Brennan Benson
30bf2647fc
* fix(mobile): replay a delivery-ambiguous worktree.create instead of failing it A socket close or response timeout rejects an in-flight worktree.create as delivery-unknown: the frame reached the wire, so the host may already have built the worktree. The client only replayed connection-migration cutovers, so every other ambiguity surfaced as a create failure for a create that may well have succeeded. Replay on the same clientMutationId — which the host already dedupes — after waiting for the transport to come back. * fix(mobile): bound the ambiguous worktree.create replay by the host's dedupe window The replay was bounded only by a retry count, but what makes a replay reconcile instead of building a second worktree is wall clock: the host drops a settled create's dedupe record 60s after it resolves, and past that the replay is just a fresh create that the host's suffix loop happily duplicates — for a folder workspace, into a second workspace with the very same name and no collision check at all. Two paths ran past that window: - The request-timeout path. A silently dropped response frame leaves the socket alive, so nothing rejects until WORKTREE_CREATE_TIMEOUT_MS — ten minutes, with no bound at all on when the host actually resolved. This was previously the path that replayed *soonest*, short-circuiting the reconnect wait because the transport still looked healthy. Invert it: every path that reports a real drop has already left 'connected' by the time the rejection surfaces, so still being 'connected' identifies the timeout and is now refused. - The reported-drop path. Worst-case detection is a full liveness idle period plus the missed-probe budget before the client even learns the socket is dead, and the old 20s wait on top of that overran the record. Derive the wait from the watchdog constants and the TTL instead of hardcoding it, and anchor a single deadline at the first ambiguity so a second wait gets the remainder rather than restarting. The TTL now has one definition shared by both processes, so the client asserts its budget against the host's real window instead of a copied literal. * fix(mobile): end the reconnect wait on a revoked pairing, and pin the wait's behavior waitForRpcClientReconnected resolves only on 'connected' or the timeout, but an 'auth-failed' client never reaches 'connected' — so a create interrupted by a revoked pairing sat out the full wait before surfacing the error it already had. Treat auth-failed as a terminal answer on both the fast path and the listener. The helper also shipped with no tests of its own: its already-connected fast path, its timeout path, and the synchronous-notification-during-subscribe teardown were only ever exercised indirectly through the retry suite, and neither RpcClient implementation notifies synchronously, so that branch had no coverage at all. Add a direct suite covering all of them, asserting listener and timer teardown rather than just the resolved value. Also give the fake-timer tests an explicit timeout. advanceTimersByTimeAsync yields through real macrotasks between ticks while vitest's own budget runs on real time, so on a loaded runner the default 5s is reachable — observed once as a spurious timeout in this suite. * fix(mobile): bound the ambiguous replay in wall clock, not timer time The replay window was derived from the liveness watchdog's own budget (idle + missed probes x probe timeout). That is a bound on how long the watchdog takes to *fire*, not on how much wall clock passed. iOS and Android suspend JS timers while the app is backgrounded, so across a background cycle the socket dies silently and the pending create rejects delivery-unknown minutes later with the timer-derived ceiling still reading ~44s. The replay then lands well past the host's 60s dedupe record and the suffix loop builds a SECOND worktree - for a folder workspace, one with the very same name and no collision check at all. Anchor the deadline on the watchdog's lastInboundAt instead: a wall-clock stamp of a frame that really arrived, so it stays honest across a suspension. Fall back to the send time when the transport can't vouch for one (relay sessions run with idleProbeMs: null), which errs toward refusing the replay. Also restore the delivery-unknown discrimination test that the still-connected guard had made vacuous, pin the still-connected guard itself against a live inbound stamp, and pin the deadline against being re-read from a fresher replacement session.
Orca Mobile
React Native companion app for Orca. Monitor worktrees, view terminal output, and send commands from your phone.
Local development uses two processes:
- Orca desktop/Electron from the repo root. This hosts the mobile WebSocket RPC server on port
6768. - Expo Metro from
mobile/. This serves the React Native app on port8081.
Unless a command says otherwise, run mobile app commands from the mobile/ directory.
Prerequisites
- Node.js 24+
- pnpm
- Xcode and/or Android Studio tooling for simulator or device builds
- Expo Go on your phone, or a development client build when native modules are needed
- Phone and desktop on the same LAN when testing a physical phone
Start Desktop Orca
From the repository root:
pnpm install
pnpm dev
Confirm the mobile RPC server is listening:
lsof -nP -iTCP:6768 -sTCP:LISTEN
Restart pnpm dev after changing Electron main-process code. Metro hot reload only applies to the mobile JavaScript bundle.
Start The Mobile App
cd mobile
pnpm install
pnpm start
Scan the Expo QR code with your phone's camera on iOS, or Expo Go on Android.
For a native dev-client build:
pnpm exec expo run:android
pnpm exec expo run:ios
pnpm start --dev-client
Pair With Desktop Orca
- Open Orca desktop.
- Go to Settings > Mobile.
- Scan the pairing QR code from the mobile app.
- Confirm the mobile host endpoint is
ws://<desktop-ip>:6768.
For the Android emulator, use ws://10.0.2.2:6768. For a physical phone, use the desktop LAN IP, for example ws://192.168.0.179:6768.
If the phone has a stale host entry, remove it from the app and pair again.
Development Paths
Android Phone
- Install Expo Go from Google Play
- Run
pnpm start, scan QR with Expo Go - For native modules:
pnpm exec expo run:android - Run with
pnpm start --dev-client
iOS Simulator
- Install Xcode from the App Store
- Run
pnpm start --iosto open in iOS Simulator
Physical Phone Debugging
The phone can be inspected through the connected device tooling:
orca snapshot --json
orca click --element @e3 --json
orca fill --element @e1 --value "ls" --json
orca screenshot --json
Use snapshot first to find the current element refs, then click/fill those refs. After mobile file edits, Metro usually hot reloads automatically, but navigating out of and back into the session screen can be useful because it re-runs terminal.subscribe.
Terminal Streaming Repro Without A Phone
Use this when terminal output does not render on device and you need to split server streaming bugs from WebView/UI bugs:
cd mobile
ORCA_MOBILE_WS_URL=ws://127.0.0.1:6768 pnpm exec tsx scripts/test-subscribe.ts <deviceToken> <serverPublicKeyB64>
You can pass a worktree selector as the third argument:
pnpm exec tsx scripts/test-subscribe.ts <deviceToken> <serverPublicKeyB64> "id:<worktreeId>"
pnpm exec tsx scripts/test-subscribe.ts <deviceToken> <serverPublicKeyB64> "path:/absolute/worktree/path"
pnpm exec tsx scripts/test-subscribe.ts <deviceToken> <serverPublicKeyB64> "name:my-worktree"
The expected result includes:
streamSawMarker: true
readSawMarker: true
If this repro fails, debug the desktop runtime/PTY path before the mobile WebView. If it passes but the phone is blank, debug the session screen or TerminalWebView readiness/queueing path.
Terminal Color Repro Without A Phone
Use this when terminal colors disappear after switching tabs. Open a Claude Code terminal and at least one other terminal in the target worktree, then run:
cd mobile
ORCA_MOBILE_WS_URL=ws://127.0.0.1:6768 pnpm exec tsx scripts/repro-terminal-colors.ts \
<deviceToken> <serverPublicKeyB64> "id:<worktreeId>"
The script captures terminal.subscribe snapshots in an A → B → A sequence and writes raw snapshots to mobile/terminal-color-repro/. If the two A snapshots have different sgrColor counts, the desktop snapshot changed during the switch. If they match, the ANSI color data is still present and the bug is in mobile replay/rendering.
Validation
Run these checks before committing mobile terminal changes:
cd mobile
pnpm exec tsc --noEmit
pnpm lint
cd ..
pnpm typecheck:node
Protocol Version Compatibility
Mobile and desktop talk over a versioned protocol. Because mobile updates lag desktop by 24-48h via the App Store, both sides exchange version numbers on status.get so a genuinely incompatible combo can hard-block instead of silently misbehaving.
Constants live in two files (Metro can't resolve outside mobile/):
src/shared/protocol-version.ts—DESKTOP_PROTOCOL_VERSION,MIN_COMPATIBLE_MOBILE_VERSIONmobile/src/transport/protocol-version.ts—MOBILE_PROTOCOL_VERSION,MIN_COMPATIBLE_DESKTOP_VERSION
Today all four are set so evaluateCompat always returns { kind: 'ok' } — nothing blocks. The wire format is in place to flip a switch when needed.
When to bump
Bump DESKTOP_PROTOCOL_VERSION (and the mobile mirror MOBILE_PROTOCOL_VERSION when relevant) for breaking changes:
- Removed RPC method or required parameter that mobile uses
- Changed meaning (units, nullability) of an existing field mobile reads
- Changed encryption, framing, or auth handshake
Do not bump for additive changes:
- New RPC methods
- New optional fields on existing methods
- New event types in
terminal.subscribe
Set MIN_COMPATIBLE_MOBILE_VERSION (kill-switch) when desktop ships a change that requires a minimum mobile version to function safely. Same for MIN_COMPATIBLE_DESKTOP_VERSION from the mobile side.
When a verdict is blocked, mobile/src/components/ProtocolBlockScreen.tsx renders a screen pointing the user at either the App Store (mobile too old) or GitHub Releases (desktop too old).
To exercise the block screen locally: set MIN_COMPATIBLE_DESKTOP_VERSION = 999 in mobile/src/transport/protocol-version.ts, rebuild, pair to any desktop. Revert before merging.
Mock Server
Develop the mobile app without a running Orca desktop instance:
pnpm mock-server # starts mock WebSocket server on port 6768
Connect from the app using endpoint ws://localhost:6768 and token mock-device-token.
Environment variables
MOCK_NATIVE_CHAT=1— serve the native-chat scenario (one live agent tab, empty transcript, image upload) instead of the default terminal fixtures.MOCK_SERVER_KEY_FILE— persist the server keypair across restarts so a paired device keeps its public-key pin. A missing or invalid file is re-keyed with a warning, which forces a re-pair.
Scenario control files
Read on every request, so behaviour can be flipped mid-session without a restart (a restart would re-key E2EE and force a re-pair). Write the mode into the file, or delete it for the default.
MOCK_SEND_MODE_FILE(defaultorca-mock-send-modein the system temporary directory) —accept(default) accepts the send,errorfails it withmobile_input_floor_unavailable, anything else reports the send as rejected.MOCK_TERMINAL_LIST_MODE_FILE(defaultorca-mock-terminal-list-modein the system temporary directory) —omitreturns an empty terminal list,otherreturns a list that omits the chat handle, anything else lists it.MOCK_TERMINAL_STREAM_MODE_FILE(defaultorca-mock-terminal-stream-modein the system temporary directory) —deadanswers a subscribe withsubscribedthenend(a gone PTY), which is what exercises the rearm bound and terminal prune; anything else streams normally.
Connecting to Real Orca
- Start Orca desktop with WebSocket transport enabled
- In Orca, go to Settings > Mobile and scan the QR code with this app
- The QR encodes the connection endpoint, device token, and TLS fingerprint
Project Structure
mobile/
├── app/ # Expo Router screens (file-based routing)
│ ├── _layout.tsx # Root layout with navigation stack
│ ├── index.tsx # Home screen — paired hosts list
│ └── pair-scan.tsx # QR code scanning screen
├── src/
│ ├── terminal/ # Terminal WebView and xterm bridge
│ └── transport/ # WebSocket RPC client
├── scripts/
│ ├── test-subscribe.ts # Desktop streaming repro without a phone
│ └── mock-server.ts # Standalone mock WebSocket server
└── assets/ # App icons and splash screen