per collaborator)
  • Share with user → auto-sends DM with canvas card
  • Share to channel → posts canvas card message
  • Copy link button

Canvas in chat:

  • Canvas picker button in both main + thread composers
  • Rich cards: [canvas:ID] → async hydration showing title, creator, timestamp
  • Session-level cache

Sidebar: creator name, relative time, shared indicator, right-click context menu (Open, Copy link, Delete)

Collaborator bar: colored avatar circles via awareness protocol

Security (3 audit rounds, 19 issues fixed)

  • Viewer WS enforcement (server drops edits from viewers)
  • Fail-closed auth in production mode
  • save_state/load_state access control
  • Mermaid securityLevel: strict (was loose — XSS)
  • Marked HTML escaping
  • Lock-order deadlock fix
  • TOCTOU race fix on canvas doc creation
  • DM lookup by participant IDs (not names)
  • Public canvas → viewer-only at WS layer
  • New user auto-creation before canvas access
  • Delete/share buttons hidden for non-owners/viewers

Chat Architecture Refactor

  • Targeted DOM updates: reactions, edits, deletes, WS messages update individual elements (no full re-render)
  • CSS flex-direction: column-reverse: scroll pins to bottom automatically — no JS hacks, images loading async do not affect scroll

Commits (21):

06911fb chore: add channel.find_dm to OpenRPC + canvas unshare/update_role to CLI
07150da fix: CSS column-reverse scroll — zero JS hacks
9d8e09d refactor: targeted DOM updates — no more full re-renders
7ac7e95 fix: canvas user picker + hide share for viewers
1cb5c99 fix: cursor shows user name not Anonymous
9f27fdf fix: public canvas editor access + DM member enrollment
6bbc91e fix: final audit — 6 issues
f6fa517 fix: 11 audit issues — security, XSS, UX, races
8c7cd09 feat: sidebar metadata + context menu + memory eviction
06ef506 feat: canvas picker in chat composer
0a04487 feat: collaborator presence bar
107d078 feat: rich canvas cards with async hydration
ea445c7 feat: share modal — roles, notify DM, post to channel
caa5ec9 feat: canvas RPC — unshare, update_role, get_preview
0959fa3 fix: canvas security — viewer enforcement, save_state, dev mode
0ac765d feat: Phase 4 — cursor fix, delete, canvas cards, CLI
bbac31b fix: review — route order, auth guard, undo, error cleanup
2deefb6 feat: Phase 4 — canvas editor with y-sync protocol
b53e70d feat: Phase 4 Step 2 — yrs WebSocket handler
a7f22ee feat: Phase 4 Step 1 — canvas backend (DB + RPC)
54b6543 docs: Phase 4 plan — yrs CRDT + Tiptap research

What's Next

Phase 5 (Voice/Video Huddles) — optional, requires LiveKit

Phase 6 (Hardening):

  • DB indexes for performance
  • Input validation (length limits, email format)
  • Rate limiting (token bucket per user)
  • Activity log population
  • Error sanitization (don't leak SQL/paths)
  • CORS policy
  • Pending attachment cleanup
  • Load testing (20 concurrent WS, SQLite lock verification)
  • Monitoring (RPC latency, active WS count in /health)
  • Integration test suite
  • DOMPurify for defense-in-depth HTML sanitization
  • Channel canvas (one per channel, Slack-style pinned document)
  • Standalone auth for deployments without hero_proxy
## Phase 4 Complete + Extended UX Redesign — Pushed to development ### Phase 4 Core (Canvas Collaborative Editing) **Backend (11 RPC methods):** - DB: `canvases`, `canvas_state` (yrs CRDT BLOB), `canvas_collaborators` - `canvas.create/get/list/update/delete/share/unshare/update_role/get_preview/save_state/load_state` - `channel.find_dm` — proper DM lookup by participant IDs - y-sync protocol: SyncStep1/2 handshake, Update broadcast, Awareness relay - Memory eviction on last WebSocket disconnect **Frontend:** - Tiptap rich text editor + Yjs Collaboration + CollaborationCursor - Vendored 474KB bundle (no CDN) via `scripts/vendor-bundle/build.sh` - Canvas page at `/canvas/{id}` with toolbar, title editing, undo/redo - Canvas user picker in dev mode **OpenRPC: 82 methods. CLI: full canvas subcommands.** ### Extended Phase 4 — Slack-aligned UX **Share modal:** - Role management (editor/viewer dropdown + remove per collaborator) - Share with user → auto-sends DM with canvas card - Share to channel → posts canvas card message - Copy link button **Canvas in chat:** - Canvas picker button in both main + thread composers - Rich cards: `[canvas:ID]` → async hydration showing title, creator, timestamp - Session-level cache **Sidebar:** creator name, relative time, shared indicator, right-click context menu (Open, Copy link, Delete) **Collaborator bar:** colored avatar circles via awareness protocol ### Security (3 audit rounds, 19 issues fixed) - Viewer WS enforcement (server drops edits from viewers) - Fail-closed auth in production mode - save_state/load_state access control - Mermaid `securityLevel: strict` (was loose — XSS) - Marked HTML escaping - Lock-order deadlock fix - TOCTOU race fix on canvas doc creation - DM lookup by participant IDs (not names) - Public canvas → viewer-only at WS layer - New user auto-creation before canvas access - Delete/share buttons hidden for non-owners/viewers ### Chat Architecture Refactor - **Targeted DOM updates**: reactions, edits, deletes, WS messages update individual elements (no full re-render) - **CSS `flex-direction: column-reverse`**: scroll pins to bottom automatically — no JS hacks, images loading async do not affect scroll ### Commits (21): ``` 06911fb chore: add channel.find_dm to OpenRPC + canvas unshare/update_role to CLI 07150da fix: CSS column-reverse scroll — zero JS hacks 9d8e09d refactor: targeted DOM updates — no more full re-renders 7ac7e95 fix: canvas user picker + hide share for viewers 1cb5c99 fix: cursor shows user name not Anonymous 9f27fdf fix: public canvas editor access + DM member enrollment 6bbc91e fix: final audit — 6 issues f6fa517 fix: 11 audit issues — security, XSS, UX, races 8c7cd09 feat: sidebar metadata + context menu + memory eviction 06ef506 feat: canvas picker in chat composer 0a04487 feat: collaborator presence bar 107d078 feat: rich canvas cards with async hydration ea445c7 feat: share modal — roles, notify DM, post to channel caa5ec9 feat: canvas RPC — unshare, update_role, get_preview 0959fa3 fix: canvas security — viewer enforcement, save_state, dev mode 0ac765d feat: Phase 4 — cursor fix, delete, canvas cards, CLI bbac31b fix: review — route order, auth guard, undo, error cleanup 2deefb6 feat: Phase 4 — canvas editor with y-sync protocol b53e70d feat: Phase 4 Step 2 — yrs WebSocket handler a7f22ee feat: Phase 4 Step 1 — canvas backend (DB + RPC) 54b6543 docs: Phase 4 plan — yrs CRDT + Tiptap research ``` ### What's Next **Phase 5 (Voice/Video Huddles)** — optional, requires LiveKit **Phase 6 (Hardening):** - DB indexes for performance - Input validation (length limits, email format) - Rate limiting (token bucket per user) - Activity log population - Error sanitization (don't leak SQL/paths) - CORS policy - Pending attachment cleanup - Load testing (20 concurrent WS, SQLite lock verification) - Monitoring (RPC latency, active WS count in /health) - Integration test suite - DOMPurify for defense-in-depth HTML sanitization - Channel canvas (one per channel, Slack-style pinned document) - Standalone auth for deployments without hero_proxy
Author
Member

Phase 4 — Canvases with Real-Time Collaboration — Shipped

Ref commits: 263cb89, 58d3715, 35c2b2c, 80f9a24, 9d8e09d, c143c0b, 753076e, 07150da, 06911fb, 6214d95

What landed

Backend — 11 RPC methods, new yrs CRDT infrastructure:

  • New DB tables: canvases (metadata), canvas_state (yrs-encoded BLOB), canvas_collaborators
  • RPCs: canvas.create / get / list / update / delete / share / unshare / update_role / get_preview / save_state / load_state
  • Canvas state = single CRDT document per canvas; yrs handles block structure internally — no block-row schema
  • Binary-capable WebSocket at /ws/canvas/{id} (distinct from the text-only channel WS) running the yrs y-sync protocol
  • In-memory Arc<RwLock<HashMap<u64, yrs::Doc>>> for active docs; periodic flush to canvas_state BLOB
  • Access-control enforced on every WS frame (viewer/editor roles); canvas.save_state / load_state forward X-Hero-User for auth
  • Connection-count eviction: when the last WS disconnects, the in-memory doc is dropped

Frontend — Tiptap + Yjs editor, no bundler:

  • templates/canvas.html + static/js/canvas-app.js — Tiptap editor bound to Yjs via @tiptap/extension-collaboration
  • @tiptap/extension-collaboration-cursor for live cursors with colored avatars on the topbar
  • Collaborator panel with role dropdown (viewer / editor), remove button, "Copy link", "Post to channel"
  • Sharing creates a DM thread with the target user and posts a [canvas:ID] card
  • Rich canvas cards in chat: [canvas:ID] in any message renders as interactive card (title, creator, edited-X-ago) fetched via canvas.get_preview
  • Canvas picker in chat composers (main + thread) — search + insert [canvas:ID]

Vendored bundle:

  • scripts/vendor-bundle/build.sh produces static/js/vendor/collab-editor.min.js (Tiptap + Yjs + y-websocket + collaboration-cursor) via esbuild
  • Aliases y-prosemirror → @tiptap/y-tiptap so all packages share a single ySyncPluginKey — a subtle bug we hit during integration
  • No CDN at runtime; rust-embed serves the file

Notable mid-Phase corrections

Several UX bugs discovered during hands-on testing and fixed:

  • Scroll-to-bottom on initial chat load (triple-attempt RAF → eventually fixed with flex-direction: column-reverse and zero JS scroll hacks)
  • Scroll position preserved on reactions / WS updates (was jumping to middle)
  • Send button correctly enables/disables after canvas-picker insertion
  • Targeted DOM updates for individual messages instead of full re-renders
  • Viewer-role read-only enforcement on both frontend and WebSocket handler
  • DM find vs create (new channel.find_dm RPC to avoid duplicate DM channels on share)

Acceptance notes

Two-browser collaboration verified: type in tab A, see edits merge in tab B with sub-second latency; cursors visible with correct colors and names. Restart server — canvas content survives (reloaded from SQLite BLOB). Non-collaborator WS connect returns 403. Chat card hydration works on page reload and live message append.

Docs updated in plan/slack-feature-parity.md (Phase 4 + Phase 4-EXT sections).

## Phase 4 — Canvases with Real-Time Collaboration — ✅ Shipped Ref commits: `263cb89`, `58d3715`, `35c2b2c`, `80f9a24`, `9d8e09d`, `c143c0b`, `753076e`, `07150da`, `06911fb`, `6214d95` ### What landed **Backend — 11 RPC methods, new yrs CRDT infrastructure:** - New DB tables: `canvases` (metadata), `canvas_state` (yrs-encoded BLOB), `canvas_collaborators` - RPCs: `canvas.create / get / list / update / delete / share / unshare / update_role / get_preview / save_state / load_state` - Canvas state = single CRDT document per canvas; yrs handles block structure internally — no block-row schema - Binary-capable WebSocket at `/ws/canvas/{id}` (distinct from the text-only channel WS) running the yrs y-sync protocol - In-memory `Arc<RwLock<HashMap<u64, yrs::Doc>>>` for active docs; periodic flush to `canvas_state` BLOB - Access-control enforced on every WS frame (viewer/editor roles); `canvas.save_state` / `load_state` forward `X-Hero-User` for auth - Connection-count eviction: when the last WS disconnects, the in-memory doc is dropped **Frontend — Tiptap + Yjs editor, no bundler:** - `templates/canvas.html` + `static/js/canvas-app.js` — Tiptap editor bound to Yjs via `@tiptap/extension-collaboration` - `@tiptap/extension-collaboration-cursor` for live cursors with colored avatars on the topbar - Collaborator panel with role dropdown (viewer / editor), remove button, "Copy link", "Post to channel" - Sharing creates a DM thread with the target user and posts a `[canvas:ID]` card - Rich canvas cards in chat: `[canvas:ID]` in any message renders as interactive card (title, creator, edited-X-ago) fetched via `canvas.get_preview` - Canvas picker in chat composers (main + thread) — search + insert `[canvas:ID]` **Vendored bundle:** - `scripts/vendor-bundle/build.sh` produces `static/js/vendor/collab-editor.min.js` (Tiptap + Yjs + y-websocket + collaboration-cursor) via esbuild - Aliases `y-prosemirror → @tiptap/y-tiptap` so all packages share a single `ySyncPluginKey` — a subtle bug we hit during integration - No CDN at runtime; rust-embed serves the file ### Notable mid-Phase corrections Several UX bugs discovered during hands-on testing and fixed: - Scroll-to-bottom on initial chat load (triple-attempt RAF → eventually fixed with `flex-direction: column-reverse` and zero JS scroll hacks) - Scroll position preserved on reactions / WS updates (was jumping to middle) - Send button correctly enables/disables after canvas-picker insertion - Targeted DOM updates for individual messages instead of full re-renders - Viewer-role read-only enforcement on both frontend and WebSocket handler - DM find vs create (new `channel.find_dm` RPC to avoid duplicate DM channels on share) ### Acceptance notes Two-browser collaboration verified: type in tab A, see edits merge in tab B with sub-second latency; cursors visible with correct colors and names. Restart server — canvas content survives (reloaded from SQLite BLOB). Non-collaborator WS connect returns 403. Chat card hydration works on page reload and live message append. Docs updated in [`plan/slack-feature-parity.md`](../../src/branch/development/plan/slack-feature-parity.md) (Phase 4 + Phase 4-EXT sections).
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Phase 5 — Slack-Style LiveKit Huddles — Shipped (audio v1)

Ref commits: 55ddf63 (feature), 75017f7 (sync openrpc + SDK + CLI)

What landed

Server (hero_collab_server):

  • New src/livekit.rs — JWT generation via livekit-api 0.4. HS256 signing, 15-minute TTL, can_publish_sources = ["microphone"] (audio-only — no video/screen push), can_publish_data = false (chat runs on the existing WS). LiveKitConfig::from_env() loads once at startup; falls back between LIVEKIT_URL (hero_osis convention) and LIVEKIT_WS_URL.
  • New src/handlers/huddle.rs — 5 RPCs: huddle.start / join / leave / list / participants. Reuses rooms + room_participants tables via the JSON-blob pattern. Idempotent start (second caller gets the active room back). Thread-anchor message created on start with kind: "huddle_start" and auto-flipped to huddle_ended on auto-end. Final N people count sourced from a joiner_ids set kept on the room blob — survives leave events, unlike room_participants.
  • check_channel_member() — proxy-mode auth: missing caller_id"Authentication required for huddle operations"; DB errors propagate with ? instead of collapsing into "Not a member". Dev mode bypass confined to explicit COLLAB_AUTH_MODE=dev.
  • resolve_display_name() — distinguishes missing user / missing name / DB error; each path logged at the right level.
  • New src/huddle_reaper.rs — background tokio task, every 5 minutes polls LiveKit's ListParticipants for each active huddle. If LiveKit reports empty, force_end_huddle(room_id) mirrors the leave-auto-end branch: deletes participant rows, marks ended, flips anchor. Treats LiveKit as the source of truth so crashed-browser ghosts get reaped. Skips force-end on LiveKit errors — prefer ghost to cut-off live call.
  • main.rsCOLLAB_AUTH_MODE default flipped to proxy (fail-closed). dev must be explicit. Reaper spawned after AppState init.

UI (hero_collab_ui):

  • New static/js/huddle.js (HuddleManager IIFE) — wraps livekit-client SDK; on joinHuddle, calls huddle.start + huddle.join, connects to LiveKit Room, attaches remote audio tracks to hidden sink, publishes mic (catches permission denial with an explicit "joined muted" toast), subscribes to ActiveSpeakersChanged. onDisconnected keyed on DisconnectReason — user toasts for DUPLICATE_IDENTITY, SERVER_SHUTDOWN, PARTICIPANT_REMOVED, CONNECTION_ERROR, etc. forceStopLocalTracks() safety net to prevent stuck browser-mic LED.
  • chat-app.js — huddle button in channel header, in-call bar with mute / leave / participant avatars (speaking indicator), sidebar participant-count indicator (clickable → joinHuddleFromSidebar), Slack-style anchor cards in the message list: active with Join button, ended faded with participant-count summary. Companion thread auto-opens on join. refreshChannelHuddleIndicator degrades closed on error instead of silently lying.
  • chat.html — huddle-bar markup, <audio id="huddle-audio-sink">, CSS for buttons / indicator / system-message cards / speaking pulse.
  • static/js/vendor/livekit-client.min.js — vendored UMD bundle (506 KB, no CDN at runtime).

Tooling + spec:

  • scripts/vendor-bundle/build.sh — copies the LiveKit UMD bundle alongside the collab-editor bundle.
  • openrpc.json — 5 huddle.* method specs with full response schemas: huddle.start returns anchor + thread_message_id + creator_name + joiner_ids; huddle.leave returns anchor when ended=true. This enables the "server returns anchor → client broadcasts via existing chat WS" pattern that delivers real-time UI updates without any new push transport.
  • openrpc.client.generated.rs — SDK regenerated by the openrpc_client! proc macro; HuddleStartOutput etc. now have typed fields for the new data.
  • hero_collab/src/main.rs (CLI) — new hero_collab huddle start / join / leave / list / participants subcommand group, mirrors the existing Room pattern.

Architectural decisions

  • Standalone pattern — mirrors hero_whiteboard. Own SQLite, own token generation. Copied token-generation logic from hero_osis/communication/rpc.rs rather than depending on hero_osis at runtime.
  • LiveKit over P2P mesh — ~99.9% vs 60–85% reliability in corporate networks; identical audio quality at ≤10 users; Slack uses SFU. Dependency is the same external LiveKit server that hero_osis points at (same env vars: LIVEKIT_URL, LIVEKIT_API_KEY, LIVEKIT_API_SECRET).
  • "Server returns anchor" pattern for real-time UI — considered and rejected three alternatives (new internal Unix socket, SSE on rpc.sock, new WS endpoint on rpc.sock). All solved a problem we don't have in v1: server-initiated events with no client in the loop. For v1 flows, huddle.start and huddle.leave return the anchor message, and the initiating/leaving client broadcasts message.created / message.updated on the existing chat WS. Reaper covers the ghost case via LiveKit polling. Proper server-push bridge deferred to v2 as V2-Optional in plan/feature-huddles-v2.md with implement-vs-drop tradeoffs documented.
  • JWT hygiene — not inherited from the library defaults. TTL 15 min (vs 6 h default), publish-sources restricted to microphone, data-channel disabled. Each hardening step is documented inline.

Verification

  • RPC layer verified end-to-end with live LiveKit dev container (docker run livekit/livekit-server --dev --bind 0.0.0.0):
    • huddle.start is idempotent, returns the anchor inline
    • huddle.join returns a valid JWT — decoded payload has exp - nbf = 900, canPublishSources = ["microphone"], canPublishData = false, correct room and sub claims
    • LiveKit's ListRooms Twirp API returns 401 permissions-denied (token is signature-valid but we only granted roomJoin — proves the signature is accepted)
    • Bob leaves (non-last) → ended: false; Alice leaves (last) → ended: true, anchor flips to "🎧 Huddle ended · less than a minute · 2 people" (correct distinct-joiner count)
    • Proxy-mode auth: no-caller_id request rejected, non-member rejected, member accepted
  • Browser UI verified via Playwright MCP: active-huddle card renders with Join button; ended card renders faded; sidebar indicator has cursor: pointer and working onclick; thread auto-opens on join (URL hash updates to .../thread/{anchor_id}). Real WebRTC not testable in headless — JS is a thin SDK wrapper; ws_url + token validity confirmed.
  • 4 external auditors dispatched in parallel — detailed findings in the plan docs. Remaining work tracked below.

External audit — key findings

  • No critical issues found after the fix-up round.
  • Slack parity blockers from round-1 audit either fixed (ghost reaper, sidebar clickable, JWT hygiene, dev-mode landmine) or explicitly deferred with engineering-level writeups in plan/known-issues.md and plan/feature-huddles-v2.md.
  • Hero OS philosophy aligned: reaper matches hero_router/scanner.rs background-task pattern, env vars match hero_osis, no new dependencies, startup env load is actually cleaner than hero_osis (per-request env::var was flagged as a footgun in the sibling codebase).
  • Round-3 follow-ups identified (non-blocking but should land soon) — tracked in a separate follow-up comment.
## Phase 5 — Slack-Style LiveKit Huddles — ✅ Shipped (audio v1) Ref commits: `55ddf63` (feature), `75017f7` (sync openrpc + SDK + CLI) ### What landed **Server (`hero_collab_server`):** - New `src/livekit.rs` — JWT generation via `livekit-api 0.4`. HS256 signing, **15-minute TTL**, `can_publish_sources = ["microphone"]` (audio-only — no video/screen push), `can_publish_data = false` (chat runs on the existing WS). `LiveKitConfig::from_env()` loads once at startup; falls back between `LIVEKIT_URL` (hero_osis convention) and `LIVEKIT_WS_URL`. - New `src/handlers/huddle.rs` — 5 RPCs: `huddle.start / join / leave / list / participants`. Reuses `rooms` + `room_participants` tables via the JSON-blob pattern. Idempotent start (second caller gets the active room back). Thread-anchor message created on `start` with `kind: "huddle_start"` and auto-flipped to `huddle_ended` on auto-end. Final `N people` count sourced from a `joiner_ids` set kept on the room blob — survives leave events, unlike `room_participants`. - `check_channel_member()` — proxy-mode auth: missing `caller_id` → `"Authentication required for huddle operations"`; DB errors propagate with `?` instead of collapsing into "Not a member". Dev mode bypass confined to explicit `COLLAB_AUTH_MODE=dev`. - `resolve_display_name()` — distinguishes missing user / missing name / DB error; each path logged at the right level. - New `src/huddle_reaper.rs` — background tokio task, every 5 minutes polls LiveKit's `ListParticipants` for each active huddle. If LiveKit reports empty, `force_end_huddle(room_id)` mirrors the leave-auto-end branch: deletes participant rows, marks ended, flips anchor. Treats LiveKit as the source of truth so crashed-browser ghosts get reaped. Skips force-end on LiveKit errors — prefer ghost to cut-off live call. - `main.rs` — **`COLLAB_AUTH_MODE` default flipped to `proxy`** (fail-closed). `dev` must be explicit. Reaper spawned after AppState init. **UI (`hero_collab_ui`):** - New `static/js/huddle.js` (`HuddleManager` IIFE) — wraps `livekit-client` SDK; on `joinHuddle`, calls `huddle.start` + `huddle.join`, connects to LiveKit `Room`, attaches remote audio tracks to hidden sink, publishes mic (catches permission denial with an explicit "joined muted" toast), subscribes to `ActiveSpeakersChanged`. `onDisconnected` keyed on `DisconnectReason` — user toasts for `DUPLICATE_IDENTITY`, `SERVER_SHUTDOWN`, `PARTICIPANT_REMOVED`, `CONNECTION_ERROR`, etc. `forceStopLocalTracks()` safety net to prevent stuck browser-mic LED. - `chat-app.js` — huddle button in channel header, in-call bar with mute / leave / participant avatars (speaking indicator), sidebar participant-count indicator (clickable → `joinHuddleFromSidebar`), Slack-style anchor cards in the message list: active with **Join** button, ended faded with participant-count summary. Companion thread auto-opens on join. `refreshChannelHuddleIndicator` degrades closed on error instead of silently lying. - `chat.html` — huddle-bar markup, `<audio id="huddle-audio-sink">`, CSS for buttons / indicator / system-message cards / speaking pulse. - `static/js/vendor/livekit-client.min.js` — vendored UMD bundle (506 KB, no CDN at runtime). **Tooling + spec:** - `scripts/vendor-bundle/build.sh` — copies the LiveKit UMD bundle alongside the collab-editor bundle. - `openrpc.json` — 5 `huddle.*` method specs with full response schemas: `huddle.start` returns `anchor` + `thread_message_id` + `creator_name` + `joiner_ids`; `huddle.leave` returns `anchor` when `ended=true`. This enables the "server returns anchor → client broadcasts via existing chat WS" pattern that delivers real-time UI updates without any new push transport. - `openrpc.client.generated.rs` — SDK regenerated by the `openrpc_client!` proc macro; `HuddleStartOutput` etc. now have typed fields for the new data. - `hero_collab/src/main.rs` (CLI) — new `hero_collab huddle start / join / leave / list / participants` subcommand group, mirrors the existing Room pattern. ### Architectural decisions - **Standalone pattern** — mirrors `hero_whiteboard`. Own SQLite, own token generation. Copied token-generation logic from `hero_osis/communication/rpc.rs` rather than depending on `hero_osis` at runtime. - **LiveKit over P2P mesh** — ~99.9% vs 60–85% reliability in corporate networks; identical audio quality at ≤10 users; Slack uses SFU. Dependency is the same external LiveKit server that `hero_osis` points at (same env vars: `LIVEKIT_URL`, `LIVEKIT_API_KEY`, `LIVEKIT_API_SECRET`). - **"Server returns anchor" pattern for real-time UI** — considered and rejected three alternatives (new internal Unix socket, SSE on rpc.sock, new WS endpoint on rpc.sock). All solved a problem we don't have in v1: *server-initiated events with no client in the loop*. For v1 flows, `huddle.start` and `huddle.leave` return the anchor message, and the initiating/leaving client broadcasts `message.created` / `message.updated` on the **existing chat WS**. Reaper covers the ghost case via LiveKit polling. Proper server-push bridge deferred to v2 as `V2-Optional` in [`plan/feature-huddles-v2.md`](../../src/branch/development/plan/feature-huddles-v2.md) with implement-vs-drop tradeoffs documented. - **JWT hygiene** — not inherited from the library defaults. TTL 15 min (vs 6 h default), publish-sources restricted to microphone, data-channel disabled. Each hardening step is documented inline. ### Verification - RPC layer verified end-to-end with live LiveKit dev container (`docker run livekit/livekit-server --dev --bind 0.0.0.0`): - `huddle.start` is idempotent, returns the anchor inline - `huddle.join` returns a valid JWT — decoded payload has `exp - nbf = 900`, `canPublishSources = ["microphone"]`, `canPublishData = false`, correct `room` and `sub` claims - LiveKit's `ListRooms` Twirp API returns **401 permissions-denied** (token is signature-valid but we only granted `roomJoin` — proves the signature is accepted) - Bob leaves (non-last) → `ended: false`; Alice leaves (last) → `ended: true`, anchor flips to `"🎧 Huddle ended · less than a minute · 2 people"` (correct distinct-joiner count) - Proxy-mode auth: no-`caller_id` request rejected, non-member rejected, member accepted - Browser UI verified via Playwright MCP: active-huddle card renders with Join button; ended card renders faded; sidebar indicator has `cursor: pointer` and working `onclick`; thread auto-opens on join (URL hash updates to `.../thread/{anchor_id}`). Real WebRTC not testable in headless — JS is a thin SDK wrapper; ws_url + token validity confirmed. - 4 external auditors dispatched in parallel — detailed findings in the plan docs. Remaining work tracked below. ### External audit — key findings - ✅ **No critical issues found** after the fix-up round. - ✅ Slack parity blockers from round-1 audit either fixed (ghost reaper, sidebar clickable, JWT hygiene, dev-mode landmine) or explicitly deferred with engineering-level writeups in [`plan/known-issues.md`](../../src/branch/development/plan/known-issues.md) and [`plan/feature-huddles-v2.md`](../../src/branch/development/plan/feature-huddles-v2.md). - ✅ Hero OS philosophy aligned: reaper matches `hero_router/scanner.rs` background-task pattern, env vars match `hero_osis`, no new dependencies, startup env load is actually **cleaner than hero_osis** (per-request `env::var` was flagged as a footgun in the sibling codebase). - Round-3 follow-ups identified (non-blocking but should land soon) — tracked in a separate follow-up comment.
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Remaining Work

Round 3 — Huddle fix-up (next commit, ~1 hour)

Findings from the external audit that should land before calling the feature "production-grade broadly" (currently ship-ready behind a feature flag). Each is concrete:

  • B1 · Clients don't learn when the reaper ends a huddle. Fix: 30 s poll of huddle.list on current channel, detect transition to "empty" → invalidate state.activeHuddles[channelId] + reload messages. ~10 lines in chat-app.js.
  • B2 · broadcastState silently drops if WS is mid-reconnect. Fix: console.warn on drop; consider queuing critical events. 1 line today, optional upgrade later.
  • B3 · Anchor-load failure on server drops the client broadcast silently. Fix: even without anchor in the response, client broadcasts a synthetic huddle.ended event that triggers refreshChannelHuddleIndicator on receivers. ~15 lines split between server + client.
  • B4 · onDisconnected vs leaveHuddle duplicate-broadcast race. Fix: skip huddle.participant_left broadcast in onDisconnected when reason is CLIENT_INITIATED; defer nulling huddle.room until after onDisconnected has run (prevents forceStopLocalTracks no-op on the happy leave path). 5 lines.
  • B6 · Outer WS catch (err) {} swallows huddle-specific exceptions (the huddle dispatch block is now inside this try/catch so it's load-bearing). Fix: console.error. 1 line.
  • Observability · tracing::info! on huddle start / join / leave with room, user, channel, ended, total_participants (H-3-7 in known-issues). The one operational thing that blocks debugging a production incident. ~30 min.

Sub-total: ~1 hour of focused work, then browser re-test of the specific B1 (reaper → clients) and B4 (leave-flow) scenarios.

Phase 6 — Hardening & polish (3–4 days, from plan/slack-feature-parity.md)

Not yet started. The full list:

  • 6A · Missing DB indexesidx_workspace_members_user, idx_channel_members_user, idx_messages_user.
  • 6B · Input validation — string length limits (names 100, descriptions 1000, content 40000), email format, file size (25 MB), channel-name format.
  • 6C · Rate limiting — token-bucket per user_id. 60 RPC/min, 10 message.send/min. New rate_limit.rs.
  • 6D · Activity-log population — helper log_activity(db, ws_id, user_id, action, data) called from key operations. Table exists but is unused.
  • 6E · Error sanitization — map internal errors to user-friendly messages in main.rs:http_rpc; don't leak SQL or filesystem path details.
  • 6F · CORS policyCorsLayer from tower-http (already in deps).
  • 6G · Pending-attachment cleanup — new attachment.cleanup_pending RPC; periodic sweep via tokio task or startup pass.
  • 6H · Load testing — 20 concurrent WS + 10 msg/s for 30 s. SQLite single-writer under load is the biggest unknown.
  • 6I · Monitoring & observability — log RPC method / duration / status via tracing::info!, expose active_ws_connections on /health, add rpc_calls_total / rpc_errors_total / avg_latency_ms to system.metrics.
  • 6J · Integration test suite — starts hero_collab_server + hero_collab_ui via hero_proc, creates workspace/user/channel, exercises each feature end-to-end.
  • 6K · Browser-compatibility baseline — document minimum requirements (WebSocket, sendBeacon, localStorage, FileReader, fetch). Test Chrome / Firefox / Safari.

Other gaps in the main plan (not Phase 6, not huddles)

From plan/slack-feature-parity.md:

  • Phase 1 (auth) — several items deferred earlier while shipping the MVP in dev mode:
    • 1H: claims-based authorization (optional enhancement — coexists with hero_collab's own group/rights system).
    • user.preferences RPC (referenced by huddles v2 — mute-on-join preference).
  • Phase 2 polish that didn't land as crisply as planned:
    • Typing indicators work but are un-debounced on reconnect.
    • Presence 5-min stale timeout relies on client heartbeat; if heartbeat stops mid-session the server detects it correctly, but there's no admin visibility.
    • Read cursors mark-on-channel-select but don't update on visibility / scroll.
  • Phase 3 (feature set) gaps:
    • Mention notifications: table populated, UI notification bell exists but the browser Notification API path for background tabs isn't wired.
    • Pinned messages: working, but no "pinned" panel in channel settings pane.
  • TECH_SPEC reconciliation (noted in plan preamble): the original TECH_SPEC.md still references a 4-crate / column-per-field / UUID / WebDAV design. The actual code uses 6 crates / JSON blobs / INTEGER autoincrement / local FS. TECH_SPEC.md should be rewritten or archived before external onboarding.

Tracked elsewhere (follow-up issues, not in this thread)

  • plan/feature-huddles-v2.md — huddles v2 roadmap (screenshare, video, DM ringing, reactions, recording, optional server-push bridge).
  • plan/known-issues.md — Tier-3 deferred items on the huddles v1 path (H-3-1..9: transactional writes, partial unique index, unit tests, joiner_ids table, TZ storage, observability, mute-on-join, active-speaker ring).
  • plan/feature-voice-to-canvas.md — voice-to-text dictation into canvas (separate feature, separate issue).

Round-3 fix-up → merge → then Phase 6A/6I/6J first (observability + load-test + integration tests) before broadening huddles beyond feature-flag. Everything else can fan out in parallel.

## Remaining Work ### Round 3 — Huddle fix-up (next commit, ~1 hour) Findings from the external audit that should land before calling the feature "production-grade broadly" (currently **ship-ready behind a feature flag**). Each is concrete: - **B1 · Clients don't learn when the reaper ends a huddle.** Fix: 30 s poll of `huddle.list` on current channel, detect transition to "empty" → invalidate `state.activeHuddles[channelId]` + reload messages. ~10 lines in `chat-app.js`. - **B2 · `broadcastState` silently drops if WS is mid-reconnect.** Fix: `console.warn` on drop; consider queuing critical events. 1 line today, optional upgrade later. - **B3 · Anchor-load failure on server drops the client broadcast silently.** Fix: even without `anchor` in the response, client broadcasts a synthetic `huddle.ended` event that triggers `refreshChannelHuddleIndicator` on receivers. ~15 lines split between server + client. - **B4 · `onDisconnected` vs `leaveHuddle` duplicate-broadcast race.** Fix: skip `huddle.participant_left` broadcast in `onDisconnected` when reason is `CLIENT_INITIATED`; defer nulling `huddle.room` until after `onDisconnected` has run (prevents `forceStopLocalTracks` no-op on the happy leave path). 5 lines. - **B6 · Outer WS `catch (err) {}` swallows huddle-specific exceptions** (the huddle dispatch block is now inside this try/catch so it's load-bearing). Fix: `console.error`. 1 line. - **Observability · `tracing::info!` on huddle start / join / leave** with `room`, `user`, `channel`, `ended`, `total_participants` (H-3-7 in known-issues). The one operational thing that blocks debugging a production incident. ~30 min. Sub-total: ~1 hour of focused work, then browser re-test of the specific B1 (reaper → clients) and B4 (leave-flow) scenarios. ### Phase 6 — Hardening & polish (3–4 days, from [`plan/slack-feature-parity.md`](../../src/branch/development/plan/slack-feature-parity.md)) Not yet started. The full list: - **6A · Missing DB indexes** — `idx_workspace_members_user`, `idx_channel_members_user`, `idx_messages_user`. - **6B · Input validation** — string length limits (names 100, descriptions 1000, content 40000), email format, file size (25 MB), channel-name format. - **6C · Rate limiting** — token-bucket per `user_id`. 60 RPC/min, 10 `message.send`/min. New `rate_limit.rs`. - **6D · Activity-log population** — helper `log_activity(db, ws_id, user_id, action, data)` called from key operations. Table exists but is unused. - **6E · Error sanitization** — map internal errors to user-friendly messages in `main.rs:http_rpc`; don't leak SQL or filesystem path details. - **6F · CORS policy** — `CorsLayer` from `tower-http` (already in deps). - **6G · Pending-attachment cleanup** — new `attachment.cleanup_pending` RPC; periodic sweep via tokio task or startup pass. - **6H · Load testing** — 20 concurrent WS + 10 msg/s for 30 s. SQLite single-writer under load is the biggest unknown. - **6I · Monitoring & observability** — log RPC method / duration / status via `tracing::info!`, expose `active_ws_connections` on `/health`, add `rpc_calls_total` / `rpc_errors_total` / `avg_latency_ms` to `system.metrics`. - **6J · Integration test suite** — starts `hero_collab_server` + `hero_collab_ui` via `hero_proc`, creates workspace/user/channel, exercises each feature end-to-end. - **6K · Browser-compatibility baseline** — document minimum requirements (WebSocket, `sendBeacon`, `localStorage`, `FileReader`, `fetch`). Test Chrome / Firefox / Safari. ### Other gaps in the main plan (not Phase 6, not huddles) From [`plan/slack-feature-parity.md`](../../src/branch/development/plan/slack-feature-parity.md): - **Phase 1 (auth) — several items deferred earlier** while shipping the MVP in `dev` mode: - 1H: claims-based authorization (optional enhancement — coexists with hero_collab's own group/rights system). - `user.preferences` RPC (referenced by huddles v2 — mute-on-join preference). - **Phase 2 polish that didn't land as crisply as planned:** - Typing indicators work but are un-debounced on reconnect. - Presence 5-min stale timeout relies on client heartbeat; if heartbeat stops mid-session the server detects it correctly, but there's no admin visibility. - Read cursors mark-on-channel-select but don't update on visibility / scroll. - **Phase 3 (feature set) gaps:** - Mention notifications: table populated, UI notification bell exists but the browser Notification API path for background tabs isn't wired. - Pinned messages: working, but no "pinned" panel in channel settings pane. - **TECH_SPEC reconciliation** (noted in plan preamble): the original TECH_SPEC.md still references a 4-crate / column-per-field / UUID / WebDAV design. The actual code uses 6 crates / JSON blobs / INTEGER autoincrement / local FS. TECH_SPEC.md should be rewritten or archived before external onboarding. ### Tracked elsewhere (follow-up issues, not in this thread) - [`plan/feature-huddles-v2.md`](../../src/branch/development/plan/feature-huddles-v2.md) — huddles v2 roadmap (screenshare, video, DM ringing, reactions, recording, optional server-push bridge). - [`plan/known-issues.md`](../../src/branch/development/plan/known-issues.md) — Tier-3 deferred items on the huddles v1 path (H-3-1..9: transactional writes, partial unique index, unit tests, joiner_ids table, TZ storage, observability, mute-on-join, active-speaker ring). - `plan/feature-voice-to-canvas.md` — voice-to-text dictation into canvas (separate feature, separate issue). ### Recommended next milestone Round-3 fix-up → merge → then Phase 6A/6I/6J first (observability + load-test + integration tests) before broadening huddles beyond feature-flag. Everything else can fan out in parallel.
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Round 3 Hardening — Shipped (ship-ready broadly, no feature flag)

Ref commit: cc3dcc6

What landed

Two prior audit rounds surfaced five correctness gaps that kept the feature "ship-ready behind a feature flag." Round 3 closes them; Round 3.5 fixes the two regressions Round 3 itself introduced (caught by the follow-up audit).

Backend (hero_collab_server):

  • handlers/huddle.rs:

    • load_message filters deleted_at IS NULL — soft-deleted anchors can never be broadcast as live.
    • fetch_participants logs + continues on malformed row instead of rendering ghost {} avatars.
    • leave returns anchor_missing: true when ended=true and the updated-anchor reload fails, so the client can broadcast a synthetic huddle.ended event and peers still flip their cards.
    • participants now fails closed on a room blob missing channel_id (prior if let Some(...) leaked participant metadata on corrupt rows).
    • Structured observability: tracing::info! on huddle.start / join / leave with fields huddle_event, room_id, channel_id, user_id, ended, anchor_missing, distinct_joiners. "User X stuck huddle for 10 min" incident is now greppable end-to-end from logs.
  • huddle_reaper.rs:

    • URL scheme validation at spawnLIVEKIT_URL must start with ws:// or wss:// or the reaper refuses to spawn with a loud error!. No more silent per-tick warnings against a broken api_host.
    • Skip-young filter in snapshot_active_huddles (created_at < now - 5min) — eliminates the "brand-new huddle with first client still in handshake gets reaped" race.
    • Ghost cleanup inside transaction: captures poll_started_at BEFORE the LiveKit call, then deletes only participant rows with joined_at < poll_started_at. A late-joiner row whose joined_at >= poll_started_at preserves the huddle — TOCTOU defense without defeating ghost cleanup (the Round 3 regression).
    • Transaction-wrapped force_end_huddle: anchor-flip failure returns Err, whole thing rolls back. No more half-ended state.
    • Dead-code workaround block removed.

Frontend (hero_collab_ui/static/js):

  • huddle.js:

    • Critical bug fix: DisconnectReason is a numeric protobuf enum (CLIENT_INITIATED=1, DUPLICATE_IDENTITY=2, …), not a string. The previous reasonStr === 'CLIENT_INITIATED' check never matched → the skip-broadcast branch was unreachable (duplicate broadcasts on every leave) and the string-keyed DISCONNECT_MESSAGES toast map was silently dead (no disconnect toasts ever fired). Now keyed numerically; enum values verified live against window.LivekitClient.DisconnectReason.
    • Toasts wired for DUPLICATE_IDENTITY, SERVER_SHUTDOWN, PARTICIPANT_REMOVED, ROOM_DELETED, STATE_MISMATCH, JOIN_FAILURE, SIGNAL_CLOSE, ROOM_CLOSED, CONNECTION_TIMEOUT, MEDIA_FAILURE. CLIENT_INITIATED and UNKNOWN_REASON intentionally stay silent.
    • disconnectReasonName() helper for readable log lines.
    • broadcastState: console.warn on dropped broadcasts with readyState + event type.
    • leaveHuddle: on anchor_missing, broadcasts synthetic huddle.ended event.
  • chat-app.js:

    • Outer WS onmessage catch logs with payload instead of silently swallowing.
    • 30s reconciliation poll (startHuddleReconciliationPoll) — browsers learn about reaper-initiated ends that never went through the chat WS. Guard narrowed to "current-channel huddle" so a user huddling in #A still gets #B reconciliation. Wrapped in try/catch.
    • toggleHuddle: post-join UI failures no longer show misleading "failed to start" toast — the huddle IS live at that point.
    • Initiator sidebar refresh: toggleHuddle + huddleLeave explicitly call refreshChannelHuddleIndicator on their own tab (WS relay skips own conn_id).

Verification

End-to-end verified with real WebRTC — the missing piece from prior rounds (Playwright headless has no media stack):

  • Two real browser users joined a huddle, talked over microphone, heard each other, muted/unmuted, left cleanly.

Reaper ghost cleanup live-tested:

INFO huddle reaper: room 1 (huddle-1) is empty in LiveKit — reconciling ghosts
INFO huddle reaper: room 1 — reaped 1 ghost participant row(s) (joined before 2026-04-16 18:30:28)
INFO huddle reaper: force-ended room 1 (distinct_joiners=1)

huddle.list empty after, anchor flipped to "Huddle ended · 18 minutes · 1 person".

Browser 30s reconciliation poll live-tested: manually ended a huddle via DB, observed the UI flip within 35s with no WS event involved.

TOCTOU defense live-tested: reaper correctly aborts force-end when a participant row exists with joined_at >= poll_started_at.

JWT hygiene decoded: TTL=900s, canPublishSources=["microphone"], canPublishData=false. Proxy-mode auth rejects both missing caller_id and non-channel-member callers.

Audit trail this round

Four audits dispatched in parallel after Round 3:

  • Silent-failure-hunter: found NEW-R3-1 (string-vs-numeric enum, critical) and NEW-R3-2 (ghost cleanup regression, high) — both fixed in Round 3.5.
  • Code-reviewer (general): independently confirmed both critical findings; also flagged participants channel_id fail-open (fixed) and setInterval missing try/catch (fixed).
  • Code-reviewer (focused): flagged toggleHuddle misleading-error-toast (fixed), unnecessary huddleLeave stale-sidebar on refresh failure (mitigated by 30s poll).
  • General-purpose (Slack + Hero OS philosophy): verdict "ship-ready broadly, YES" — 30s poll is an order of magnitude lighter than sibling hero_proc dashboard (2s/5s polls); structured logs sufficient for incident debugging; reaper matches hero_router's scanner pattern.

Final Round 3.5 audit: "Round 3.5 ready to commit."

Operational note

Requires LiveKit started with --node-ip <host-reachable-ip> — e.g. 127.0.0.1 for local single-machine testing. Default Docker container IP (172.17.0.2) is not routable from the host, causing the "could not establish pc connection" error. In production, set to your LAN or public IP depending on where clients connect from. This matches how hero_osis is deployed.

Day-1-after-ship watchlist

Per the Hero-OS-philosophy audit:

  1. Reaper abort rategrep "has .* live joiner(s) that arrived after the LiveKit poll". If non-trivial per day, the reaper interval vs LiveKit handshake window needs tuning.
  2. Anchor-missing rategrep anchor_missing=true. Should be ~0. Non-zero means load_message is failing post-leave (messages table contention, soft-delete regression).
  3. Broadcast-dropped rate — browser console "Huddle broadcast dropped". Ask beta users to share console on any "sidebar stuck" report. If common, move huddle events off the chat WS onto a dedicated reliable channel.

What's deferred (still)

  • plan/known-issues.md — H-3-1 transactional writes in huddle.start, H-3-2 check_channel_member DB-error propagation (now done ✓), H-3-3 partial unique index, H-3-4 unit tests, H-3-5 joiner_ids dedicated table, H-3-6 TZ storage, H-3-7 structured logs (now done ✓), H-3-8 mute-on-join, H-3-9 active-speaker ring.
  • plan/feature-huddles-v2.md — full v2 roadmap including optional server-push bridge.

Verdict

Feature is ship-ready broadly. No feature flag required. Phase 5 done.

## Round 3 Hardening — ✅ Shipped (ship-ready broadly, no feature flag) Ref commit: `cc3dcc6` ### What landed Two prior audit rounds surfaced five correctness gaps that kept the feature "ship-ready behind a feature flag." Round 3 closes them; Round 3.5 fixes the two regressions Round 3 itself introduced (caught by the follow-up audit). **Backend (`hero_collab_server`):** - `handlers/huddle.rs`: - `load_message` filters `deleted_at IS NULL` — soft-deleted anchors can never be broadcast as live. - `fetch_participants` logs + continues on malformed row instead of rendering ghost `{}` avatars. - `leave` returns `anchor_missing: true` when `ended=true` and the updated-anchor reload fails, so the client can broadcast a synthetic `huddle.ended` event and peers still flip their cards. - `participants` now **fails closed** on a room blob missing `channel_id` (prior `if let Some(...)` leaked participant metadata on corrupt rows). - **Structured observability**: `tracing::info!` on `huddle.start / join / leave` with fields `huddle_event`, `room_id`, `channel_id`, `user_id`, `ended`, `anchor_missing`, `distinct_joiners`. "User X stuck huddle for 10 min" incident is now greppable end-to-end from logs. - `huddle_reaper.rs`: - **URL scheme validation at spawn** — `LIVEKIT_URL` must start with `ws://` or `wss://` or the reaper refuses to spawn with a loud `error!`. No more silent per-tick warnings against a broken `api_host`. - **Skip-young filter** in `snapshot_active_huddles` (`created_at < now - 5min`) — eliminates the "brand-new huddle with first client still in handshake gets reaped" race. - **Ghost cleanup inside transaction**: captures `poll_started_at` BEFORE the LiveKit call, then deletes only participant rows with `joined_at < poll_started_at`. A late-joiner row whose `joined_at >= poll_started_at` preserves the huddle — TOCTOU defense **without** defeating ghost cleanup (the Round 3 regression). - Transaction-wrapped `force_end_huddle`: anchor-flip failure returns `Err`, whole thing rolls back. No more half-ended state. - Dead-code workaround block removed. **Frontend (`hero_collab_ui/static/js`):** - `huddle.js`: - **Critical bug fix**: `DisconnectReason` is a numeric protobuf enum (`CLIENT_INITIATED=1`, `DUPLICATE_IDENTITY=2`, …), not a string. The previous `reasonStr === 'CLIENT_INITIATED'` check never matched → the skip-broadcast branch was unreachable (duplicate broadcasts on every leave) **and** the string-keyed `DISCONNECT_MESSAGES` toast map was silently dead (no disconnect toasts ever fired). Now keyed numerically; enum values verified live against `window.LivekitClient.DisconnectReason`. - Toasts wired for `DUPLICATE_IDENTITY`, `SERVER_SHUTDOWN`, `PARTICIPANT_REMOVED`, `ROOM_DELETED`, `STATE_MISMATCH`, `JOIN_FAILURE`, `SIGNAL_CLOSE`, `ROOM_CLOSED`, `CONNECTION_TIMEOUT`, `MEDIA_FAILURE`. `CLIENT_INITIATED` and `UNKNOWN_REASON` intentionally stay silent. - `disconnectReasonName()` helper for readable log lines. - `broadcastState`: `console.warn` on dropped broadcasts with `readyState` + event type. - `leaveHuddle`: on `anchor_missing`, broadcasts synthetic `huddle.ended` event. - `chat-app.js`: - Outer WS `onmessage` catch logs with payload instead of silently swallowing. - **30s reconciliation poll** (`startHuddleReconciliationPoll`) — browsers learn about reaper-initiated ends that never went through the chat WS. Guard narrowed to "current-channel huddle" so a user huddling in #A still gets #B reconciliation. Wrapped in try/catch. - `toggleHuddle`: post-join UI failures no longer show misleading "failed to start" toast — the huddle IS live at that point. - Initiator sidebar refresh: `toggleHuddle` + `huddleLeave` explicitly call `refreshChannelHuddleIndicator` on their own tab (WS relay skips own `conn_id`). ### Verification **End-to-end verified with real WebRTC** — the missing piece from prior rounds (Playwright headless has no media stack): - Two real browser users joined a huddle, talked over microphone, heard each other, muted/unmuted, left cleanly. **Reaper ghost cleanup live-tested:** ``` INFO huddle reaper: room 1 (huddle-1) is empty in LiveKit — reconciling ghosts INFO huddle reaper: room 1 — reaped 1 ghost participant row(s) (joined before 2026-04-16 18:30:28) INFO huddle reaper: force-ended room 1 (distinct_joiners=1) ``` `huddle.list` empty after, anchor flipped to "Huddle ended · 18 minutes · 1 person". **Browser 30s reconciliation poll live-tested:** manually ended a huddle via DB, observed the UI flip within 35s with no WS event involved. **TOCTOU defense live-tested:** reaper correctly aborts force-end when a participant row exists with `joined_at >= poll_started_at`. **JWT hygiene decoded:** TTL=900s, `canPublishSources=["microphone"]`, `canPublishData=false`. Proxy-mode auth rejects both missing `caller_id` and non-channel-member callers. ### Audit trail this round Four audits dispatched in parallel after Round 3: - **Silent-failure-hunter**: found **NEW-R3-1** (string-vs-numeric enum, critical) and **NEW-R3-2** (ghost cleanup regression, high) — both fixed in Round 3.5. - **Code-reviewer (general)**: independently confirmed both critical findings; also flagged participants `channel_id` fail-open (fixed) and setInterval missing try/catch (fixed). - **Code-reviewer (focused)**: flagged toggleHuddle misleading-error-toast (fixed), unnecessary `huddleLeave` stale-sidebar on refresh failure (mitigated by 30s poll). - **General-purpose (Slack + Hero OS philosophy)**: verdict "ship-ready broadly, YES" — 30s poll is an order of magnitude lighter than sibling hero_proc dashboard (2s/5s polls); structured logs sufficient for incident debugging; reaper matches hero_router's scanner pattern. **Final Round 3.5 audit**: *"Round 3.5 ready to commit."* ### Operational note Requires LiveKit started with `--node-ip <host-reachable-ip>` — e.g. `127.0.0.1` for local single-machine testing. Default Docker container IP (`172.17.0.2`) is not routable from the host, causing the "could not establish pc connection" error. In production, set to your LAN or public IP depending on where clients connect from. This matches how hero_osis is deployed. ### Day-1-after-ship watchlist Per the Hero-OS-philosophy audit: 1. **Reaper abort rate** — `grep "has .* live joiner(s) that arrived after the LiveKit poll"`. If non-trivial per day, the reaper interval vs LiveKit handshake window needs tuning. 2. **Anchor-missing rate** — `grep anchor_missing=true`. Should be ~0. Non-zero means `load_message` is failing post-leave (messages table contention, soft-delete regression). 3. **Broadcast-dropped rate** — browser console `"Huddle broadcast dropped"`. Ask beta users to share console on any "sidebar stuck" report. If common, move huddle events off the chat WS onto a dedicated reliable channel. ### What's deferred (still) - [`plan/known-issues.md`](../../src/branch/development/plan/known-issues.md) — H-3-1 transactional writes in `huddle.start`, H-3-2 `check_channel_member` DB-error propagation (now done ✓), H-3-3 partial unique index, H-3-4 unit tests, H-3-5 `joiner_ids` dedicated table, H-3-6 TZ storage, H-3-7 structured logs (now done ✓), H-3-8 mute-on-join, H-3-9 active-speaker ring. - [`plan/feature-huddles-v2.md`](../../src/branch/development/plan/feature-huddles-v2.md) — full v2 roadmap including optional server-push bridge. ### Verdict **Feature is ship-ready broadly. No feature flag required.** Phase 5 done.
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Phase 6.0 — Typed RpcError Model — Shipped

Ref commit: e7c31b9

What landed

Replaces string-based error classification in the RPC dispatch path with a typed RpcError enum. Every variant has a stable JSON-RPC error code and a sanitization strategy. The Internal variant — the safe default for anything handlers didn't explicitly classify — logs the full cause chain server-side with a unique trace_id and returns only that trace_id to the client. No SQL, no filesystem paths, no panic messages ever reach the wire.

Wire contract

Code Variant Meaning Structured data
-32600 InvalidRequest missing/malformed request envelope
-32601 MethodNotFound RPC method not in the dispatcher
-32602 Validation invalid params (e.g. missing required field) {field, reason}
-32603 Internal sanitized; correlates to server log {trace_id}
-32001 Unauthenticated auth required, not provided / not resolved
-32002 PermissionDenied authenticated but not allowed
-32003 NotFound referenced resource does not exist
-32004 Conflict state conflict (ended huddle, duplicate, etc.)
-32005 RateLimited reserved for Phase 6C {retry_after_ms}

Why typed, not anyhow-string-matching

The prior handler chain was handler → anyhow::bail!("Something went wrong with X") → handle_rpc → if msg.starts_with("Method not found") { -32601 } else { -32000 }. That's fragile (wording changes break clients), carries no structured data, and leaked SQL / file paths / panic text onto the wire whenever an unexpected internal error surfaced. The Round-3 audit flagged this as "workaround-grade." Phase 6.0 replaces it.

Key design choices

  • From<anyhow::Error> for RpcError ALWAYS produces Internal. No blanket string-classification — that is the workaround we're removing. Handlers that want a typed variant construct it explicitly: Err(RpcError::PermissionDenied("not in channel".into())). A unit test explicitly smuggles anyhow!("Authentication required") through the From impl and asserts the result is Internal, not Unauthenticated — because classification would be easy and wrong.
  • Progressive migration. Handlers that haven't migrated keep returning anyhow::Result<Value>; the dispatch layer adds .map_err(Into::into) which wraps every such error as Internal. Safe by default; loud on the server (trace_id + full chain); sanitized on the wire.
  • trace_id format: e<pid_hex>_<counter_hex> — short enough to read aloud in a support ticket, unique within a process run. Emitted at tracing::warn! level with the full anyhow chain so ops can grep.

Migrated reference implementation

Huddle handlers migrated end-to-end as the pattern for others to follow:

  • check_channel_member now returns RpcResult<()> — missing caller_id in proxy mode → Unauthenticated, not-in-channel → PermissionDenied, DB error → Internal.
  • huddle::start / join / leave / list / participants return RpcResult<Value> with explicit variants:
    • nonexistent room → NotFound
    • room id points to a non-huddle → InvalidRequest
    • join an ended huddle → Conflict
    • missing livekit_room on blob (corrupted data) → Internal with trace_id
    • LiveKit env vars missing at boot → Conflict (deployment config issue)
  • New require_u64(params, field) helper returns Validation with structured data: {field, reason}. Replaces the params["X"].as_u64().ok_or_else(anyhow!("X required"))? idiom across all huddle handlers.

Deliberately deferred

Legacy handlers (workspace, user, channel, message, thread, document, canvas, attachment, room, presence, read, group, permissions, mention) still return anyhow::Result<Value>. Their errors flow through From<anyhow::Error> and arrive as Internal with a trace_id. Client UX is strictly no worse than before — the old path stringified errors directly onto the wire; the new path sanitizes. Each handler migrates to structured variants in follow-up commits as it's touched for validation / rate-limiting / observability work in Phase 6.1+.

handlers::resolve_self_user_id stays anyhow::Result<u64> for the same reason — 12 callers across 6 modules would need coordinated migration. Tracked for a later sub-phase.

Verification

  • 8 unit tests in rpc_error.rs, all passing:
    • stable code→variant mapping (regression guard for any clients pinning specific codes)
    • message pass-through for structured variants
    • Internal never leaks cause string contents; message is fixed text, data always contains a trace_id
    • From<anyhow::Error> is guaranteed never to classify
    • unique trace_ids
    • valid JSON-RPC 2.0 envelope shape
  • Live wire verification against the running server:
    • does.not.exist-32601 "Method not found: does.not.exist"
    • huddle.start (no args)-32602 + data {field:"channel_id", reason:"missing_or_wrong_type"}
    • huddle.join (bad room)-32003 "Huddle room 99999 does not exist"
    • huddle.list (non-member)-32002 "Not a member of channel 4"
    • huddle.join (ended room)-32004 "Huddle has ended"
    • (missing method)-32600 "missing method"

Compatibility

The SDK (openrpc.client.generated.rs) and CLI consume {code, message, data} generically via the vendored ClientError::Rpc(code, msg) — no code-specific pattern matching anywhere in our clients. This commit is strictly additive on the wire: legacy clients continue to work unchanged; new clients can start reading error.code + error.data for structured handling.

Ecosystem notes also in this commit

  • plan/slack-feature-parity.md: added a note about hero_proxy commit 5f7bb04 (X-Hero-Context now sourced from the authenticated user, not per-domain route — matches our Phase 1 assumptions exactly).

What's next

Phase 6.1a on top of this foundation: a proper validator crate–based input validation layer, with RpcError::Validation as the output type and structured data conveying which field failed which rule. Then rate limiting (uses the RateLimited variant reserved here), DB indexes, attachment cleanup, integration tests, load test, browser compat.

## Phase 6.0 — Typed RpcError Model — ✅ Shipped Ref commit: `e7c31b9` ### What landed Replaces string-based error classification in the RPC dispatch path with a typed `RpcError` enum. Every variant has a stable JSON-RPC error code and a sanitization strategy. The `Internal` variant — the safe default for anything handlers didn't explicitly classify — logs the full cause chain server-side with a unique `trace_id` and returns only that trace_id to the client. **No SQL, no filesystem paths, no panic messages ever reach the wire.** ### Wire contract | Code | Variant | Meaning | Structured `data` | |---|---|---|---| | -32600 | `InvalidRequest` | missing/malformed request envelope | — | | -32601 | `MethodNotFound` | RPC method not in the dispatcher | — | | -32602 | `Validation` | invalid params (e.g. missing required field) | `{field, reason}` | | -32603 | `Internal` | sanitized; correlates to server log | `{trace_id}` | | -32001 | `Unauthenticated` | auth required, not provided / not resolved | — | | -32002 | `PermissionDenied` | authenticated but not allowed | — | | -32003 | `NotFound` | referenced resource does not exist | — | | -32004 | `Conflict` | state conflict (ended huddle, duplicate, etc.) | — | | -32005 | `RateLimited` | reserved for Phase 6C | `{retry_after_ms}` | ### Why typed, not anyhow-string-matching The prior handler chain was `handler → anyhow::bail!("Something went wrong with X") → handle_rpc → if msg.starts_with("Method not found") { -32601 } else { -32000 }`. That's fragile (wording changes break clients), carries no structured data, and leaked SQL / file paths / panic text onto the wire whenever an unexpected internal error surfaced. The Round-3 audit flagged this as "workaround-grade." Phase 6.0 replaces it. ### Key design choices - **`From<anyhow::Error> for RpcError` ALWAYS produces `Internal`.** No blanket string-classification — that is the workaround we're removing. Handlers that want a typed variant construct it explicitly: `Err(RpcError::PermissionDenied("not in channel".into()))`. A unit test explicitly smuggles `anyhow!("Authentication required")` through the `From` impl and asserts the result is `Internal`, not `Unauthenticated` — because classification would be easy and wrong. - **Progressive migration.** Handlers that haven't migrated keep returning `anyhow::Result<Value>`; the dispatch layer adds `.map_err(Into::into)` which wraps every such error as `Internal`. Safe by default; loud on the server (trace_id + full chain); sanitized on the wire. - **`trace_id` format:** `e<pid_hex>_<counter_hex>` — short enough to read aloud in a support ticket, unique within a process run. Emitted at `tracing::warn!` level with the full anyhow chain so ops can grep. ### Migrated reference implementation Huddle handlers migrated end-to-end as the pattern for others to follow: - `check_channel_member` now returns `RpcResult<()>` — missing caller_id in proxy mode → `Unauthenticated`, not-in-channel → `PermissionDenied`, DB error → `Internal`. - `huddle::start / join / leave / list / participants` return `RpcResult<Value>` with explicit variants: - nonexistent room → `NotFound` - room id points to a non-huddle → `InvalidRequest` - join an ended huddle → `Conflict` - missing livekit_room on blob (corrupted data) → `Internal` with trace_id - LiveKit env vars missing at boot → `Conflict` (deployment config issue) - New `require_u64(params, field)` helper returns `Validation` with structured `data: {field, reason}`. Replaces the `params["X"].as_u64().ok_or_else(anyhow!("X required"))?` idiom across all huddle handlers. ### Deliberately deferred Legacy handlers (workspace, user, channel, message, thread, document, canvas, attachment, room, presence, read, group, permissions, mention) still return `anyhow::Result<Value>`. Their errors flow through `From<anyhow::Error>` and arrive as `Internal` with a trace_id. Client UX is strictly **no worse than before** — the old path stringified errors directly onto the wire; the new path sanitizes. Each handler migrates to structured variants in follow-up commits as it's touched for validation / rate-limiting / observability work in Phase 6.1+. `handlers::resolve_self_user_id` stays `anyhow::Result<u64>` for the same reason — 12 callers across 6 modules would need coordinated migration. Tracked for a later sub-phase. ### Verification - **8 unit tests** in `rpc_error.rs`, all passing: - stable code→variant mapping (regression guard for any clients pinning specific codes) - message pass-through for structured variants - `Internal` *never* leaks cause string contents; message is fixed text, data always contains a trace_id - `From<anyhow::Error>` is guaranteed never to classify - unique trace_ids - valid JSON-RPC 2.0 envelope shape - **Live wire verification** against the running server: - `does.not.exist` → `-32601 "Method not found: does.not.exist"` - `huddle.start (no args)` → `-32602 + data {field:"channel_id", reason:"missing_or_wrong_type"}` - `huddle.join (bad room)` → `-32003 "Huddle room 99999 does not exist"` - `huddle.list (non-member)` → `-32002 "Not a member of channel 4"` - `huddle.join (ended room)` → `-32004 "Huddle has ended"` - `(missing method)` → `-32600 "missing method"` ### Compatibility The SDK (`openrpc.client.generated.rs`) and CLI consume `{code, message, data}` generically via the vendored `ClientError::Rpc(code, msg)` — no code-specific pattern matching anywhere in our clients. This commit is strictly additive on the wire: legacy clients continue to work unchanged; new clients can start reading `error.code` + `error.data` for structured handling. ### Ecosystem notes also in this commit - `plan/slack-feature-parity.md`: added a note about hero_proxy commit `5f7bb04` (`X-Hero-Context` now sourced from the authenticated user, not per-domain route — matches our Phase 1 assumptions exactly). ### What's next Phase 6.1a on top of this foundation: a proper `validator` crate–based input validation layer, with `RpcError::Validation` as the output type and structured `data` conveying which field failed which rule. Then rate limiting (uses the `RateLimited` variant reserved here), DB indexes, attachment cleanup, integration tests, load test, browser compat.
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Phase 6.1a — Input Validation (parse-don't-validate newtypes) — Shipped

Ref commit: 73e48f7

What landed

Every user-facing string field with a semantic rule (length cap, email format, channel-slug pattern) is now a newtype whose Deserialize impl runs the validator. A value of type Name, Email, ChannelName, Description, or MessageContent is guaranteed to have been validated at serde-decode time — there is no in-crate constructor that skips the check. Handlers cannot see an invalid value; rejection happens before the handler body runs.

Wire contract — live-verified

Input Expected Result
workspace.create name="" -32602 validation field \name`: must not be empty`
workspace.create name=100×🎧 200 graphemes, not bytes, counted
workspace.create name=101×🎧 -32602 grapheme cap rejected
user.create email="not-an-email" -32602 Missing separator '@'
channel.create name="UPPERCASE" -32602 pattern ^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9_-]*$
message.send content="" -32602 non-whitespace required
{nme: "Typo"} -32602 deny_unknown_fields catches typo
attachment.upload oversized -32602 structured {max_bytes, actual_bytes}
_hero_user present with auth 200 server-injected field stripped before deserialize

Key decisions made through specialist consultation

Three independent specialists reviewed the design (type-design, ecosystem precedent, industry consensus):

  • Chose hand-written newtypes over typify codegen — typify would have saved ~100 lines of Rust, but only by committing to an openrpc.json restructure (components.schemas + $ref) and a build script. That scope is a separate refactor. Public API (Name, Email, etc.) is stable either way; swapping to typify-generated implementations later is mechanical.
  • Chose #[serde(deny_unknown_fields)] on input structs. For hero_collab's monorepo with co-versioned SDK/server, the benefit (catching typo'd field names at the boundary) outweighs the forward-compat concern industry auditors flagged for multi-version deployments.
  • Enriched openrpc.json with JSON Schema constraint annotations (maxLength, minLength, pattern, format) — openrpc_client! macro tolerates unknown keys (verified by reading the macro source), so additions are wire-safe. Spec is now single source of truth for "what is valid input".
  • Email validation adds a "domain contains '.'" check on top of RFC parsing — rejects user@localhost that every major registration flow rejects in practice.

Newtypes + constants

Name               non-empty (trimmed),  100 grapheme clusters
Description        possibly-empty,  1000 grapheme clusters
ChannelName         80 bytes, regex ^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9_-]*$
MessageContent     non-whitespace-only,  40 000 grapheme clusters
Email              RFC via `email_address`,  254 bytes, domain has a dot

What was migrated

9 handlers now return RpcResult<Value> and deserialize through parse_input:

  • workspace.create / update
  • user.create / update
  • channel.create / update
  • message.send / update
  • attachment.upload

Untouched handlers stay on anyhow::Result<Value> with Internal-wrap-via-From — per Phase 6.0's progressive migration design. Each time a handler is touched for later hardening (rate limit, activity log), it migrates too.

Spec-drift test

A unit test parses openrpc.json at test time, finds each annotated field (maxLength/format/pattern), and asserts every adversarial payload the schema would reject is also rejected by the Rust newtype. Catches drift between spec and Rust WITHOUT requiring code generation. 14 constraint annotations covered; a floor assert!(covered >= 10) fires if annotations get silently removed.

Audit trail

Three-specialist design consultation (pre-implementation) → all three validated:

  • Type-design: TYPE-SAFE-READY, 18/20 (vs 8/20 for helpers-on-Value, 16/20 for codegen)
  • Ecosystem: ECOSYSTEM-SAFE — hero_osis already annotates its specs; we add discipline of Rust enforcement on top
  • Industry: INDUSTRY-DEFENSIBLE — newtype+TryFrom pattern used in production by ruma (Matrix), Ethereum JSON-RPC, Diem, Substrate's AccountId32

Production-grade audit of the implementation caught two critical bugs BEFORE commit:

  • C1: _hero_user injection collided with deny_unknown_fields — would have broken every authenticated call. Fixed: parse_input strips server-injected fields before typed deserialize.
  • C2: UserCreate.workspace_id was spuriously required but neither spec, SDK, nor CLI sends it — user.create via CLI was 100% broken. Fixed: removed from the struct.

Both fixes have regression tests. Full test suite: 18 unit tests passing.

Hardening change clients should know

Typed u64 fields now reject string-encoded numeric IDs ("123" is no longer coerced to 123). Pre-migration handlers permissively accepted both via id_from_json. hero_collab_sdk always sends numeric IDs; CLI uses the SDK; no in-house callers affected. Browser-side callers that JSON.stringify(BigInt) now need to send numbers. Documented so future integrators have a trail.

What's next

Phase 6.1a is done. Remaining in Phase 6:

  • 6.1b: migrate remaining handlers (canvas, document, group) to typed inputs.
  • 6.2: rate limiting (the RpcError::RateLimited variant reserved in Phase 6.0).
  • 6.2: DB indexes, activity log population, error-sanitization audit sweep.
  • 6.3: attachment cleanup task, integration tests, load test, browser compat.

Typify evaluation for a spec-driven codegen path is tracked as a separate potential refactor — the current hand-written public API (Name, Email, etc.) would stay stable; only the origin (hand-written ↔ generated) would swap.

## Phase 6.1a — Input Validation (parse-don't-validate newtypes) — ✅ Shipped Ref commit: `73e48f7` ### What landed Every user-facing string field with a semantic rule (length cap, email format, channel-slug pattern) is now a **newtype whose `Deserialize` impl runs the validator**. A value of type `Name`, `Email`, `ChannelName`, `Description`, or `MessageContent` is guaranteed to have been validated at serde-decode time — there is no in-crate constructor that skips the check. Handlers cannot see an invalid value; rejection happens before the handler body runs. ### Wire contract — live-verified | Input | Expected | Result | |---|---|---| | `workspace.create name=""` | -32602 validation | ✅ `field \`name\`: must not be empty` | | `workspace.create name=100×🎧` | 200 | ✅ graphemes, not bytes, counted | | `workspace.create name=101×🎧` | -32602 | ✅ grapheme cap rejected | | `user.create email="not-an-email"` | -32602 | ✅ `Missing separator '@'` | | `channel.create name="UPPERCASE"` | -32602 | ✅ pattern `^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9_-]*$` | | `message.send content=""` | -32602 | ✅ non-whitespace required | | `{nme: "Typo"}` | -32602 | ✅ `deny_unknown_fields` catches typo | | `attachment.upload` oversized | -32602 | ✅ structured `{max_bytes, actual_bytes}` | | `_hero_user` present with auth | 200 | ✅ server-injected field stripped before deserialize | ### Key decisions made through specialist consultation Three independent specialists reviewed the design (type-design, ecosystem precedent, industry consensus): - **Chose hand-written newtypes over `typify` codegen** — typify would have saved ~100 lines of Rust, but only by committing to an openrpc.json restructure (components.schemas + $ref) and a build script. That scope is a separate refactor. Public API (`Name`, `Email`, etc.) is stable either way; swapping to typify-generated implementations later is mechanical. - **Chose `#[serde(deny_unknown_fields)]`** on input structs. For hero_collab's monorepo with co-versioned SDK/server, the benefit (catching typo'd field names at the boundary) outweighs the forward-compat concern industry auditors flagged for multi-version deployments. - **Enriched `openrpc.json` with JSON Schema constraint annotations** (`maxLength`, `minLength`, `pattern`, `format`) — `openrpc_client!` macro tolerates unknown keys (verified by reading the macro source), so additions are wire-safe. Spec is now single source of truth for "what is valid input". - **Email validation adds a "domain contains '.'" check** on top of RFC parsing — rejects `user@localhost` that every major registration flow rejects in practice. ### Newtypes + constants ```rust Name — non-empty (trimmed), ≤ 100 grapheme clusters Description — possibly-empty, ≤ 1000 grapheme clusters ChannelName — ≤ 80 bytes, regex ^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9_-]*$ MessageContent — non-whitespace-only, ≤ 40 000 grapheme clusters Email — RFC via `email_address`, ≤ 254 bytes, domain has a dot ``` ### What was migrated 9 handlers now return `RpcResult<Value>` and deserialize through `parse_input`: - `workspace.create / update` - `user.create / update` - `channel.create / update` - `message.send / update` - `attachment.upload` Untouched handlers stay on `anyhow::Result<Value>` with Internal-wrap-via-From — per Phase 6.0's progressive migration design. Each time a handler is touched for later hardening (rate limit, activity log), it migrates too. ### Spec-drift test A unit test parses `openrpc.json` at test time, finds each annotated field (`maxLength`/`format`/`pattern`), and asserts every adversarial payload the schema would reject is also rejected by the Rust newtype. Catches drift between spec and Rust WITHOUT requiring code generation. 14 constraint annotations covered; a floor `assert!(covered >= 10)` fires if annotations get silently removed. ### Audit trail **Three-specialist design consultation** (pre-implementation) → all three validated: - Type-design: TYPE-SAFE-READY, 18/20 (vs 8/20 for helpers-on-Value, 16/20 for codegen) - Ecosystem: ECOSYSTEM-SAFE — `hero_osis` already annotates its specs; we add discipline of Rust enforcement on top - Industry: INDUSTRY-DEFENSIBLE — newtype+TryFrom pattern used in production by ruma (Matrix), Ethereum JSON-RPC, Diem, Substrate's `AccountId32` **Production-grade audit of the implementation** caught two critical bugs BEFORE commit: - **C1**: `_hero_user` injection collided with `deny_unknown_fields` — would have broken every authenticated call. Fixed: `parse_input` strips server-injected fields before typed deserialize. - **C2**: `UserCreate.workspace_id` was spuriously required but neither spec, SDK, nor CLI sends it — `user.create` via CLI was 100% broken. Fixed: removed from the struct. Both fixes have regression tests. Full test suite: **18 unit tests passing**. ### Hardening change clients should know Typed `u64` fields now reject string-encoded numeric IDs (`"123"` is no longer coerced to `123`). Pre-migration handlers permissively accepted both via `id_from_json`. `hero_collab_sdk` always sends numeric IDs; CLI uses the SDK; no in-house callers affected. Browser-side callers that `JSON.stringify(BigInt)` now need to send numbers. Documented so future integrators have a trail. ### What's next Phase 6.1a is done. Remaining in Phase 6: - **6.1b**: migrate remaining handlers (canvas, document, group) to typed inputs. - **6.2**: rate limiting (the `RpcError::RateLimited` variant reserved in Phase 6.0). - **6.2**: DB indexes, activity log population, error-sanitization audit sweep. - **6.3**: attachment cleanup task, integration tests, load test, browser compat. Typify evaluation for a spec-driven codegen path is tracked as a separate potential refactor — the current hand-written public API (`Name`, `Email`, etc.) would stay stable; only the origin (hand-written ↔ generated) would swap.
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Phase 0-5 status audit — done vs documented

Ref commit: 40e8d92 (plan docs only — no functional change)

Audit result

39 DONE · 1 PARTIAL · 7 NOT DONE (1 of the 7 is explicitly deferred by plan). Evidence: file:line per item, from a code-level cross-reference against every subitem in plan/slack-feature-parity.md.

Phase DONE PARTIAL NOT DONE
0 Bugs + foundation 0B toggle, 0C attachment, 0D toggle_react RPC 0A DB backup policy
1 Auth via hero_proxy 1-PRE-2 flag, 1A X-Hero-User, 1B forwarding, 1C WS auth, 1D user.me, 1E impersonation guard, 1F UI init 1-PRE proxy E2E (procedural), 1G user federation for invites, 1H claims authz (optional)
2 Chat UI 2A unread, 2B typing, 2C presence+stale, 2D WS (partial), 2E inline edit 2F channel details panel, 2G user profile popover
3 Core features 3A FTS5, 3B mentions, 3C pinned, 3D browse
4 Canvases + 4-EXT all 5 core + all 12 EXT
5 Huddles 5B token, 5C UI, 5D spec+CLI 5A LiveKit deploy artifact 5E video/screen ( deferred)

Top 5 gaps (production-impactful)

  1. Phase 1G — hero_proxy user federation not wired. In proxy mode, invite/member-add dropdowns only see already-logged-in users (those auto-created by user.me on first login). Practically blocks multi-user invites. Fix: add proxy_client.rs + new collab.users.available RPC that queries ~/hero/var/sockets/hero_proxy/rpc.sock. Tracked as K-4-2.
  2. Phase 2F / 2G — channel details panel + user profile popover absent. Visible Slack-parity gaps on every message. Tracked as K-4-3.
  3. Phase 5A — no LiveKit deployment artifact. Env-var integration works, but no docker-compose.yml, no .env.example, no README section explaining --node-ip. Ops blocker for anyone but the original author. Tracked as K-4-4.
  4. Phase 0A — DB backup policy undocumented. Every schema-touching phase was supposed to be preceded by a backup. Zero script / Makefile target / docs exist. Ops risk at next migration. Tracked as K-4-1.
  5. Phase 2D — WS receive-side missing presence.update / read.updated handlers. Outbound both fire correctly; the browser WS onmessage switch doesn't consume these from peers. Multi-tab presence lags the 60-second poll; read cursors from other tabs never update. Tracked as K-4-5.

Work shipped beyond Phase 5 scope (not folded into "Phase 5 done")

These land in their own commits and are tracked separately from the phase 0-5 audit:

  • Round 3 huddle hardening (cc3dcc6) — reaper ghost cleanup, DisconnectReason enum fix, URL validation, TOCTOU defense, observability
  • Phase 6.0 (e7c31b9) — typed RpcError model + sanitized Internal + trace_id
  • Phase 6.1a (73e48f7) — parse-don't-validate newtypes + spec-drift test + openrpc.json constraint annotations

What this commit contains

Non-code only. Updated plan docs:

  • plan/slack-feature-parity.md → new "Implementation Status Snapshot" section at top with the audit table
  • plan/known-issues.md → 5 new entries (K-4-1 through K-4-5) with file:line references, concrete fixes, severity tags
  • Phase 6.1b → 6.3 continues the hardening track already underway (~2-3 days)
  • Phase 1G (K-4-2) is the single largest unshipped production blocker — invite workflows are broken in proxy mode without it (~1-2 days)
  • Phase 5A (K-4-4) and Phase 0A (K-4-1) are ops-hygiene fixes that block adoption by anyone but current maintainers (~half day each)
  • Phase 2F/2G/2D (K-4-3, K-4-5) are Slack-parity UX polish — defer until production-blockers are cleared
## Phase 0-5 status audit — done vs documented Ref commit: `40e8d92` (plan docs only — no functional change) ### Audit result **39 DONE · 1 PARTIAL · 7 NOT DONE** (1 of the 7 is explicitly deferred by plan). Evidence: file:line per item, from a code-level cross-reference against every subitem in `plan/slack-feature-parity.md`. | Phase | DONE | PARTIAL | NOT DONE | |---|---|---|---| | **0** Bugs + foundation | 0B toggle, 0C attachment, 0D toggle_react RPC | — | 0A DB backup policy | | **1** Auth via hero_proxy | 1-PRE-2 flag, 1A X-Hero-User, 1B forwarding, 1C WS auth, 1D user.me, 1E impersonation guard, 1F UI init | — | 1-PRE proxy E2E (procedural), **1G user federation for invites**, 1H claims authz (optional) | | **2** Chat UI | 2A unread, 2B typing, 2C presence+stale, 2D WS (partial), 2E inline edit | — | **2F channel details panel**, **2G user profile popover** | | **3** Core features | 3A FTS5, 3B mentions, 3C pinned, 3D browse | — | — | | **4** Canvases + 4-EXT | all 5 core + all 12 EXT | — | — | | **5** Huddles | 5B token, 5C UI, 5D spec+CLI | 5A LiveKit deploy artifact | 5E video/screen (⏳ deferred) | ### Top 5 gaps (production-impactful) 1. **Phase 1G — hero_proxy user federation not wired.** In proxy mode, invite/member-add dropdowns only see already-logged-in users (those auto-created by `user.me` on first login). Practically blocks multi-user invites. Fix: add `proxy_client.rs` + new `collab.users.available` RPC that queries `~/hero/var/sockets/hero_proxy/rpc.sock`. Tracked as `K-4-2`. 2. **Phase 2F / 2G — channel details panel + user profile popover absent.** Visible Slack-parity gaps on every message. Tracked as `K-4-3`. 3. **Phase 5A — no LiveKit deployment artifact.** Env-var integration works, but no `docker-compose.yml`, no `.env.example`, no README section explaining `--node-ip`. Ops blocker for anyone but the original author. Tracked as `K-4-4`. 4. **Phase 0A — DB backup policy undocumented.** Every schema-touching phase was supposed to be preceded by a backup. Zero script / Makefile target / docs exist. Ops risk at next migration. Tracked as `K-4-1`. 5. **Phase 2D — WS receive-side missing `presence.update` / `read.updated` handlers.** Outbound both fire correctly; the browser WS `onmessage` switch doesn't consume these from peers. Multi-tab presence lags the 60-second poll; read cursors from other tabs never update. Tracked as `K-4-5`. ### Work shipped beyond Phase 5 scope (not folded into "Phase 5 done") These land in their own commits and are tracked separately from the phase 0-5 audit: - **Round 3 huddle hardening** (`cc3dcc6`) — reaper ghost cleanup, DisconnectReason enum fix, URL validation, TOCTOU defense, observability - **Phase 6.0** (`e7c31b9`) — typed `RpcError` model + sanitized Internal + trace_id - **Phase 6.1a** (`73e48f7`) — parse-don't-validate newtypes + spec-drift test + openrpc.json constraint annotations ### What this commit contains Non-code only. Updated plan docs: - `plan/slack-feature-parity.md` → new "Implementation Status Snapshot" section at top with the audit table - `plan/known-issues.md` → 5 new entries (`K-4-1` through `K-4-5`) with file:line references, concrete fixes, severity tags ### Recommended next steps - **Phase 6.1b → 6.3** continues the hardening track already underway (~2-3 days) - **Phase 1G (K-4-2)** is the single largest unshipped production blocker — invite workflows are broken in proxy mode without it (~1-2 days) - **Phase 5A (K-4-4)** and **Phase 0A (K-4-1)** are ops-hygiene fixes that block adoption by anyone but current maintainers (~half day each) - **Phase 2F/2G/2D** (K-4-3, K-4-5) are Slack-parity UX polish — defer until production-blockers are cleared
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Phase 6.1b — typed inputs for canvas/document/group (commit 2158cf5)

Extends the Phase 6.1a parse-don't-validate pattern to the remaining write handlers.

Added newtypes (validation.rs):

  • Title — ≤200 graphemes, non-empty, trimmed-on-store (canvas/document titles)
  • DocumentContent — ≤500,000 graphemes, empty OK (long-form markdown bodies)
  • Icon — ≤32 graphemes, empty OK (short UI slug / emoji glyph)
  • Role enum — Viewer | Editor, rejects unknown values at deserialize time

Migrated handlers (10 entrypoints): canvas.{create, get, update, delete, share, unshare, update_role, get_preview, save_state, load_state}, document.{create, update, share}, group.{create, update}. All return RpcResult<Value>; dispatcher arms in rpc.rs drop .map_err(Into::into) accordingly.

Audit fixes folded in:

  • check_canvas_access now returns RpcResult<()> so policy denials surface as -32002 PermissionDenied / -32001 Unauthenticated instead of being sanitized into -32603 Internal.
  • "Cannot change canvas owner's role" reclassified from Conflict (-32004) to PermissionDenied (-32002) — it's a policy refusal, not a state conflict.
  • Same treatment applied to unshare owner-removal and soft-deleted canvas lookups (-32003 NotFound).

Backwards compatibility: group.create preserves all three pre-migration caller shapes — admin dashboard's {name, description}-only (global groups), CLI's singular workspace_id, and the legacy workspace_ids array. Precedence matches: workspace_ids wins when both present.

Spec + tests: 15 new JSON Schema constraint annotations in openrpc.json. The drift-test pick_newtype_test gained three match arms (title / content / icon); coverage floor raised from ≥10 to ≥20 so forgetting to extend the test when adding a newtype fails CI. 30 passing unit tests (up from 25).

Live-verified: Every adversarial payload (empty title, over-cap content, unknown field via deny_unknown_fields, invalid role enum, owner-role change, non-collaborator access, soft-deleted get) returns the expected structured error code via raw Unix socket RPC.

Next up: Phase 6.2 (rate limiting, DB indexes, activity log, observability extension) → Phase 6.3 (attachment cleanup, integration + load tests, browser-compat baseline).

## Phase 6.1b — typed inputs for canvas/document/group (commit `2158cf5`) Extends the Phase 6.1a parse-don't-validate pattern to the remaining write handlers. **Added newtypes (`validation.rs`):** - `Title` — ≤200 graphemes, non-empty, trimmed-on-store (canvas/document titles) - `DocumentContent` — ≤500,000 graphemes, empty OK (long-form markdown bodies) - `Icon` — ≤32 graphemes, empty OK (short UI slug / emoji glyph) - `Role` enum — `Viewer` | `Editor`, rejects unknown values at deserialize time **Migrated handlers (10 entrypoints):** `canvas.{create, get, update, delete, share, unshare, update_role, get_preview, save_state, load_state}`, `document.{create, update, share}`, `group.{create, update}`. All return `RpcResult<Value>`; dispatcher arms in `rpc.rs` drop `.map_err(Into::into)` accordingly. **Audit fixes folded in:** - `check_canvas_access` now returns `RpcResult<()>` so policy denials surface as `-32002 PermissionDenied` / `-32001 Unauthenticated` instead of being sanitized into `-32603 Internal`. - "Cannot change canvas owner's role" reclassified from `Conflict` (-32004) to `PermissionDenied` (-32002) — it's a policy refusal, not a state conflict. - Same treatment applied to `unshare` owner-removal and soft-deleted canvas lookups (`-32003 NotFound`). **Backwards compatibility:** `group.create` preserves all three pre-migration caller shapes — admin dashboard's `{name, description}`-only (global groups), CLI's singular `workspace_id`, and the legacy `workspace_ids` array. Precedence matches: `workspace_ids` wins when both present. **Spec + tests:** 15 new JSON Schema constraint annotations in `openrpc.json`. The drift-test `pick_newtype_test` gained three match arms (title / content / icon); coverage floor raised from ≥10 to ≥20 so forgetting to extend the test when adding a newtype fails CI. **30 passing unit tests** (up from 25). **Live-verified:** Every adversarial payload (empty title, over-cap content, unknown field via `deny_unknown_fields`, invalid role enum, owner-role change, non-collaborator access, soft-deleted get) returns the expected structured error code via raw Unix socket RPC. Next up: Phase 6.2 (rate limiting, DB indexes, activity log, observability extension) → Phase 6.3 (attachment cleanup, integration + load tests, browser-compat baseline).
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Phase 6.2 shipped — runtime hardening (4 commits)

Three sub-phases, landed across concurrent tracks (6.2d/6.2a on main + 6.2b/6.2c in a worktree-isolated agent, merged via cherry-pick).

6.2d — Observability (23573bb)

handle_rpc now emits a structured rpc.dispatch tracing event on every call with rpc.method, rpc.duration_ms, rpc.status (ok|error), and rpc.error_code when failing. Operators can grep rpc.method=huddle.join or filter validation noise via rpc.error_code=-32602.

Three atomic counters added to AppState (rpc_calls_total, rpc_errors_total, rpc_latency_sum_us) and surfaced through system.metrics as rpc_calls_total, rpc_errors_total, avg_latency_ms. Relaxed ordering throughout — monitoring, not consistency. Latency summed in microseconds so sub-ms calls don't round to zero.

hero_collab_ui gains an active_ws_connections gauge (AtomicUsize, paired fetch_add/fetch_sub around both chat and canvas WS handlers) exposed via /health. Single number for "are clients connected".

6.2a — Rate limiting (ae9c3c0)

New rate_limit.rs module. Two buckets per authenticated caller_id:

  • global: 60 RPC/min
  • send: 10 message.send/min (tighter inner constraint on the write path that hits the DB hardest)

Two-phase check-then-commit: refill + verify both buckets, then consume only if both pass. A rejection never spuriously depletes the other bucket — mattered because the naive ordering wasted tokens on send-rejection, caught by a unit test.

Rejections flow through the same error path as any other error, so they hit the 6.2d counters and tracing. Operators can grep rpc.error_code=-32005 to see throttled callers.

Unauthenticated dev-mode calls (caller_id=None) bypass unlimited — matches the existing auth model.

7 unit tests covering bucket mechanics, per-caller isolation, and the two-phase invariant. Drops the #[allow(dead_code)] on RpcError::RateLimited — the variant reserved in Phase 6.0 now has a consumer.

6.2b + 6.2c — Indexes + activity log (275674e)

Three new DB indexes on user-id columns: idx_workspace_members_user, idx_channel_members_user, idx_messages_user. CREATE INDEX IF NOT EXISTS so re-running against existing DBs is safe.

New handlers/activity.rs module with log_activity_or_warn — fire-and-forget: activity-log failure must NEVER break a successful business operation, so it's logged via tracing::warn! and swallowed. 26 call sites across 6 handler files (workspace, channel, message, canvas, document, group). message.send payload deliberately omits content — high-frequency path, and content is PII.

Ran as a worktree-isolated background agent in parallel with 6.2d/6.2a; cherry-picked onto main after both tracks verified.

Live-verified

  • Fired 63 rpc.health as caller 100 → 60 ok + 3 rate-limited with retry_after_ms ≈ 998ms
  • Fresh caller 200 unaffected (per-caller isolation)
  • No-caller_id bypass works
  • Rate-limited rejections count in rpc_errors_total and emit structured traces
  • End-to-end smoke (workspace.createcanvas.createdocument.creategroup.create) lands 4 rows in activity_log with correct action + workspace_id + data payload
  • All 3 new indexes visible via sqlite3 .indexes
  • /health on ui.sock returns active_ws_connections

Test count: 40 passing (up from 30)

+7 rate_limit, +3 activity_log.

Next: Phase 6.3 (attachment cleanup, integration tests, load test, browser compat) — running 6H/6J/6K in a parallel agent now, 6G on main.

## Phase 6.2 shipped — runtime hardening (4 commits) Three sub-phases, landed across concurrent tracks (6.2d/6.2a on main + 6.2b/6.2c in a worktree-isolated agent, merged via cherry-pick). ### 6.2d — Observability (`23573bb`) `handle_rpc` now emits a structured `rpc.dispatch` tracing event on every call with `rpc.method`, `rpc.duration_ms`, `rpc.status` (ok|error), and `rpc.error_code` when failing. Operators can `grep rpc.method=huddle.join` or filter validation noise via `rpc.error_code=-32602`. Three atomic counters added to `AppState` (`rpc_calls_total`, `rpc_errors_total`, `rpc_latency_sum_us`) and surfaced through `system.metrics` as `rpc_calls_total`, `rpc_errors_total`, `avg_latency_ms`. Relaxed ordering throughout — monitoring, not consistency. Latency summed in microseconds so sub-ms calls don't round to zero. `hero_collab_ui` gains an `active_ws_connections` gauge (AtomicUsize, paired fetch_add/fetch_sub around both chat and canvas WS handlers) exposed via `/health`. Single number for "are clients connected". ### 6.2a — Rate limiting (`ae9c3c0`) New `rate_limit.rs` module. Two buckets per authenticated `caller_id`: - **global**: 60 RPC/min - **send**: 10 `message.send`/min (tighter inner constraint on the write path that hits the DB hardest) **Two-phase check-then-commit**: refill + verify both buckets, then consume only if both pass. A rejection never spuriously depletes the other bucket — mattered because the naive ordering wasted tokens on send-rejection, caught by a unit test. Rejections flow through the same error path as any other error, so they hit the 6.2d counters and tracing. Operators can grep `rpc.error_code=-32005` to see throttled callers. Unauthenticated dev-mode calls (`caller_id=None`) bypass unlimited — matches the existing auth model. 7 unit tests covering bucket mechanics, per-caller isolation, and the two-phase invariant. Drops the `#[allow(dead_code)]` on `RpcError::RateLimited` — the variant reserved in Phase 6.0 now has a consumer. ### 6.2b + 6.2c — Indexes + activity log (`275674e`) Three new DB indexes on user-id columns: `idx_workspace_members_user`, `idx_channel_members_user`, `idx_messages_user`. `CREATE INDEX IF NOT EXISTS` so re-running against existing DBs is safe. New `handlers/activity.rs` module with `log_activity_or_warn` — fire-and-forget: activity-log failure must NEVER break a successful business operation, so it's logged via `tracing::warn!` and swallowed. 26 call sites across 6 handler files (workspace, channel, message, canvas, document, group). `message.send` payload deliberately omits content — high-frequency path, and content is PII. Ran as a worktree-isolated background agent in parallel with 6.2d/6.2a; cherry-picked onto main after both tracks verified. ### Live-verified - Fired 63 `rpc.health` as caller 100 → 60 ok + 3 rate-limited with `retry_after_ms ≈ 998ms` - Fresh caller 200 unaffected (per-caller isolation) - No-caller_id bypass works - Rate-limited rejections count in `rpc_errors_total` and emit structured traces - End-to-end smoke (`workspace.create` → `canvas.create` → `document.create` → `group.create`) lands 4 rows in `activity_log` with correct action + workspace_id + data payload - All 3 new indexes visible via `sqlite3 .indexes` - `/health` on `ui.sock` returns `active_ws_connections` ### Test count: 40 passing (up from 30) +7 rate_limit, +3 activity_log. ### Next: Phase 6.3 (attachment cleanup, integration tests, load test, browser compat) — running 6H/6J/6K in a parallel agent now, 6G on main.
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Phase 6.3 shipped — hardening polish (2 commits)

Two tracks ran in parallel: main thread shipped attachment cleanup; a background agent produced the load test + integration suite + browser-compat doc. Both pushed to development.

6.3G — Attachment cleanup (7beb6b6)

Pending uploads (message_id IS NULL) previously accumulated indefinitely — opening the file picker then closing the tab left a blob in storage + a row in the DB that nothing ever swept. Two entry points now exist:

  • attachment.cleanup_pending RPC — admin-only (routes through check_permission; unknown actions fall through to false). Optional older_than_secs param overrides the 24h TTL; handy for ad-hoc reclamation and tests. Returns {deleted_rows, files_removed, older_than_secs}; the two counts diverge only when a blob was already missing on disk (logged warn, DB row still deleted so state reconciles).
  • Hourly background task — spawned in main.rs::async_main alongside the existing huddle reaper. 24h TTL, errors logged but don't stop the loop. Silent when there's nothing to do.

Live-verified: uploaded 2 pending + 1 attached; cleanup with older_than_secs=1 after a 2s wait reports deleted_rows=2, files_removed=2 and leaves the attached row untouched.

6.3H/6J/6K — Load test + integration tests + browser compat (2a9b697)

  • crates/hero_collab_examples/examples/load_test.rs (473 lines, manual-run only): 20 concurrent WS clients × 10 msg/s × 30s = 6000 sends. Bootstraps fresh workspace + channel + 20 distinct users so each caller has its own rate-limit bucket. Prints per-client + aggregate latency percentiles. Exit 0 iff no WS drops, no SQLite lock timeouts, p95 < 200ms. Rate-limit rejections (-32005) counted separately, do not fail the run.
  • crates/hero_collab_server/tests/integration.rs (500 lines): 5 #[tokio::test] fixtures each spawn hero_collab_server via env!("CARGO_BIN_EXE_...") against /private/tmp/hct_.../s/ (short enough for macOS sun_path ≤ 104 bytes; /tmp symlink breaks storage.rs's canonicalize-based traversal guard). Fixture SIGTERMs on Drop. Tests: happy-path message send+list, reaction toggle idempotence, attachment→message flow with attachment_ids, rate-limit fires on burst, validation fires on empty canvas title. 45/45 server tests pass (40 pre-existing unit + 5 new integration).
  • crates/hero_collab_ui/BROWSER_SUPPORT.md — minimum supported browsers (Chrome/Edge 100+, Firefox 100+, Safari 15.4+) with per-API rationale sourced from an actual grep of static/js/ + templates/. The Tested Configurations table currently shows all "not tested" — no structured compat sweep has been performed at the 6.3 baseline; future manual passes should fill it in honestly.

Test count: 45 (was 40)

+5 integration tests covering end-to-end flows across 6.1a/6.1b/6.2a/6.3G work.

Phase 6 status

Core hardening complete. Every planned 6.x subitem has shipped: 6.0 typed errors, 6.1a/6.1b typed inputs + newtypes, 6.2a rate limiting, 6.2b indexes, 6.2c activity log, 6.2d observability, 6.3G cleanup, 6H/6J/6K tests+docs.

Not closing #9 yet — real gaps remain

The Phase 0-5 audit from 2026-04-17 surfaced real production blockers tracked as K-4-1..K-4-5 + K-6-1 in plan/known-issues.md:

  1. K-4-2 (Phase 1G) — hero_proxy user federation. In proxy mode, invite dropdowns only see locally-created users. Blocks multi-user workflows.
  2. K-4-4 (Phase 5A) — no docker-compose / README for LiveKit. Ops blocker.
  3. K-4-1 (Phase 0A) — DB backup policy undocumented.
  4. K-4-3 (Phase 2F+2G) — channel details panel + user profile popover missing. Visible Slack-parity UI gaps.
  5. K-4-5 (Phase 2D) — WS onmessage doesn't handle presence.update / read.updated. Multi-tab lag.
  6. K-6-1 — README / TECH_SPEC / IMPLEMENTATION_SUMMARY rewrite.

Rough sequencing for next ~1 working week: 5A + 0A together (small) → 1G federation (blocker) → 2D (small WS fix) → 2F + 2G (UI panels) → K-6-1 docs.

## Phase 6.3 shipped — hardening polish (2 commits) Two tracks ran in parallel: main thread shipped attachment cleanup; a background agent produced the load test + integration suite + browser-compat doc. Both pushed to `development`. ### 6.3G — Attachment cleanup (`7beb6b6`) Pending uploads (`message_id IS NULL`) previously accumulated indefinitely — opening the file picker then closing the tab left a blob in storage + a row in the DB that nothing ever swept. Two entry points now exist: - **`attachment.cleanup_pending` RPC** — admin-only (routes through `check_permission`; unknown actions fall through to `false`). Optional `older_than_secs` param overrides the 24h TTL; handy for ad-hoc reclamation and tests. Returns `{deleted_rows, files_removed, older_than_secs}`; the two counts diverge only when a blob was already missing on disk (logged `warn`, DB row still deleted so state reconciles). - **Hourly background task** — spawned in `main.rs::async_main` alongside the existing huddle reaper. 24h TTL, errors logged but don't stop the loop. Silent when there's nothing to do. Live-verified: uploaded 2 pending + 1 attached; cleanup with `older_than_secs=1` after a 2s wait reports `deleted_rows=2, files_removed=2` and leaves the attached row untouched. ### 6.3H/6J/6K — Load test + integration tests + browser compat (`2a9b697`) - **`crates/hero_collab_examples/examples/load_test.rs`** (473 lines, manual-run only): 20 concurrent WS clients × 10 msg/s × 30s = 6000 sends. Bootstraps fresh workspace + channel + 20 distinct users so each caller has its own rate-limit bucket. Prints per-client + aggregate latency percentiles. Exit 0 iff no WS drops, no SQLite lock timeouts, p95 < 200ms. Rate-limit rejections (-32005) counted separately, do not fail the run. - **`crates/hero_collab_server/tests/integration.rs`** (500 lines): 5 `#[tokio::test]` fixtures each spawn `hero_collab_server` via `env!("CARGO_BIN_EXE_...")` against `/private/tmp/hct_.../s/` (short enough for macOS `sun_path` ≤ 104 bytes; `/tmp` symlink breaks `storage.rs`'s canonicalize-based traversal guard). Fixture SIGTERMs on `Drop`. Tests: happy-path message send+list, reaction toggle idempotence, attachment→message flow with `attachment_ids`, rate-limit fires on burst, validation fires on empty canvas title. **45/45 server tests pass** (40 pre-existing unit + 5 new integration). - **`crates/hero_collab_ui/BROWSER_SUPPORT.md`** — minimum supported browsers (Chrome/Edge 100+, Firefox 100+, Safari 15.4+) with per-API rationale sourced from an actual grep of `static/js/` + `templates/`. The Tested Configurations table currently shows all "not tested" — no structured compat sweep has been performed at the 6.3 baseline; future manual passes should fill it in honestly. ### Test count: 45 (was 40) +5 integration tests covering end-to-end flows across 6.1a/6.1b/6.2a/6.3G work. ### Phase 6 status **Core hardening complete.** Every planned 6.x subitem has shipped: 6.0 typed errors, 6.1a/6.1b typed inputs + newtypes, 6.2a rate limiting, 6.2b indexes, 6.2c activity log, 6.2d observability, 6.3G cleanup, 6H/6J/6K tests+docs. ### Not closing #9 yet — real gaps remain The Phase 0-5 audit from 2026-04-17 surfaced real production blockers tracked as K-4-1..K-4-5 + K-6-1 in `plan/known-issues.md`: 1. **K-4-2 (Phase 1G)** — hero_proxy user federation. In proxy mode, invite dropdowns only see locally-created users. Blocks multi-user workflows. 2. **K-4-4 (Phase 5A)** — no docker-compose / README for LiveKit. Ops blocker. 3. **K-4-1 (Phase 0A)** — DB backup policy undocumented. 4. **K-4-3 (Phase 2F+2G)** — channel details panel + user profile popover missing. Visible Slack-parity UI gaps. 5. **K-4-5 (Phase 2D)** — WS `onmessage` doesn't handle `presence.update` / `read.updated`. Multi-tab lag. 6. **K-6-1** — README / TECH_SPEC / IMPLEMENTATION_SUMMARY rewrite. Rough sequencing for next ~1 working week: 5A + 0A together (small) → 1G federation (blocker) → 2D (small WS fix) → 2F + 2G (UI panels) → K-6-1 docs.
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Post-Plan-A hardening — Sprints H1/H2/H3 shipped; P0/P1 next

Three hardening sprints landed since the Phase 6.3 comment, plus an audit round that surfaced a real XSS ship-blocker. Everything below is on development as of 74d137b.

Sprint H1 — ship-blockers from the Plan-A audit (055d5b8)

Four audits ran in parallel (code-reviewer, silent-failure-hunter, Slack-parity, business-logic) against the Plan-A end state. Three ship-blockers landed in H1:

  • S1canvas.update_role against a missing canvas returned -32603 Internal instead of -32003 NotFound. Replaced .ok().flatten() with explicit QueryReturnedNoRows match.
  • S2message.send attachment-claim path used let _ = db.execute(...) on the blob UPDATE, so a silent failure desynced the message_id column from the blob's message_id field. message.get (which reads the blob) would then show attachments: [] for a successful insert. Fix: wrap the whole send flow in unchecked_transaction, use ? instead of let _ =, commit at end.
  • S4attachment.cleanup_pending denial in proxy mode returned -32603 Internal instead of -32002 PermissionDenied (anyhow path, not the typed wrapper).

Regression tests: h1_s1, h1_s2, h1_s4 in tests/integration.rs.

Sprint H2 — pre-beta hardening, straightforward items (8dc9ada)

10+ items, skipping S3 (canvas WS close UX) and H-B (startDm federated path) per Specialist 1's scope estimate at the time:

  • H-Ahero_proxy_sdk::users_list calls inside users_available now bounded by a 3s tokio timeout. A hero_proxy mid-restart (socket bound, accept loop not running) was blocking block_in_place workers indefinitely; under 10 concurrent calls that would exhaust the tokio pool.
  • H-Droom.end now allows creator-OR-admin. Previously required workspace_admin.
  • H-Echannel.member.add self-add guard extended from kind == "dm" to also cover kind == "group". Pre-fix this produced a 1-member "group DM with nobody."
  • H-H / P-B-1message.send wrapped in unchecked_transaction (also covers S2 above — they merged).
  • H-Ichat-app.js WS onclose handler now inspects close codes 1008/1011/≥4000, suppresses reconnect, and shows a toast. Exponential backoff restored for transient codes.
  • P-C-3 — adaptive 30s poll cadence when WS is dropped; restored to 120s on reconnect.
  • S4 swept to check_permission_typed across canvas.update_role, the 6.3G RPC, and the related .ok().flatten() sites.
  • Several openrpc.json schema fixes (attachment.upload, canvas.share, canvas.save_state, canvas.load_state) + missing collab.users.available method spec.

Regression tests: h2_hd, h2_he.

Sprint H3 — close the two H2 deferrals (8fce623)

Verification during H3 found Specialist 1's scope warnings on S3/H-B were based on y-websocket v1.x APIs; the repo actually pins y-websocket@^3.0.0 (scripts/vendor-bundle/package.json). v3 exposes connection-close as a public event delivering the native CloseEvent, so S3 collapses from a half-day subclassing exercise to ~15 LoC of event handler.

  • S3 — Canvas WS close-reason UX. canvas-app.js::initEditor now subscribes to wsProvider.on('connection-close', ...), halts reconnect on terminal codes 1008/1011/≥4000, and surfaces CloseEvent.reason via the existing showError() panel. In parallel, routes.rs::ws_canvas_handler now upgrades the socket and sends CloseFrame(1008, reason) on auth rejections instead of returning HTTP 403 — browsers translate a 403-on-upgrade to code 1006 with no reason string, losing the server message entirely. Upgrade-then-close is the standard pattern that lets the reason reach the client.
  • H-B — startDm against a federated-only user. New RPC collab.users.claim_federated(username) in handlers/federation.rs mirrors user.me's upsert-by-external-id: verify the username exists in hero_proxy via users_list, then INSERT OR IGNORE into users with external_id = username. Fail-closed: hero_proxy unreachable → error, never an unverified local row. chat-app.js::pickDmUser now materialises local: false picks via this RPC before calling startDm. Idempotent: repeated claim for the same identity returns the existing id without a hero_proxy round-trip.

Regression tests: h_b_1 (missing username → Validation), h_b_2 (idempotent claim for existing local row).

Full 24-test integration suite green across H1/H2/H3.

SDK regeneration (74d137b)

openrpc.client.generated.rs picks up collab.users.claim_federated, collab.users.available, and the attachment.upload input-shape fix. No behaviour change; typed clients available for all three.


External audit round — P0/P1 ratified, proceeding locally

An independent audit re-landed after H3. Cross-checked every claim against the tree; ratified the list with one reframe and one second-order finding.

P0 (actual ship-blocker, 1 item)

XSS via markdown → innerHTML. Custom _markedRenderer at chat-app.js:218-222 overrides only .html. marked@15.0.7's default .link handler does not block javascript: / data: schemes — its URL helper Y() only runs encodeURI. So [click](javascript:alert(document.cookie)) renders as a live <a href="javascript:alert(...)"> across six renderMarkdown → innerHTML sites (chat-app.js:1038, 1214, 1274, 1869, 1896, 2476). Zero DOMPurify anywhere.

Fix order, pinned after verifying both regex replacements in renderMarkdown emit hardcoded-shape HTML (mention \w+ capture, canvas-card \d+ capture — both literal-only attrs):

marked.parse → DOMPurify.sanitize → mention regex → canvas-card regex → innerHTML

P0 second-order (same class, deployment-invariant)

base_path_middleware (routes.rs:52-60) reads X-Forwarded-Prefix with zero scheme validation — only .trim_end_matches('/'). Template inlines into <meta name="base-path"> and chat-app.js concatenates into canvas-card href as basePath + '/canvas/' + id. An attacker reaching ui.sock directly can inject X-Forwarded-Prefix: javascript:alert(1)#href="javascript:alert(1)#/canvas/1". The # fragment trick fires the javascript: scheme.

Same class as the rpc_proxy 4-header trust boundary. Fix: one ops note in deploy/README.md ("ui.sock must sit behind hero_router") + a two-line defense-in-depth in base_path_middleware: if the trimmed value is non-empty and doesn't start with /, discard.

P1 (correctness / quality; user's stated bar)

  • Pin/unpin typed-error finish (message.rs:528, 597). Still anyhow::bail! — wire codes wrong. Tracked as P-D-1 / P-D-4.
  • Permission-check idiom centralisation. 7 sites of if let Some(cid) = caller_id { if cid > 0 { check } } (message.rs:31,333,379,520,589 + channel.rs:187,281). Fail-open by shape in dev mode, safe in proxy — but collapse into one require_caller() helper.
  • Inline-onclick with JSON-interpolated data (chat-app.js:407, 588, 600). Contained (server-sourced obj), brittle. → data-* + addEventListener.
  • rpc_proxy deployment invariant doc — ops note, no code change.
  • Clippy -D warnings in CI — 52 current warnings, 44 of them fail -D warnings (the other 8 are allowed-by-config lints). Tracked as P-C-5 / P-C-6.
  • BROWSER_SUPPORT.md:43 — contradicts H10; says we don't use Notification, but we do. One-line fix.

P2 / P3 (tracked, not scheduled)

  • 107 .unwrap() on .lock()db_lock() helper. Hygiene, not blocking.
  • Validation style: canvas.save_state / huddle.* to parse_input. Functionally equivalent today.
  • schema_version table + explicit migration list before the 4th schema change.
  • Pin hero_archipelagos_core + other ecosystem crates to commit SHAs instead of branch = "development".
  • chat-app.js ES-module split (3,649 lines, 40+ window.* leaks) — own project.
  • hero_collab_app admin island coverage of new entities — scope question.

Execution plan

  1. Single P0 commit: DOMPurify vendored + wired (pinned order above) + canvas-card regression test + 2-line base_path_middleware defense-in-depth + BROWSER_SUPPORT.md fix.
  2. Backend + browser smoke verify.
  3. P1 commits in order: pin/unpin migration → require_caller() helper → inline-onclick modernisation → rpc_proxy deploy doc → clippy gate (last, once all other lints are quiet).
  4. Each commit re-runs cargo test + Playwright browser smoke before the next one starts.

Will post follow-up per-commit summaries.

## Post-Plan-A hardening — Sprints H1/H2/H3 shipped; P0/P1 next Three hardening sprints landed since the Phase 6.3 comment, plus an audit round that surfaced a real XSS ship-blocker. Everything below is on `development` as of `74d137b`. ### Sprint H1 — ship-blockers from the Plan-A audit (`055d5b8`) Four audits ran in parallel (code-reviewer, silent-failure-hunter, Slack-parity, business-logic) against the Plan-A end state. Three ship-blockers landed in H1: - **S1** — `canvas.update_role` against a missing canvas returned `-32603 Internal` instead of `-32003 NotFound`. Replaced `.ok().flatten()` with explicit `QueryReturnedNoRows` match. - **S2** — `message.send` attachment-claim path used `let _ = db.execute(...)` on the blob UPDATE, so a silent failure desynced the `message_id` column from the blob's `message_id` field. `message.get` (which reads the blob) would then show `attachments: []` for a successful insert. Fix: wrap the whole send flow in `unchecked_transaction`, use `?` instead of `let _ =`, commit at end. - **S4** — `attachment.cleanup_pending` denial in proxy mode returned `-32603 Internal` instead of `-32002 PermissionDenied` (anyhow path, not the typed wrapper). Regression tests: `h1_s1`, `h1_s2`, `h1_s4` in `tests/integration.rs`. ### Sprint H2 — pre-beta hardening, straightforward items (`8dc9ada`) 10+ items, skipping S3 (canvas WS close UX) and H-B (startDm federated path) per Specialist 1's scope estimate at the time: - **H-A** — `hero_proxy_sdk::users_list` calls inside `users_available` now bounded by a 3s tokio timeout. A hero_proxy mid-restart (socket bound, accept loop not running) was blocking `block_in_place` workers indefinitely; under 10 concurrent calls that would exhaust the tokio pool. - **H-D** — `room.end` now allows creator-OR-admin. Previously required workspace_admin. - **H-E** — `channel.member.add` self-add guard extended from `kind == "dm"` to also cover `kind == "group"`. Pre-fix this produced a 1-member "group DM with nobody." - **H-H / P-B-1** — `message.send` wrapped in `unchecked_transaction` (also covers S2 above — they merged). - **H-I** — `chat-app.js` WS `onclose` handler now inspects close codes 1008/1011/≥4000, suppresses reconnect, and shows a toast. Exponential backoff restored for transient codes. - **P-C-3** — adaptive 30s poll cadence when WS is dropped; restored to 120s on reconnect. - **S4** swept to `check_permission_typed` across `canvas.update_role`, the 6.3G RPC, and the related `.ok().flatten()` sites. - Several `openrpc.json` schema fixes (`attachment.upload`, `canvas.share`, `canvas.save_state`, `canvas.load_state`) + missing `collab.users.available` method spec. Regression tests: `h2_hd`, `h2_he`. ### Sprint H3 — close the two H2 deferrals (`8fce623`) Verification during H3 found Specialist 1's scope warnings on S3/H-B were based on **y-websocket v1.x** APIs; the repo actually pins `y-websocket@^3.0.0` (`scripts/vendor-bundle/package.json`). v3 exposes `connection-close` as a public event delivering the native `CloseEvent`, so S3 collapses from a half-day subclassing exercise to ~15 LoC of event handler. - **S3 — Canvas WS close-reason UX.** `canvas-app.js::initEditor` now subscribes to `wsProvider.on('connection-close', ...)`, halts reconnect on terminal codes 1008/1011/≥4000, and surfaces `CloseEvent.reason` via the existing `showError()` panel. In parallel, `routes.rs::ws_canvas_handler` now **upgrades the socket and sends `CloseFrame(1008, reason)` on auth rejections** instead of returning HTTP 403 — browsers translate a 403-on-upgrade to code 1006 with no reason string, losing the server message entirely. Upgrade-then-close is the standard pattern that lets the reason reach the client. - **H-B — `startDm` against a federated-only user.** New RPC `collab.users.claim_federated(username)` in `handlers/federation.rs` mirrors `user.me`'s upsert-by-external-id: verify the username exists in hero_proxy via `users_list`, then `INSERT OR IGNORE` into `users` with `external_id = username`. **Fail-closed:** hero_proxy unreachable → error, never an unverified local row. `chat-app.js::pickDmUser` now materialises `local: false` picks via this RPC before calling `startDm`. Idempotent: repeated claim for the same identity returns the existing id without a hero_proxy round-trip. Regression tests: `h_b_1` (missing username → Validation), `h_b_2` (idempotent claim for existing local row). Full 24-test integration suite green across H1/H2/H3. ### SDK regeneration (`74d137b`) `openrpc.client.generated.rs` picks up `collab.users.claim_federated`, `collab.users.available`, and the `attachment.upload` input-shape fix. No behaviour change; typed clients available for all three. --- ## External audit round — P0/P1 ratified, proceeding locally An independent audit re-landed after H3. Cross-checked every claim against the tree; ratified the list with one reframe and one second-order finding. ### P0 (actual ship-blocker, 1 item) **XSS via markdown → innerHTML.** Custom `_markedRenderer` at `chat-app.js:218-222` overrides only `.html`. `marked@15.0.7`'s default `.link` handler does not block `javascript:` / `data:` schemes — its URL helper `Y()` only runs `encodeURI`. So `[click](javascript:alert(document.cookie))` renders as a live `<a href="javascript:alert(...)">` across six `renderMarkdown → innerHTML` sites (chat-app.js:1038, 1214, 1274, 1869, 1896, 2476). Zero DOMPurify anywhere. Fix order, pinned after verifying both regex replacements in `renderMarkdown` emit hardcoded-shape HTML (mention `\w+` capture, canvas-card `\d+` capture — both literal-only attrs): ``` marked.parse → DOMPurify.sanitize → mention regex → canvas-card regex → innerHTML ``` ### P0 second-order (same class, deployment-invariant) `base_path_middleware` (routes.rs:52-60) reads `X-Forwarded-Prefix` with zero scheme validation — only `.trim_end_matches('/')`. Template inlines into `<meta name="base-path">` and `chat-app.js` concatenates into canvas-card `href` as `basePath + '/canvas/' + id`. An attacker reaching ui.sock directly can inject `X-Forwarded-Prefix: javascript:alert(1)#` → `href="javascript:alert(1)#/canvas/1"`. The `#` fragment trick fires the `javascript:` scheme. Same class as the rpc_proxy 4-header trust boundary. Fix: one ops note in `deploy/README.md` ("ui.sock must sit behind hero_router") + a two-line defense-in-depth in `base_path_middleware`: if the trimmed value is non-empty and doesn't start with `/`, discard. ### P1 (correctness / quality; user's stated bar) - **Pin/unpin typed-error finish** (`message.rs:528, 597`). Still `anyhow::bail!` — wire codes wrong. Tracked as P-D-1 / P-D-4. - **Permission-check idiom centralisation.** 7 sites of `if let Some(cid) = caller_id { if cid > 0 { check } }` (message.rs:31,333,379,520,589 + channel.rs:187,281). Fail-open by shape in dev mode, safe in proxy — but collapse into one `require_caller()` helper. - **Inline-onclick with JSON-interpolated data** (chat-app.js:407, 588, 600). Contained (server-sourced obj), brittle. → `data-*` + `addEventListener`. - **rpc_proxy deployment invariant doc** — ops note, no code change. - **Clippy `-D warnings` in CI** — 52 current warnings, 44 of them fail `-D warnings` (the other 8 are allowed-by-config lints). Tracked as P-C-5 / P-C-6. - **BROWSER_SUPPORT.md:43** — contradicts H10; says we don't use `Notification`, but we do. One-line fix. ### P2 / P3 (tracked, not scheduled) - 107 `.unwrap()` on `.lock()` → `db_lock()` helper. Hygiene, not blocking. - Validation style: `canvas.save_state` / `huddle.*` to `parse_input`. Functionally equivalent today. - `schema_version` table + explicit migration list before the 4th schema change. - Pin `hero_archipelagos_core` + other ecosystem crates to commit SHAs instead of `branch = "development"`. - `chat-app.js` ES-module split (3,649 lines, 40+ window.* leaks) — own project. - `hero_collab_app` admin island coverage of new entities — scope question. ### Execution plan 1. Single P0 commit: DOMPurify vendored + wired (pinned order above) + canvas-card regression test + 2-line `base_path_middleware` defense-in-depth + `BROWSER_SUPPORT.md` fix. 2. Backend + browser smoke verify. 3. P1 commits in order: pin/unpin migration → `require_caller()` helper → inline-onclick modernisation → rpc_proxy deploy doc → clippy gate (last, once all other lints are quiet). 4. Each commit re-runs `cargo test` + Playwright browser smoke before the next one starts. Will post follow-up per-commit summaries.
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P0 + P1 shipped — six commits on development (3088595 → 69b9c22)

All items from the external-audit plan I outlined in #issuecomment-20102 are now closed. Each commit verified locally with cargo test (28/28 integration) + a Playwright browser smoke against a TCP-bridged dev stack.

P0 — XSS + base_path (3088595)

The audit's one ship-blocker was marked v15 no longer blocking javascript: / data: / vbscript: URL schemes through the default .link renderer — the custom _markedRenderer at chat-app.js:218 only overrode .html. A message [click](javascript:alert(document.cookie)) rendered as a live XSS on every renderMarkdown() → innerHTML site (six of them).

  • DOMPurify vendoredscripts/vendor-bundle picks up dompurify@^3.4.0; the UMD bundle is copied to crates/hero_collab_ui/static/js/purify.min.js (same pattern as marked / highlight.js).
  • Pipeline pinned in renderMarkdown and in editor.html::updatePreview:
    marked.parse → DOMPurify.sanitize → @mention regex → [canvas:ID] regex → innerHTML
    
    Steps 3 and 4 are safe post-sanitize because the captures (\w+, \d+) are constrained and the emitted HTML is fixed-shape with only literal attributes.
  • Fail-closed if DOMPurify didn't load — sanitizeMarkdown() falls through to HTML-entity escaping, so a broken vendor dep produces text-only messages, not live HTML.
  • Second-order vector closed: base_path_middleware (routes.rs) now rejects any X-Forwarded-Prefix value that doesn't start with /. Without that, an attacker reaching ui.sock directly could have injected javascript:alert(1)# and turned every templated link into a live javascript: scheme.
  • BROWSER_SUPPORT.md reconciled — listed Notification under "we do not use" while H10 shipped background-tab notifications. Fixed, and added DOMPurify to the "we use" matrix.
  • Regression test: scripts/test-xss-sanitization.mjs loads the same minified marked.min.js + purify.min.js the browser gets, runs renderMarkdown against an XSS corpus (javascript: / data: / onerror / <script> / mention preservation / canvas-card \d+ boundary / https non-regression). 12 assertions, all green.

P1-A — pin/unpin typed errors (06801b0)

message::pin / message::unpin migrated from anyhow::Result<Value> to RpcResult<Value>. Pre-fix, every failure mode collapsed to -32603 Internal — clients couldn't distinguish "message not found" from "not a channel member" from a real server bug.

Post-fix:

Failure mode Before After
Missing id param -32603 Internal -32602 Validation
Missing message row -32603 Internal -32003 NotFound
Non-member caller -32603 Internal -32002 PermissionDenied
Pin cap reached (100/channel) -32603 (via anyhow::bail!) -32004 Conflict

Three regression tests (p1a_pin_missing_message_is_not_found, p1a_pin_missing_id_is_validation, p1a_pin_by_non_member_is_permission_denied) pin the wire codes. rpc.rs drops the .map_err(Into::into) for both methods.

The broader P-D-1 cascade (react / toggle_react / get / list / update / delete / search + channel/document/group leftovers) still depends on migrating check_permission itself to RpcResult. Tracked as a follow-up — this commit closes the specific pin/unpin pair the audit called out.

P1-B — require_caller() helper (63d5f17)

The if let Some(cid) = caller_id { if cid > 0 { check } } shape appeared at 7 sites (message.rs:31/333/379/520/589, channel.rs:187/281). Its latent failure mode: in proxy mode, if the header middleware ever failed to inject caller_id, the handler silently skipped the permission check.

New helper permissions::require_caller(caller_id: Option<u64>) -> RpcResult<Option<u64>>:

  • Ok(Some(cid)) when caller is present and > 0 → run the check.
  • Ok(None) in dev mode, no caller → skip check (preserves CLI + user-picker flows).
  • Err(Unauthenticated) in proxy mode, no caller → fail-closed.

All 7 sites migrated. p1b_dev_mode_missing_caller_id_still_works pins the non-regression guarantee (dev-mode pin without caller_id still succeeds). The proxy-mode fail-closed is guaranteed by the helper's code shape; a full end-to-end proxy test requires provisioning workspace_admin grants, blocked by the broader P-D-1 typed-error migration.

Caveat: for the still-anyhow handlers (channel.member.add/remove, message.react, message.delete), Err(Unauthenticated) converts back to anyhow::Error → RpcError::Internal on the wire (collapses to -32603). The check itself still fires — the ? short-circuit prevents the handler body from running — but the wire code is classified incorrectly. Resolved when P-D-1 migrates those handlers.

P1-C — inline-onclick modernisation (bed794e)

Three inline onclicks interpolated a full JSON-serialised object into the HTML attribute:

user-picker:   onclick="pickUser(${JSON.stringify(u).replace(/"/g,'&quot;')})"
channel row:   onclick="selectChannel(${JSON.stringify(c).replace(...)})"
dm row:        onclick="selectChannel(${JSON.stringify(c).replace(...)})"

Contained today (objects are server-sourced), but one escape-mismatch away from breaking JS parsing inside the attribute.

Replaced with data-channel-id / data-user-id / data-start-dm-user-id numeric attributes + a one-time delegated click listener on each parent (#channels-list, #dm-list, #user-picker-list), bound with a data-p1c-bound="1" marker to prevent double-registration. The huddle-join icon gets its own data-join-channel-id so the delegate can distinguish "clicked icon" from "clicked row" (preserving the previous event.stopPropagation() behaviour).

Browser-verified: no inline onclicks on .channel-item after render; clicking a row drives selectChannel via the delegate; zero console errors.

P1-D — deployment invariant doc (5d8736c)

Codified the hero_proxy/hero_router trust boundary in deploy/README.md. The audit's "allowlist forwarded headers" framing was wrong — rpc_proxy already forwards only 4 named headers. The real gap was missing documentation.

ui.sock and rpc.sock MUST NOT be reachable by untrusted clients. Every request MUST transit hero_proxy → hero_router → socket.

Added production-deploy checklist (hero_proxy binds external only, socket-dir perms locked to hero_router's user, no stray forwarders, TCP shims bind loopback). Called out that COLLAB_AUTH_MODE=dev does NOT fail-closed on missing identity — intentional for CLI/test flows but explicitly unsupported in production.

P1-E — clippy -D warnings gate (69b9c22)

Brings server + ui to cargo clippy -- -D warnings clean. 43 source warnings → 0.

Most fixed by cargo clippy --fix (38 sites — collapsible_if × 16, useless_conversion × 6, and_then→map, map_or→is_some_and, etc.). Manual fixes for:

  • routes.rs::canvas_channels — extracted CanvasBroadcastSender type alias.
  • message.rs::searchif let (Some(cid), Some(ws_id)) = (caller_id, workspace_id) replaces the unwrap()-after-is_some() pair.
  • attachment.rs::sanitize_attachment_filename — removed identical-branches if and the now-dead decoded variable.
  • Four #[allow(dead_code)] on public API helpers with no current callers but stable contracts (UserCreate.caller_id, UserUpdate.caller_id, TokenBucket::try_consume, Description::is_empty).
  • One doc-comment line-continuation fix (handlers/mod.rs).

New make lint-strict target — cargo clippy -p hero_collab_server -p hero_collab_ui --no-deps -- -D warnings. Scoped to the two audited crates for now; broadening to --workspace is a follow-up once sdk/app/cli are also clean. This is the CI gate the P-C-5/P-C-6 follow-up items tracked.


What's left

Still tracked in plan/known-issues.md

  • P-D-1 cascade — full check_permissionRpcResult migration; unlocks correct wire codes for react/toggle_react/get/list/update/delete/search + channel/document/group leftovers. ~15 handlers.
  • P2 hygienedb_lock() helper + .unwrap() sweep (107 sites), validation-style convergence on parse_input for huddle/canvas.save_state, schema_version table.
  • P3 long-horizon — chat-app.js ES-module split (3649 lines, 40+ window.*), hero_collab_app admin island coverage of new entities.
  • Ecosystem pinning — upstream crates pinned to branch = "development" (hero_archipelagos_core, hero_proxy_sdk, etc.) — a SHA pin would lock out silent-upstream-rebase risk. Not unique to hero_collab; ecosystem-wide pattern.

Pre-existing bootstrap quirk surfaced during browser smoke (not a regression)

When hero_collab_server boots fresh, the default channel 1 is created but the default user 1 is NOT auto-added as a member. A message.send from user 1 → channel 1 is denied by the member check (and user 1 has no workspace_admin grant). This has existed since before the audit — fixtures work around it by calling channel.member.add in every setup. Should fix at the bootstrap layer (either auto-add creator as member in channel.create, or provision user 1 as workspace_admin in the initial migration). Filing as a follow-up.

SDK + CLI + openrpc.json

Verified current: openrpc.client.generated.rs doesn't drift on cargo build, CLI has no pin/unpin/require_caller/base_path touchpoints, openrpc.json has 90 methods (no schema additions in P0-P1). P0/P1 was purely security, typed-error, refactor, docs, style — no RPC shape changes.

All six commits pushed to origin/development.

## P0 + P1 shipped — six commits on `development` (`3088595 → 69b9c22`) All items from the external-audit plan I outlined in [#issuecomment-20102](https://forge.ourworld.tf/lhumina_code/hero_collab/issues/9#issuecomment-20102) are now closed. Each commit verified locally with `cargo test` (28/28 integration) + a Playwright browser smoke against a TCP-bridged dev stack. ### P0 — XSS + base_path (`3088595`) The audit's one ship-blocker was marked v15 no longer blocking `javascript:` / `data:` / `vbscript:` URL schemes through the default `.link` renderer — the custom `_markedRenderer` at `chat-app.js:218` only overrode `.html`. A message `[click](javascript:alert(document.cookie))` rendered as a live XSS on every `renderMarkdown() → innerHTML` site (six of them). - **DOMPurify vendored** — `scripts/vendor-bundle` picks up `dompurify@^3.4.0`; the UMD bundle is copied to `crates/hero_collab_ui/static/js/purify.min.js` (same pattern as marked / highlight.js). - **Pipeline pinned** in `renderMarkdown` and in `editor.html::updatePreview`: ``` marked.parse → DOMPurify.sanitize → @mention regex → [canvas:ID] regex → innerHTML ``` Steps 3 and 4 are safe post-sanitize because the captures (`\w+`, `\d+`) are constrained and the emitted HTML is fixed-shape with only literal attributes. - **Fail-closed** if DOMPurify didn't load — `sanitizeMarkdown()` falls through to HTML-entity escaping, so a broken vendor dep produces text-only messages, not live HTML. - **Second-order vector closed**: `base_path_middleware` (routes.rs) now rejects any `X-Forwarded-Prefix` value that doesn't start with `/`. Without that, an attacker reaching `ui.sock` directly could have injected `javascript:alert(1)#` and turned every templated link into a live `javascript:` scheme. - **BROWSER_SUPPORT.md** reconciled — listed `Notification` under "we do not use" while H10 shipped background-tab notifications. Fixed, and added DOMPurify to the "we use" matrix. - **Regression test**: `scripts/test-xss-sanitization.mjs` loads the same minified `marked.min.js` + `purify.min.js` the browser gets, runs `renderMarkdown` against an XSS corpus (javascript: / data: / onerror / `<script>` / mention preservation / canvas-card `\d+` boundary / https non-regression). 12 assertions, all green. ### P1-A — pin/unpin typed errors (`06801b0`) `message::pin` / `message::unpin` migrated from `anyhow::Result<Value>` to `RpcResult<Value>`. Pre-fix, every failure mode collapsed to `-32603 Internal` — clients couldn't distinguish "message not found" from "not a channel member" from a real server bug. Post-fix: | Failure mode | Before | After | |---|---|---| | Missing `id` param | -32603 Internal | -32602 Validation | | Missing message row | -32603 Internal | -32003 NotFound | | Non-member caller | -32603 Internal | -32002 PermissionDenied | | Pin cap reached (100/channel) | -32603 (via `anyhow::bail!`) | -32004 Conflict | Three regression tests (`p1a_pin_missing_message_is_not_found`, `p1a_pin_missing_id_is_validation`, `p1a_pin_by_non_member_is_permission_denied`) pin the wire codes. `rpc.rs` drops the `.map_err(Into::into)` for both methods. The broader P-D-1 cascade (react / toggle_react / get / list / update / delete / search + channel/document/group leftovers) still depends on migrating `check_permission` itself to `RpcResult`. Tracked as a follow-up — this commit closes the specific pin/unpin pair the audit called out. ### P1-B — `require_caller()` helper (`63d5f17`) The `if let Some(cid) = caller_id { if cid > 0 { check } }` shape appeared at 7 sites (message.rs:31/333/379/520/589, channel.rs:187/281). Its latent failure mode: in proxy mode, if the header middleware ever failed to inject `caller_id`, the handler silently skipped the permission check. New helper `permissions::require_caller(caller_id: Option<u64>) -> RpcResult<Option<u64>>`: - `Ok(Some(cid))` when caller is present and > 0 → run the check. - `Ok(None)` in dev mode, no caller → skip check (preserves CLI + user-picker flows). - `Err(Unauthenticated)` in proxy mode, no caller → fail-closed. All 7 sites migrated. `p1b_dev_mode_missing_caller_id_still_works` pins the non-regression guarantee (dev-mode pin without caller_id still succeeds). The proxy-mode fail-closed is guaranteed by the helper's code shape; a full end-to-end proxy test requires provisioning workspace_admin grants, blocked by the broader P-D-1 typed-error migration. **Caveat**: for the still-anyhow handlers (channel.member.add/remove, message.react, message.delete), `Err(Unauthenticated)` converts back to `anyhow::Error → RpcError::Internal` on the wire (collapses to `-32603`). The check itself still fires — the `?` short-circuit prevents the handler body from running — but the wire code is classified incorrectly. Resolved when P-D-1 migrates those handlers. ### P1-C — inline-onclick modernisation (`bed794e`) Three inline onclicks interpolated a full JSON-serialised object into the HTML attribute: ``` user-picker: onclick="pickUser(${JSON.stringify(u).replace(/"/g,'&quot;')})" channel row: onclick="selectChannel(${JSON.stringify(c).replace(...)})" dm row: onclick="selectChannel(${JSON.stringify(c).replace(...)})" ``` Contained today (objects are server-sourced), but one escape-mismatch away from breaking JS parsing inside the attribute. Replaced with `data-channel-id` / `data-user-id` / `data-start-dm-user-id` numeric attributes + a one-time delegated click listener on each parent (`#channels-list`, `#dm-list`, `#user-picker-list`), bound with a `data-p1c-bound="1"` marker to prevent double-registration. The huddle-join icon gets its own `data-join-channel-id` so the delegate can distinguish "clicked icon" from "clicked row" (preserving the previous `event.stopPropagation()` behaviour). Browser-verified: no inline onclicks on `.channel-item` after render; clicking a row drives `selectChannel` via the delegate; zero console errors. ### P1-D — deployment invariant doc (`5d8736c`) Codified the hero_proxy/hero_router trust boundary in `deploy/README.md`. The audit's "allowlist forwarded headers" framing was wrong — `rpc_proxy` already forwards only 4 named headers. The real gap was missing documentation. > `ui.sock` and `rpc.sock` MUST NOT be reachable by untrusted clients. Every request MUST transit `hero_proxy → hero_router → socket`. Added production-deploy checklist (hero_proxy binds external only, socket-dir perms locked to hero_router's user, no stray forwarders, TCP shims bind loopback). Called out that `COLLAB_AUTH_MODE=dev` does NOT fail-closed on missing identity — intentional for CLI/test flows but explicitly unsupported in production. ### P1-E — clippy `-D warnings` gate (`69b9c22`) Brings server + ui to `cargo clippy -- -D warnings` clean. 43 source warnings → 0. Most fixed by `cargo clippy --fix` (38 sites — collapsible_if × 16, useless_conversion × 6, and_then→map, map_or→is_some_and, etc.). Manual fixes for: - `routes.rs::canvas_channels` — extracted `CanvasBroadcastSender` type alias. - `message.rs::search` — `if let (Some(cid), Some(ws_id)) = (caller_id, workspace_id)` replaces the `unwrap()`-after-`is_some()` pair. - `attachment.rs::sanitize_attachment_filename` — removed identical-branches if and the now-dead `decoded` variable. - Four `#[allow(dead_code)]` on public API helpers with no current callers but stable contracts (UserCreate.caller_id, UserUpdate.caller_id, TokenBucket::try_consume, Description::is_empty). - One doc-comment line-continuation fix (handlers/mod.rs). New `make lint-strict` target — `cargo clippy -p hero_collab_server -p hero_collab_ui --no-deps -- -D warnings`. Scoped to the two audited crates for now; broadening to `--workspace` is a follow-up once sdk/app/cli are also clean. This is the CI gate the P-C-5/P-C-6 follow-up items tracked. --- ## What's left ### Still tracked in `plan/known-issues.md` - **P-D-1 cascade** — full `check_permission` → `RpcResult` migration; unlocks correct wire codes for react/toggle_react/get/list/update/delete/search + channel/document/group leftovers. ~15 handlers. - **P2 hygiene** — `db_lock()` helper + `.unwrap()` sweep (107 sites), validation-style convergence on `parse_input` for huddle/canvas.save_state, `schema_version` table. - **P3 long-horizon** — chat-app.js ES-module split (3649 lines, 40+ window.*), hero_collab_app admin island coverage of new entities. - **Ecosystem pinning** — upstream crates pinned to `branch = "development"` (hero_archipelagos_core, hero_proxy_sdk, etc.) — a SHA pin would lock out silent-upstream-rebase risk. Not unique to hero_collab; ecosystem-wide pattern. ### Pre-existing bootstrap quirk surfaced during browser smoke (not a regression) When hero_collab_server boots fresh, the default channel 1 is created but the default user 1 is NOT auto-added as a member. A `message.send` from user 1 → channel 1 is denied by the member check (and user 1 has no `workspace_admin` grant). This has existed since before the audit — fixtures work around it by calling `channel.member.add` in every setup. Should fix at the bootstrap layer (either auto-add creator as member in `channel.create`, or provision user 1 as workspace_admin in the initial migration). Filing as a follow-up. ### SDK + CLI + openrpc.json Verified current: `openrpc.client.generated.rs` doesn't drift on `cargo build`, CLI has no pin/unpin/`require_caller`/`base_path` touchpoints, openrpc.json has 90 methods (no schema additions in P0-P1). P0/P1 was purely security, typed-error, refactor, docs, style — no RPC shape changes. All six commits pushed to `origin/development`.
Author
Member

Post-P1 hygiene + dev-UX sprint — 4 more landmark closures

Since #issuecomment-20104 landed the P0/P1 batch, 11 commits shipped on development (ca38d23..51b6e4b). Split into five themes:

Config plumbing — CLI flags end-to-end

ca38d23 feat(config): externalise auth-mode + LiveKit config via CLI flags

Fixed a silent hero_proc-supervision gap: the CLI wrapper registered the server action without forwarding any configuration, and hero_proc spawns children with a clean env. So COLLAB_AUTH_MODE=dev hero_collab --start silently boots in proxy mode, and LiveKit credentials the operator exported never reached the binary.

Three-tier precedence:

Setting Server flag hero_collab --start flag Env fallback
Auth mode --auth-mode=<dev|proxy> --auth-mode=<dev|proxy> COLLAB_AUTH_MODE
LiveKit URL --livekit-url=… --livekit-url=… LIVEKIT_URL
LiveKit API key --livekit-api-key=… --livekit-api-key=… LIVEKIT_API_KEY
LiveKit secret --livekit-api-secret-file=… same LIVEKIT_API_SECRET_FILE or legacy LIVEKIT_API_SECRET

No --livekit-api-secret CLI flag — argv is world-readable via ps auxww. Secret-file path is the only argv-safe option; env fallback stays for legacy deployments.

Supporting plumbing: 9065374 (dev-mode flag read from a OnceLock<bool> populated by init_dev_mode() at startup — was previously read from the env var at request time, which went stale the moment the CLI flag became the source of truth), b2f7cbc (dev-mode now bypasses check_permission unconditionally instead of only when caller_id was absent — eliminated a foot-gun where any DevTools RPC that passed caller_id hit a fresh-DB permission wall), 5d858b1 (LiveKit UDP port range narrowed from 10 000 ports to the single 7882 that --dev mode actually uses — caught a bind: address already in use during local bring-up on port 53667).

Bootstrap rewrite — seeded dev fixtures

4855d72 feat(dev): --seed-dev-users flag + make devstart + drop "You" auto-create
8d0be18 fix(channel): auto-add creator to channel_members as admin on create

Two closures on the bootstrap design gap:

  1. Server-side channel.create now auto-adds the creator as a channel admin. Previously the handler left the new channel empty of members, so every client had to follow every channel.create with a channel.member.add — error-prone, not Slack-parity. Closed by 8d0be18.
  2. Client-side "You" auto-create dropped. chat-app.js::init no longer silently creates {name:"You", email:"you@hero.collab"} on empty DB. Empty DB now shows an explicit welcome screen with a make devstart pointer. Server-side seeding handled by a new dev_seed module behind --seed-dev-users, provisioning 4 named users (Alice/Bob/Carol/Dave), one "General" workspace, one #general channel with all 4 as members (Alice admin). Triple-gated (opt-in flag + dev-mode-only + empty-DB-only). New make devstart target does the whole wipe-install-restart-seed flow in one call. Closed by 4855d72.

The third bootstrap sub-case (first-user-is-workspace-admin in proxy mode) remains open; it's a real design question about Slack-style "workspace owner" semantics and tracked in known-issues.md.

Hygiene — parking_lot swap

dde51a4 refactor(hygiene): swap std::Mutex for parking_lot::Mutex on the DB handle

Closes the 106-site .lock().unwrap() pattern and its latent bug: a single handler panicking while holding the DB lock would poison std::sync::Mutex, turning every subsequent .lock().unwrap() into a panic that killed the server for the rest of its life. parking_lot::Mutex has no poison semantics — a panicking holder cleanly releases the lock. Mechanical sweep of all 106 call sites (rate-limit's unrelated Mutex<HashMap> left on std::sync). Zero API-surface change, zero happy-path behavior change, class of bug eliminated.

P-D-1 typed-error cascade — closed in two commits

5436c80 refactor(types): P-D-1 step 1 — migrate foundation fns + user.rs + remove _typed shims
49a89ae refactor(types): P-D-1 step 2 — migrate 37 handlers to RpcResult, close the cascade

The big one. check_permission and resolve_self_user_id now return RpcResult directly; the *_typed string-match wrappers are gone. All 37 previously-anyhow handlers (message / channel / workspace / document / canvas / group / user families) migrated to RpcResult<Value>. Every .map_err(Into::into) dropped from the rpc.rs dispatch (37 sites). Common patterns (ok_or_else(|| anyhow!("X required"))) replaced with RpcError::Validation { field, reason }. QueryReturnedNoRows branches mapped to RpcError::NotFound.

Wire-code contract now matches the failure mode:

Failure Before After
Missing required param -32603 Internal -32602 Validation
Row not found -32603 Internal -32003 NotFound
Soft-deleted row -32603 Internal -32003 NotFound
Permission denied -32603 Internal -32002 PermissionDenied
Unauthenticated (no caller_id in proxy) -32603 Internal -32001 Unauthenticated
Conflict (cycle, pin cap) -32603 Internal -32004 Conflict

-32603 Internal is now reserved for genuine unclassified exceptions. anyhow stays as the error type for internal DB helpers (has_cycle, resolve_user_rights, fetch_*_for_messages) — they bubble up through RpcError::Internal(anyhow::Error) at the handler boundary, which preserves the full cause chain for trace_id logging.

Also closes P-D-4 (message.react/unreact/toggle_react + check_message_not_deleted) — subsumed by the same sweep.

Docs + tracker catchup

9cf1664 docs: refresh README + deploy + known-issues for the CLI-flag era
51b6e4b docs(plan): consolidate external-audit follow-up + mark in-line closures

README quickstart rewritten around make devstart. deploy/README.md gained the three-tier flag/env precedence table + a "getting docker compose to see .env" workaround (hit this during LiveKit bring-up: compose v2 didn't auto-load the .env despite the file being in the right directory — set -a; source .env; set +a is the fix). plan/known-issues.md consolidated: P-A-6, P-D-1, P-D-4, and the bootstrap-design-gap sub-cases all marked CLOSED with commit cross-references.

Verification status

Check Result
cargo build (server + ui + sdk + cli + app) clean
cargo clippy --no-deps -- -D warnings clean
cargo test -p hero_collab_server --test integration 33/33 green
Browser smoke via Playwright (seed + pick user + send message + DOMPurify round-trip) clean
make devstart end-to-end works; fresh DB → 4 users + 1 workspace + 1 channel + 4 memberships + Alice can post immediately

What's next

The following items remain in known-issues.md with open status:

  • K-P2-1 · "first user is workspace admin" in proxy mode — design question. Blocks proxy-mode end-to-end testing on a fresh install. Proposals in the known-issues entry: server seeds an admin group on first-boot, or user.me grants admin to the first caller.
  • K-P2-3 · validation-style convergence on parse_input — canvas.save_state still uses params["..."].as_u64() pattern. Style/DRY, not correctness.
  • K-P2-4 · schema_version table + explicit migration list — speculative; bites on the 4th migration, not today.
  • K-P2-5 · chat-app.js ES-module split — 3 759-line IIFE, long-horizon project.
  • K-P3-1 · ecosystem SHA pinning — cross-service decision.
  • K-P3-2 · hero_collab_app admin-island coverage of newer entities — scope question.

All pushed to development. Ready for review.

## Post-P1 hygiene + dev-UX sprint — 4 more landmark closures Since [#issuecomment-20104](https://forge.ourworld.tf/lhumina_code/hero_collab/issues/9#issuecomment-20104) landed the P0/P1 batch, 11 commits shipped on `development` (`ca38d23..51b6e4b`). Split into five themes: ### Config plumbing — CLI flags end-to-end `ca38d23 feat(config): externalise auth-mode + LiveKit config via CLI flags` Fixed a silent hero_proc-supervision gap: the CLI wrapper registered the server action without forwarding any configuration, and hero_proc spawns children with a clean env. So `COLLAB_AUTH_MODE=dev hero_collab --start` silently boots in proxy mode, and LiveKit credentials the operator exported never reached the binary. Three-tier precedence: | Setting | Server flag | `hero_collab --start` flag | Env fallback | |---|---|---|---| | Auth mode | `--auth-mode=<dev\|proxy>` | `--auth-mode=<dev\|proxy>` | `COLLAB_AUTH_MODE` | | LiveKit URL | `--livekit-url=…` | `--livekit-url=…` | `LIVEKIT_URL` | | LiveKit API key | `--livekit-api-key=…` | `--livekit-api-key=…` | `LIVEKIT_API_KEY` | | LiveKit secret | `--livekit-api-secret-file=…` | same | `LIVEKIT_API_SECRET_FILE` or legacy `LIVEKIT_API_SECRET` | **No `--livekit-api-secret` CLI flag** — argv is world-readable via `ps auxww`. Secret-file path is the only argv-safe option; env fallback stays for legacy deployments. Supporting plumbing: `9065374` (dev-mode flag read from a `OnceLock<bool>` populated by `init_dev_mode()` at startup — was previously read from the env var at request time, which went stale the moment the CLI flag became the source of truth), `b2f7cbc` (dev-mode now bypasses `check_permission` unconditionally instead of only when `caller_id` was absent — eliminated a foot-gun where any DevTools RPC that passed `caller_id` hit a fresh-DB permission wall), `5d858b1` (LiveKit UDP port range narrowed from 10 000 ports to the single 7882 that `--dev` mode actually uses — caught a `bind: address already in use` during local bring-up on port 53667). ### Bootstrap rewrite — seeded dev fixtures `4855d72 feat(dev): --seed-dev-users flag + make devstart + drop "You" auto-create` `8d0be18 fix(channel): auto-add creator to channel_members as admin on create` Two closures on the bootstrap design gap: 1. **Server-side `channel.create` now auto-adds the creator as a channel admin.** Previously the handler left the new channel empty of members, so every client had to follow every `channel.create` with a `channel.member.add` — error-prone, not Slack-parity. Closed by `8d0be18`. 2. **Client-side "You" auto-create dropped.** `chat-app.js::init` no longer silently creates `{name:"You", email:"you@hero.collab"}` on empty DB. Empty DB now shows an explicit welcome screen with a `make devstart` pointer. Server-side seeding handled by a new `dev_seed` module behind `--seed-dev-users`, provisioning 4 named users (Alice/Bob/Carol/Dave), one "General" workspace, one `#general` channel with all 4 as members (Alice admin). Triple-gated (opt-in flag + dev-mode-only + empty-DB-only). New `make devstart` target does the whole wipe-install-restart-seed flow in one call. Closed by `4855d72`. The third bootstrap sub-case (first-user-is-workspace-admin in proxy mode) remains open; it's a real design question about Slack-style "workspace owner" semantics and tracked in `known-issues.md`. ### Hygiene — parking_lot swap `dde51a4 refactor(hygiene): swap std::Mutex for parking_lot::Mutex on the DB handle` Closes the 106-site `.lock().unwrap()` pattern and its latent bug: a single handler panicking while holding the DB lock would poison `std::sync::Mutex`, turning every subsequent `.lock().unwrap()` into a panic that killed the server for the rest of its life. `parking_lot::Mutex` has no poison semantics — a panicking holder cleanly releases the lock. Mechanical sweep of all 106 call sites (rate-limit's unrelated `Mutex<HashMap>` left on std::sync). Zero API-surface change, zero happy-path behavior change, class of bug eliminated. ### P-D-1 typed-error cascade — closed in two commits `5436c80 refactor(types): P-D-1 step 1 — migrate foundation fns + user.rs + remove _typed shims` `49a89ae refactor(types): P-D-1 step 2 — migrate 37 handlers to RpcResult, close the cascade` The big one. `check_permission` and `resolve_self_user_id` now return `RpcResult` directly; the `*_typed` string-match wrappers are gone. All 37 previously-anyhow handlers (message / channel / workspace / document / canvas / group / user families) migrated to `RpcResult<Value>`. Every `.map_err(Into::into)` dropped from the `rpc.rs` dispatch (37 sites). Common patterns (`ok_or_else(|| anyhow!("X required"))`) replaced with `RpcError::Validation { field, reason }`. `QueryReturnedNoRows` branches mapped to `RpcError::NotFound`. Wire-code contract now matches the failure mode: | Failure | Before | After | |---|---|---| | Missing required param | -32603 Internal | -32602 Validation | | Row not found | -32603 Internal | -32003 NotFound | | Soft-deleted row | -32603 Internal | -32003 NotFound | | Permission denied | -32603 Internal | -32002 PermissionDenied | | Unauthenticated (no caller_id in proxy) | -32603 Internal | -32001 Unauthenticated | | Conflict (cycle, pin cap) | -32603 Internal | -32004 Conflict | `-32603 Internal` is now reserved for genuine unclassified exceptions. `anyhow` stays as the error type for internal DB helpers (`has_cycle`, `resolve_user_rights`, `fetch_*_for_messages`) — they bubble up through `RpcError::Internal(anyhow::Error)` at the handler boundary, which preserves the full cause chain for trace_id logging. Also closes **P-D-4** (message.react/unreact/toggle_react + check_message_not_deleted) — subsumed by the same sweep. ### Docs + tracker catchup `9cf1664 docs: refresh README + deploy + known-issues for the CLI-flag era` `51b6e4b docs(plan): consolidate external-audit follow-up + mark in-line closures` README quickstart rewritten around `make devstart`. `deploy/README.md` gained the three-tier flag/env precedence table + a "getting docker compose to see `.env`" workaround (hit this during LiveKit bring-up: compose v2 didn't auto-load the `.env` despite the file being in the right directory — `set -a; source .env; set +a` is the fix). `plan/known-issues.md` consolidated: P-A-6, P-D-1, P-D-4, and the bootstrap-design-gap sub-cases all marked CLOSED with commit cross-references. ### Verification status | Check | Result | |---|---| | `cargo build` (server + ui + sdk + cli + app) | clean | | `cargo clippy --no-deps -- -D warnings` | clean | | `cargo test -p hero_collab_server --test integration` | 33/33 green | | Browser smoke via Playwright (seed + pick user + send message + DOMPurify round-trip) | clean | | `make devstart` end-to-end | works; fresh DB → 4 users + 1 workspace + 1 channel + 4 memberships + Alice can post immediately | ### What's next The following items remain in `known-issues.md` with open status: - **K-P2-1 · "first user is workspace admin" in proxy mode** — design question. Blocks proxy-mode end-to-end testing on a fresh install. Proposals in the known-issues entry: server seeds an admin group on first-boot, or `user.me` grants admin to the first caller. - **K-P2-3 · validation-style convergence on `parse_input`** — canvas.save_state still uses `params["..."].as_u64()` pattern. Style/DRY, not correctness. - **K-P2-4 · `schema_version` table + explicit migration list** — speculative; bites on the 4th migration, not today. - **K-P2-5 · chat-app.js ES-module split** — 3 759-line IIFE, long-horizon project. - **K-P3-1 · ecosystem SHA pinning** — cross-service decision. - **K-P3-2 · hero_collab_app admin-island coverage of newer entities** — scope question. All pushed to `development`. Ready for review.
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Plan closure — Slack feature parity shipped

Closing out the 7-phase plan with a look at what actually changed. This comment is written for product/business review; commit messages, plan/known-issues.md, and the session-level comments above carry the technical detail.


Where we started

Before the plan, hero_collab was a solid backend (most of the RPC surface already existed — 64 methods, 18 tables, group-based permissions) paired with a UI that hit a wall the moment anyone tried to use it. Broken reactions, a paperclip button that did nothing, no auth, no unread counts, no search, no canvases, no huddles, a user labelled "You". Maybe 10-15% of what a user would call "Slack-shaped" was working end-to-end.

The plan was an exhaustive Slack-feature-by-Slack-feature map, 7 phases of implementation, backed by research into Slack's own model plus how Mattermost, Zulip, Rocket.Chat, Conduit and Element had each tackled the same space. Tool choices (Tiptap + Yjs for canvases, LiveKit for huddles, SQLite FTS5 for search) came out of that research — each evaluated against the next 2-3 alternatives before committing.

What shipped

Identity & onboarding. Authentication now flows through hero_proxy: the internet-facing layer authenticates (OAuth, signature, or IP match), strips spoofable headers, and injects trusted identity headers that hero_collab reads downstream. Operators can test locally in dev mode via a one-line make devstart that provisions 4 named users + a default workspace and channel. The "You" placeholder is gone; the welcome screen is explicit. Multi-user testing is just open-two-tabs-and-pick.

The core chat loop. Every Slack-daily-use feature works: send/edit/delete messages, threaded replies, reactions (the toggle bug was one of the first fixes), file attachments (drag-and-drop compose flow with image preview), @mentions with autocomplete + notification badge + background-tab browser alerts, inline editing, public + private channels, direct messages and group DMs, channel discovery, pinned messages, full-text search via SQLite FTS5, unread counts, typing indicators, presence (online/offline with timeout-based stale-detection), context menus, keyboard shortcuts, a full emoji picker, markdown rendering with syntax highlighting and mermaid diagrams.

Canvases. Real-time collaborative markdown documents, the closest analogue to Slack Canvases. Two people editing the same canvas in two tabs see each other's cursors and edits merge without conflict — CRDT-backed via Tiptap + Yjs (server-side yrs). Canvas cards can be shared into chat messages; the picker lets you insert them inline in the composer.

Huddles. Voice calls backed by LiveKit (the same SFU Slack uses internally). Click the headphones icon in any channel header, get a JWT, connect. The whole stack (LiveKit + Redis) ships as a docker-compose file; operators just fill in credentials.

Federation. hero_proxy users who have never opened hero_collab now appear in the invite dropdown — fixed the "you can only invite people who have already logged in" gap. A claim_federated RPC materialises the local row on first DM, with a fail-closed guard if hero_proxy is unreachable.

Architecture decisions

Two choices shaped most of the implementation and deserve being on the record:

  1. Path A over Path B — we chose "standalone chat service with its own SQLite + hero_proxy headers" rather than "chat UI layer backed by hero_osis's multi-context communication domain". The former ships faster, iterates freely on the data model, and works as a single-context product without requiring hero_osis. The trade-off is that hero_collab can't participate in hero_osis multi-tenancy and its messages can't be referenced by hero_osis's cross-domain features (calendar integration, etc.). Migration to Path B remains possible — every hardening improvement we made is reusable; only the schemas would be re-authored. Full rationale, timeline evidence, and migration-triggers documented in plan/known-issues.md.

  2. Typed errors over anyhow — every RPC now returns a typed RpcResult with specific JSON-RPC error codes for each failure class (validation, not-found, unauthenticated, permission-denied, rate-limited, conflict). Before this migration, every failure mode collapsed to a generic "-32603 Internal error"; clients couldn't distinguish "you sent bad input" from "the server is broken." Took two commits spread across sprints to fully cascade through 40+ handlers.

Hardening — the invisible half

A platform that crashes once a week looks broken even if it has every feature. Phase 6 and Plan A were entirely about not-that:

  • Input validation on every RPC via typed newtypes (grapheme counting for Unicode-correct length limits, RFC-compliant email parsing, constrained enums).
  • Token-bucket rate limiting per authenticated caller.
  • Structured activity log populated from key operations, with trace IDs on every error so operators can correlate user-reported issues to log lines.
  • Atomic transactions wrapping multi-step operations (message send with attachments, canvas state save, group member add).
  • Panic guards on background tasks (attachment cleanup, huddle reaper), so one unexpected panic in a tick can't stall the service.
  • Mutex-poisoning class of bug eliminated via parking_lot.
  • Defense-in-depth on the trust boundary: DOMPurify sanitizes every markdown-to-HTML render site, the base path from reverse-proxy headers is validated to start with / (blocks a javascript: injection vector), the deployment invariant that internal sockets must sit behind hero_router is documented with a production checklist.
  • 70+ tests across unit + integration suites, spanning happy paths + every ship-blocker regression.
  • Clippy -D warnings CI gate.
  • Browser-compat baseline documented; Playwright smoke verifies the critical path end-to-end.

What's out of scope

Three Slack-heavyweight features are explicitly NOT in the plan: third-party app integrations (the "/giphy" kind of thing), Slack Connect (cross-org channels), and Enterprise Grid (multiple workspaces as one tenant). These are billion-dollar features that would each be their own multi-month project; we didn't build toward them and the plan says so.


Before vs. after

Slack feature Before the plan After
Send / edit / delete messages broken edit (opened separate tab), delete worked inline editing, delete works, all relayed via WebSocket
Reactions toggle was broken (always added) atomic toggle + duplicate-safe
File attachments paperclip button did nothing full compose-with-files flow + image preview
@mentions server parsed them, UI didn't render autocomplete + badge + background-tab browser notification
Threads backend only full thread panel UI
Unread counts no UI badges everywhere, cursor-based
Typing indicators placeholder div real-time WS push
Presence minimal online/offline with 5-min timeout
Search none full-text search modal (Ctrl+K) over all messages
Channel browse none modal with public channel listing
Pinned messages none pin/unpin + dedicated panel
DMs + group DMs DM worked, group DM missing both work, including federated-user DMs
Canvases / collaborative docs stub editor real-time CRDT editing with cursor presence
Voice huddles no UI LiveKit-backed with docker-compose
Auth none hero_proxy header-trust + dev-mode CLI
Typed errors everything was "-32603 Internal" per-category JSON-RPC wire codes
Rate limiting none per-caller token bucket
XSS hardening partial (marked renderer) full (DOMPurify + base_path validation)
Observability basic logs trace-IDs, metrics, per-RPC tracing

Roughly: we went from ~10-15% of Slack's daily-use surface working to ~85-90%. The remaining gap is the explicitly-out-of-scope set above (apps, Slack Connect, Enterprise Grid) plus polish items tracked in plan/known-issues.md (first-user-is-admin convention for proxy mode, chat-app.js ES-module split, a few minor UX refinements).

What's next

A UX-focused iteration pass to refine the rough edges — the kind of polish that comes from actually using the product for a week straight rather than testing features in isolation. Mostly flow-level, not feature-level. Separately, the plan/known-issues.md backlog tracks the design questions that surfaced during the work (bootstrap ownership convention, ecosystem version pinning, admin-dashboard coverage of newer entities) — those each deserve their own scoped conversation rather than riding along in another broad sweep.

Closing this one.

## Plan closure — Slack feature parity shipped Closing out the 7-phase plan with a look at what actually changed. This comment is written for product/business review; commit messages, `plan/known-issues.md`, and the session-level comments above carry the technical detail. --- ### Where we started Before the plan, hero_collab was a solid backend (most of the RPC surface already existed — 64 methods, 18 tables, group-based permissions) paired with a UI that hit a wall the moment anyone tried to use it. Broken reactions, a paperclip button that did nothing, no auth, no unread counts, no search, no canvases, no huddles, a user labelled "You". Maybe 10-15% of what a user would call "Slack-shaped" was working end-to-end. The plan was an exhaustive Slack-feature-by-Slack-feature map, 7 phases of implementation, backed by research into Slack's own model plus how Mattermost, Zulip, Rocket.Chat, Conduit and Element had each tackled the same space. Tool choices (Tiptap + Yjs for canvases, LiveKit for huddles, SQLite FTS5 for search) came out of that research — each evaluated against the next 2-3 alternatives before committing. ### What shipped **Identity & onboarding.** Authentication now flows through hero_proxy: the internet-facing layer authenticates (OAuth, signature, or IP match), strips spoofable headers, and injects trusted identity headers that hero_collab reads downstream. Operators can test locally in dev mode via a one-line `make devstart` that provisions 4 named users + a default workspace and channel. The "You" placeholder is gone; the welcome screen is explicit. Multi-user testing is just open-two-tabs-and-pick. **The core chat loop.** Every Slack-daily-use feature works: send/edit/delete messages, threaded replies, reactions (the toggle bug was one of the first fixes), file attachments (drag-and-drop compose flow with image preview), @mentions with autocomplete + notification badge + background-tab browser alerts, inline editing, public + private channels, direct messages and group DMs, channel discovery, pinned messages, full-text search via SQLite FTS5, unread counts, typing indicators, presence (online/offline with timeout-based stale-detection), context menus, keyboard shortcuts, a full emoji picker, markdown rendering with syntax highlighting and mermaid diagrams. **Canvases.** Real-time collaborative markdown documents, the closest analogue to Slack Canvases. Two people editing the same canvas in two tabs see each other's cursors and edits merge without conflict — CRDT-backed via Tiptap + Yjs (server-side `yrs`). Canvas cards can be shared into chat messages; the picker lets you insert them inline in the composer. **Huddles.** Voice calls backed by LiveKit (the same SFU Slack uses internally). Click the headphones icon in any channel header, get a JWT, connect. The whole stack (LiveKit + Redis) ships as a docker-compose file; operators just fill in credentials. **Federation.** hero_proxy users who have never opened hero_collab now appear in the invite dropdown — fixed the "you can only invite people who have already logged in" gap. A `claim_federated` RPC materialises the local row on first DM, with a fail-closed guard if hero_proxy is unreachable. ### Architecture decisions Two choices shaped most of the implementation and deserve being on the record: 1. **Path A over Path B** — we chose "standalone chat service with its own SQLite + hero_proxy headers" rather than "chat UI layer backed by hero_osis's multi-context communication domain". The former ships faster, iterates freely on the data model, and works as a single-context product without requiring hero_osis. The trade-off is that hero_collab can't participate in hero_osis multi-tenancy and its messages can't be referenced by hero_osis's cross-domain features (calendar integration, etc.). Migration to Path B remains possible — every hardening improvement we made is reusable; only the schemas would be re-authored. Full rationale, timeline evidence, and migration-triggers documented in `plan/known-issues.md`. 2. **Typed errors over anyhow** — every RPC now returns a typed `RpcResult` with specific JSON-RPC error codes for each failure class (validation, not-found, unauthenticated, permission-denied, rate-limited, conflict). Before this migration, every failure mode collapsed to a generic "-32603 Internal error"; clients couldn't distinguish "you sent bad input" from "the server is broken." Took two commits spread across sprints to fully cascade through 40+ handlers. ### Hardening — the invisible half A platform that crashes once a week looks broken even if it has every feature. Phase 6 and Plan A were entirely about not-that: - Input validation on every RPC via typed newtypes (grapheme counting for Unicode-correct length limits, RFC-compliant email parsing, constrained enums). - Token-bucket rate limiting per authenticated caller. - Structured activity log populated from key operations, with trace IDs on every error so operators can correlate user-reported issues to log lines. - Atomic transactions wrapping multi-step operations (message send with attachments, canvas state save, group member add). - Panic guards on background tasks (attachment cleanup, huddle reaper), so one unexpected panic in a tick can't stall the service. - Mutex-poisoning class of bug eliminated via `parking_lot`. - Defense-in-depth on the trust boundary: DOMPurify sanitizes every markdown-to-HTML render site, the base path from reverse-proxy headers is validated to start with `/` (blocks a `javascript:` injection vector), the deployment invariant that internal sockets must sit behind hero_router is documented with a production checklist. - 70+ tests across unit + integration suites, spanning happy paths + every ship-blocker regression. - Clippy `-D warnings` CI gate. - Browser-compat baseline documented; Playwright smoke verifies the critical path end-to-end. ### What's out of scope Three Slack-heavyweight features are explicitly NOT in the plan: third-party app integrations (the "/giphy" kind of thing), Slack Connect (cross-org channels), and Enterprise Grid (multiple workspaces as one tenant). These are billion-dollar features that would each be their own multi-month project; we didn't build toward them and the plan says so. --- ### Before vs. after | Slack feature | Before the plan | After | |---|---|---| | Send / edit / delete messages | broken edit (opened separate tab), delete worked | inline editing, delete works, all relayed via WebSocket | | Reactions | toggle was broken (always added) | atomic toggle + duplicate-safe | | File attachments | paperclip button did nothing | full compose-with-files flow + image preview | | @mentions | server parsed them, UI didn't render | autocomplete + badge + background-tab browser notification | | Threads | backend only | full thread panel UI | | Unread counts | no UI | badges everywhere, cursor-based | | Typing indicators | placeholder div | real-time WS push | | Presence | minimal | online/offline with 5-min timeout | | Search | none | full-text search modal (Ctrl+K) over all messages | | Channel browse | none | modal with public channel listing | | Pinned messages | none | pin/unpin + dedicated panel | | DMs + group DMs | DM worked, group DM missing | both work, including federated-user DMs | | Canvases / collaborative docs | stub editor | real-time CRDT editing with cursor presence | | Voice huddles | no UI | LiveKit-backed with docker-compose | | Auth | none | hero_proxy header-trust + dev-mode CLI | | Typed errors | everything was "-32603 Internal" | per-category JSON-RPC wire codes | | Rate limiting | none | per-caller token bucket | | XSS hardening | partial (marked renderer) | full (DOMPurify + base_path validation) | | Observability | basic logs | trace-IDs, metrics, per-RPC tracing | Roughly: we went from ~10-15% of Slack's daily-use surface working to ~85-90%. The remaining gap is the explicitly-out-of-scope set above (apps, Slack Connect, Enterprise Grid) plus polish items tracked in `plan/known-issues.md` (first-user-is-admin convention for proxy mode, chat-app.js ES-module split, a few minor UX refinements). ### What's next A UX-focused iteration pass to refine the rough edges — the kind of polish that comes from actually using the product for a week straight rather than testing features in isolation. Mostly flow-level, not feature-level. Separately, the `plan/known-issues.md` backlog tracks the design questions that surfaced during the work (bootstrap ownership convention, ecosystem version pinning, admin-dashboard coverage of newer entities) — those each deserve their own scoped conversation rather than riding along in another broad sweep. Closing this one.
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