Jinwoo Hong
da1c322b00
* feat(mobile): one build-time constant decides native or OTA, default native EXPO_PUBLIC_MOBILE_SHELL is read in exactly one place, mobileShellBuildKind in preferences.ts. Expo's babel preset inlines a literal process.env member expression at build time, so a release bundle carries the answer as a constant and anything but the exact string 'ota' — unset, empty, a typo — is native. Every default build is therefore the native app, unchanged. mobileWebShellFlagCanBeOn now answers __DEV__ or an OTA build, so the ability to mount the page comes from the build and never from storage: a native binary installed over an OTA one, same bundle id and same data container, still refuses a stored 'true' without reading the key. An unset key reads on only in an OTA build; a development build keeps its opt-in, and a stored 'false' wins everywhere so the Troubleshoot toggle can switch an OTA build back to native. That toggle now mounts wherever the flag can be on, which is the only way back to the native screens in an OTA build, and its label names the build kind rather than saying "(dev)". The bundle probe row beside it stays development-only: it fetches. The flag census gains two rules — one module reads the switch, in the member form Expo inlines and not the bracket form, and one named function answers the build kind — and the build-kind fence now lists the Troubleshoot route that asks it. Docblocks that said a store build can never mount the shell now say it mounts only when built for OTA. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JNnE9qzUZMMnqpZWCqM3nb * ci(mobile): one workflow input picks the shell, and no input means native Both release workflows gain a `shell` workflow_dispatch choice, options native and ota, default native, and hand it to the step that bundles the JavaScript as EXPO_PUBLIC_MOBILE_SHELL. That is the Gradle assembleRelease step on Android and the fastlane build_and_upload step on iOS; nothing else in either file sets it. A tag push and a schedule carry no inputs at all, so `inputs.shell || 'native'` yields native for them — the first OTA release is a dispatch with one field changed, and every other run is the app we ship today. Each build step prints the value it is about to build with, read back from the same variable rather than from a second copy of the expression, so a run's log cannot claim a shell the build did not use. The new contract test evaluates that expression rather than matching its text: absent, empty and 'native' all resolve to native, 'ota' to ota, and any expression shape it cannot evaluate is a failure rather than a pass. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JNnE9qzUZMMnqpZWCqM3nb * build: the desktop packages the real page, and the placeholder is retired build:mobile-web now runs the app builder and app verifier, and both take their output root from MOBILE_WEB_BUNDLE_DIR in the packaging guard rather than each carrying a constant of their own — one definition of where the bundle lives, so a drift cannot leave electron-builder's beforePack looking at an empty directory while the builder reports a tree it wrote elsewhere. build:mobile-web:app is gone; it was the same two commands. src/mobile-web/ and its two scripts go with it. What the app builder shared with them is split into three modules named for what they hold rather than for the bundle that used to own them: mobile-web-bundle-manifest.mjs (content types, the canonical asset serialization, buildId, hashed assets, the protocol window and the manifest write), script-entry-detection.mjs (isDirectInvocation, whose two failure modes are Windows paths and symlinked entries), and mobile-web-source-line-endings.mjs (the CRLF guard, now with a required directory rather than a default pointing at the deleted tree). The two suites that only needed *a* valid tree on disk — the beforePack guard and the packaged-bundle guard — build one from mobile-web-bundle-fixture-tree instead of bundling the whole mobile graph. It goes through the same manifest writer the page does, so a manifest shape change still reaches them. Also retired: the placeholder's tsconfig project and its typecheck lane, its knip entry, its electron-builder exclusion and .gitattributes pins, and the app-bundle test that asserted the shims stayed out of a builder that no longer exists. pr.yml's page job builds the same bundle the package job ships. Inert for native phones: they never fetch it. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JNnE9qzUZMMnqpZWCqM3nb * style(config): one import of node:fs/promises in the entry-detection suite The changed-code quality gate's focused plugins read the two as a duplicate import; the readFile line was left over from the split. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JNnE9qzUZMMnqpZWCqM3nb * docs: the comments that still describe the retired placeholder bundle The web entry said it was built by `build:mobile-web:app` into out/mobile-web-app and shipped by nothing. That script, that directory and that fact are all gone: it is built by `build:mobile-web` into the packaged bundle dir, and a phone mounts it only when the binary was built with EXPO_PUBLIC_MOBILE_SHELL=ota. Two Windows cache keys explained themselves by naming src/mobile-web and "the two bundle builders"; config/** now covers the builder, the verifier and the manifest writer, and the spike's key no longer waits on a Phase C flip that has happened. The keys themselves are unchanged. Three scratch directories in the app-bundle suites and one in the verifier still spelled the retired output root. Renamed to mobile-web, which is what the build writes; they are temp subdirectory names and nothing reads them. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JNnE9qzUZMMnqpZWCqM3nb
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 run check:tests-typecheck
pnpm lint
cd ..
pnpm typecheck:node
tsc --noEmit reads tsconfig.json, which excludes test files so Metro never bundles them.
tsconfig.test.json puts them back, and pnpm run typecheck:tests shows their errors in full.
check:tests-typecheck is the gate over it: a ratchet against tests-typecheck-baseline.txt, the
127 test files that do not typecheck yet. It fails when a file that checks today stops checking,
and when a baseline entry starts checking (prune it with
node scripts/check-tests-typecheck-ratchet.mjs --prune). The list may only shrink.
The same gate censuses the program first: every *.test.ts(x) on disk must be in it, or named in
the script's TESTS_OUTSIDE_PROGRAM with a reason. Without that, a test excluded from
tsconfig.test.json — or a Foo.test.tsx shadowed by a Foo.test.ts beside it, which a wildcard
include drops for the higher-priority extension — would leave the ratchet silently.
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_CHAT_AGENT=omp— withMOCK_NATIVE_CHAT=1, present an OMP tab and four decoded transcript messages, including a tool call and result, instead of the default Claude scenario. It deliberately omitstranscriptPathto exercise legacy-hook readability discovery; current OMP hooks may report a path.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