Brennan Benson
35e173a5b7
* fix(native-chat): alert when a structured chat asks for approval or input mid-turn A structured Claude or Codex chat that stopped mid-turn to ask for approval or a question raised no OS notification, no phone push and no unread dot: the host's attention feed only fired when a turn settled. The host now announces each newly pending prompt once, from the same feed, and owns the phone push for its own structured sessions; desktops keep presentation only. - host feed: a `prompt` edge per pending approval/question, opt-in on the existing stream; a clean settle that only restates an announced prompt is not re-announced to prompt-aware clients; failures always are - host push: an in-process subscriber pushes the host's paired phones with labels from in-memory metadata, and withdraws a prompt's alert once answered - one attention identity for desktop banner, phone push, dedupe and retirement; delivery dedupes on it instead of the per-workspace burst window - agentSession.acknowledgeAttention routes reading a chat to its owning host, which retires what it pushed for that session via its dismissal record * fix(native-chat): keep prompt alerts under their retirement identity * Fix structured attention read and delivery lifecycle * Allow later reads to retry failed attention retirement * Prevent delayed prompt alerts after accepted reads * Keep attention integration tests across process boundaries * Check structured capability before cursorless attention reads * Keep host retirement fixture in the Node typecheck boundary * Keep attention test seams in the mock boundary * Keep host notification formatting usable without Electron * Declare agents in restored-host attention fixture * Group session attention capability declarations * Retire structured alerts on every read and when a remote prompt ends - Mark read and Mark all read on a chat that was never opened, or is hidden, now cover what lit its row: the read boundary is the later of the transcript cursor and the newest edge the tab was handed, captured at the click. The one boundary closes the banners, retires relayed phone alerts and drives the host acknowledgement; an edge after the click stays live. - An alert from a host older than journal cursors has no position, so a pane read retires it again, banner and relayed phone push, as before this change. - A desktop-relayed prompt alert for a remote chat is withdrawn once that host's live status stops reporting attention (answered elsewhere, cancelled, host restart); cached status after loss of contact never settles it. - The attention acknowledgement is agent-session.attention-ack.v1 with a required journal cursor and strict params; the cursorless no-op is gone. - The dismissal store keeps a record whose origin a newer build wrote, dropping only that origin. - Host reconciliation runs on restore and when a prompt leaves the pending set, not on every journal commit. - Remove unused session-wide retirement (retire, retireMatching, retireMobileNotificationsMatching) and test-only store lookups. * Settle relayed prompts only from host-dated status; reads default to view - A remote chat's status and its prompt edges arrive on separate sockets, so a status row queued before the prompt could land after it and withdraw a relayed alert that was still pending. Settlement now needs a live, non-attention row whose host updatedAt (the journal's latest row time, never decreasing) is later than the prompt's host raisedAt. The owed prompt is cleared only once the settle call succeeds, so a failed call retries on the next qualifying row. - An acknowledgement without captured reads now reads as a view. Mark read, Mark all read, the hover-card jump and both dashboard acks pass 'explicit'; Activity's automatic per-turn read stays a view. * Re-judge relayed prompt settlement after each call; dashboard watching is a view - Settlement is one check of the current mirror, run on each status row, after each settle call returns, and when a prompt edge arrives. A row that lands while a call is out is no longer dropped, and an edge that arrives after its own resolution settles at once. A rejected call is retried only once the mirror holds a different row, so a failing call cannot loop. - The Agent Dashboard's card click acknowledges as explicit; watching the open dialog acknowledges as a view, through both the in-window drawer and the pop-out relay, and no longer re-acks the state the click just read. * Keep a reused read owner findable after its holders release it A chat pane memoizes its read owner. When every holder let go in one commit and the same owner was picked up again (React StrictMode's effect re-run in development, or a pane remounted in one commit, as on a tab move), the release dropped it from the registry and nothing put it back. The attention bridge then found no owner, so a view read carried no cursor: the unread dot cleared but the banner and phone alerts stayed. An owner now names its key again whenever it gains an activation or a subscriber and the key is free, never over a different live owner. * Type the ack test's execution host ids * Keep the turn-completion types in main's turn-completion wire module Main moved these types into agent-session-turn-completion-wire.ts while this branch moved them into agent-session-attention-wire.ts. They now live at main's path with this branch's additions (journal cursor, prompt attention, prompt arm); the unused completion key is dropped.
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 the update that clears it. When mobile is too old it opens the newest release if the installed app's update check knows one, otherwise the App Store (iOS) or GitHub Releases (Android). When desktop is too old it opens GitHub Releases.
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