macOS screen recordings are HEVC inside a .mov container, which Chromium,
Firefox and stock Electron can't decode. The file uploaded fine and a
server-side ffmpeg poster was generated, but inline <video> playback failed
silently — stuck at 0:00 with no error, since AttachmentRenderer had no error
handling. Root cause: the system had no concept of web-playability.
Server detects, client degrades:
- mediaPlayable.ts: classifyVideoPlayable(mimetype, codec) — tri-state
(false = known-undecodable e.g. HEVC/ProRes, true = web codec in web
container, null = unknown/optimistic). Never widens `false` beyond codecs
that fail everywhere, so ffmpeg-less instances keep prior behaviour.
- probeMediaMeta now captures the video codec_name; the upload finish hook
stores the verdict in the new attachments.playable column (migration 0007).
- Flag propagated through every serializer: space messages, DMs, WS, and
federation relay (outbound + inbound) — federation-compatible.
- VideoAttachment component: playable===false renders a download card (poster
+ "Can't play here — download" + name/duration/size) with no dead-player
flash; otherwise plays inline with an onError fallback to the same card.
Specs updated: uploads.md, database.md, federation.md.
Manual ownership transfers between two federated instances diverged because
`dm_channels.ownerHomeInstance` was stored as a BARE host (`orbit.ddns.net`)
for federated owners — via `transferGroupDmOwnership` copying `users.homeInstance`
verbatim — while `sourceInstance` always arrives as a full URL on the wire.
`processOwnershipTransferEvent` and `processMemberRemoveEvent` then compared the
two with strict equality and rejected legitimate inbound events as
`unauthorized_source`, keeping ownership permanently divergent across peers.
Live DB inspection on the two test instances confirmed both rows (nova + orbit)
had a BARE `owner_home_instance`, matching the bug report exactly.
Three compounding fixes:
1. Receiver authority checks now compare via `normalizeOriginForCompare` so
legacy bare-vs-full rows accept legitimate transfers (and kicks).
2. New `canonicalizeHomeInstance` helper in `federationAuth.ts`; every write
site that persists `ownerHomeInstance` (`transferGroupDmOwnership`, group DM
creation, lazy federation in member-add, `processMemberAddEvent` bootstrap,
`processOwnershipTransferEvent` receiver storage) routes through it. Full URL
is the canonical storage form, matching how `sourceInstance` arrives.
3. `dm_owner_updated` WS event extended with optional `newOwnerHomeUserId` and
`newOwnerHomeInstance` fields. Client `updateDmOwner` writes them when
present and leaves existing values untouched otherwise (legacy-server safe).
Without this, `getOwnerInstanceForDm` returned the previous owner's home
after a successful WS broadcast, routing the next owner-only op to the wrong
instance.
Coverage: new `federation.ownershipTransfer.test.ts` (7 receiver tests including
the headline bare-vs-full regression and the dedup replay guard); new bare-vs-full
case in `federation.kick.test.ts`; two new client-side cases in
`groupDm.ownerRouting.test.ts` covering both the extended-payload write path and
the legacy-server passthrough. Tests: 1053 server + 364 web, all green.
Specs updated: `dm-system.md` historical bugs + frontend handler table + WS
state-change events table; `federation.md` `ownership_transfer` receiver flow;
`websocket.md` event-fields table.
Two follow-on bugs from the initial S2S presence rollout:
(1) New friend stuck offline until they reload: presence_update fires only on
transitions, so a remote user already online when their stub is created
locally never receives a relay event seeding their actual status. The
stub defaulted to 'offline' at creation and stayed there until the next
transition. Fix: extend FederationRelayProfileSnapshot +
FederationUserLookupProfile with status. Sender-side buildProfileSnapshot,
getDmParticipants, and lookup endpoint responses populate it for native
users only (replicated stubs hold stale status owned elsewhere).
resolveOrCreateReplicatedUser uses hints.status to seed the new row's
status column. Threaded through every call site (DM participants, group
bootstrap, friend events, ownership transfer). Stub backfill worker also
heals existing rows whose status was stuck at 'offline' from creation.
(2) 'Online' text updates but green avatar dot stays grey on the same page:
spaceStore.updateMemberPresence patches members[] (which feeds space UIs)
but never patches userViews — the cache useCanonicalUserView reads from.
The Avatar in FriendItem reads canonical.status; the text reads
friend.status (socialStore). Two sources, one stale until full
user_updated arrives. Fix: updateMemberPresence now mirrors status into
matching userViews entries, so canonical-view consumers re-render with
fresh status the moment the WS event lands.
processPresenceUpdateEvent updates the local stub's status and broadcasts a
WS presence_update to friends + DM members + space co-members of that stub
via collectProfileBroadcastTargetIds. Closes the doc/code drift in
activity-presence.md:147 — federated stubs now have their status projected
by the home instance as documented.
Strict attribution: payload.homeInstance domain must equal source peer
domain. Silently no-ops when no local replica exists (peer broadcast fanout
covers all peers, not all hold a stub).
HMAC-authenticated, rate-limited (60/min/peer) endpoint that resolves a
homeUserId on this instance to its canonical username + profile snapshot.
Native non-deleted users only. Mirrors /users/lookup's auth shape.
Adds lookupRemoteUserByHomeId to federationLookup.ts as the client-side
helper. Used by the upcoming stub-backfill worker on peers that hold legacy
snowflake-named replicas of users now visible by their real handle.
FederationProfileUpdatePayload gains `username`: the home user's canonical
handle. Receiver applies displayName ?? username so stubs whose home user has
no displayName show the real handle instead of getting clobbered to null.
Mirrors the existing fallback in hydrateReplicatedUserProfile. Username itself
is immutable on the home instance, so the receiver does not rewrite the stub's
username column on profile_update.
When friend_request_create / friend_add / DM relay carries a profile snapshot,
the canonical-username hint is now used as the stub's local-part. Stubs created
purely from S2S (no client-federation) now display the human-readable handle,
not the homeUserId snowflake. Falls back to the snowflake-id scheme only when
no hint is available.
hydrateReplicatedUserProfile now calls downloadProfileAsset and stores bare local filenames, falling back to absolute URLs only on download failure. It also fills empty fields only — no longer clobbering local files written by processProfileUpdateEvent. Adds an idempotent startup backfill that converts existing http-prefixed avatar/banner rows on replicated users into local files, so federated profile pictures keep rendering when the home instance is offline.
Two correctness/defense fixes plus regression tests in the existing
in-memory drizzle test file.
1. Reverse-direction idempotency. The sender-side path in social.ts
checks BOTH directions of friend_requests and returns 409
incoming_request_exists when an opposite-direction row exists. The
receiver only matched from->to, so cross-fire (alice@A and bob@B both
click "add friend" near-simultaneously) produced two opposite
pending rows on each instance. The receiver now silent-accepts when
either direction matches a pending row, mirroring the sender's
both-direction check.
2. Self-target guard (defense-in-depth). Reject events whose
from-identity equals to-identity (after normalizeOriginForCompare)
with a new receiver-acknowledged 4xx code self_target_invalid.
Sender's local cannot_friend_self should catch this, but the
receiver does not trust upstream validation. Added to
TERMINAL_REJECTION_REASONS so the standard rollback fires
(mapped client-side to peer_rejected). Logged at console.warn.
Spec updates: social.md inbound contract now documents both-direction
idempotency and the self-target guard; federation.md and the
s2s-friend-add design spec list the new terminal rejection reason.
Live verification caught a stale-UI bug: when admin denial / approval
fanout / janitor expiry cascaded subscriber rows away, only the
peering_notification_received WS event fired (which only refetches
the notification list). The user's pending-subscriptions section
stayed stale until manual refresh.
Each terminal-state path now also fires peering_subscription_changed
to affected users so their pending list refreshes alongside the new
notification. Fixed in:
- onPeerActivated.fanoutOutboundSubscribers (approval path)
- handleOutboundDeny (admin denial)
- cleanupExpiredApprovalRequests (janitor expiry; also adds the
notification-received broadcast that was previously deferred to
next-page-load only)
db.select() returned every column including userId; spec §4.9
defined the response row WITHOUT userId. The leak is harmless today
(user queries their own rows) but expands the public API surface
beyond the spec, and would become part of the contract once Task 10
generates client types. Switching to explicit column projection.
- GET /api/federation/peering-notifications (?unread=1 filter)
- POST /api/federation/peering-notifications/:id/read (per-row mark-read)
- POST /api/federation/peering-notifications/read-all (bulk mark-read,
preserves already-read readAt; returns affected count)
- janitor: outbound expired rows fan out kind='expired' notifications
to each subscriber before cascade-deleting parent (replaces Task 1's
scaffolding 'continue' guard); inbound expired rows are deleted outright
(both sides expire independently — no cross-instance network call)
- janitor: 30-day cleanup pass for read notifications
(cleanupReadPeeringNotifications); unread rows persist indefinitely
- cleanupExpiredApprovalRequests is now sync (no async network IO)
Notes:
- No WS broadcast on janitor expiry — offline users see notifications on
next GET, matching the persistence guarantee of the notifications table.
- The previous /peer/denied network call on inbound expiry is removed;
symmetric per-side expiry now handles termination on both sides.
Tests: 12 new (3 + 4 endpoint cases on 3 endpoints; 2 outbound/inbound
janitor expiry cases + 1 not-yet-expired guard + 1 retention sweep);
247 server tests passing total.
User-facing endpoints for the pending-peering-approvals UI surface.
GET lists the user's own pending subscriber rows joined to parent
peering requests. DELETE cancels a single subscription; if it was
the last subscriber, cascade-deletes the parent (admin queue updates
via federation_peers_changed). Authorization: subscriber.userId must
match request.userId.
- social.ts friend-add: user_action, with 409 peer_pending_local_admin
when gate fires
- /peer/ensure: user_action, surfaces peeringStatus: 'admin_required'
- sendCallRelay (typing warm-up + call relay): system intent
- federationWorker resolvePendingPeers: system intent (defensive — gate
is unreachable from here since pending rows already exist)
- CallRelayFailureReason: peer_admin_required added (mapped to
peer_transient_failure on the user-facing event surface, since system
intent should never legitimately surface admin_required)
- Test files: thread intent arg through racePeering and ensurePeered
calls (positional shift from racePeering signature change)
- outboundGate.test.ts: tighten noUncheckedIndexedAccess access via
non-null assertions after toHaveLength()
- docs/systems/social.md: peer_pending_local_admin error code documented
Three changes to keep the outbound /peer/accept call sites consistent
with the new approval-token mechanism:
1. /approve outbound body now forwards approvalToken from the queued
peer_approval_requests row when present. Receiver's awaiting_approval
branch verifies it and promotes mutual approval. Legacy null-token
rows omit the field; receiver falls through autoAccept gate. Spec §3.7.
2. /approve and /peer/initiate 202 paths now capture the approvalToken
returned by the remote and store it on the local federation_peers row.
Without this, the symmetric autoAccept=0 mutual-approval flow could
not verify on the eventual return /peer/accept. Spec §3.7.
3. /approve and /peer/initiate 200 paths now include approvalToken=null
in the activation UPDATE — single-use lifecycle hygiene per §3.2.
Test coverage: +6 tests (4 in approveOutbound, 2 in peerInitiateOutbound).
Total: 301 → 307. Web tsc clean.
Receiver-side defense — closes the trust-bypass class the cheap fix
(4533e36) cannot cover. The /peer/accept handler's awaiting_approval
branch now requires an approvalToken matching the one stored on the
local peer row before promoting to active. Without a match:
- autoAccept=0 falls through to queueApprovalRequest (no bypass; new
approval-request queued, existing awaiting_approval row untouched).
- autoAccept=1 falls back to permissive promotion (no regression vs
prior behavior, since autoAccept=1 would accept any inbound regardless).
Successful match also deletes any stale approval-request row for the
origin to prevent debris accumulation from prior bypass attempts.
Refactor: queueing path extracted to a top-level queueApprovalRequest()
helper so both the no-existing-peer case and the awaiting_approval
mismatch fallback share one implementation. Helper generates a fresh
single-use token on every call.
Adds 'accept_awaiting_approval_fallback' variant to PeerActivationReason
to distinguish the autoAccept=1 fallback path from the verified path
in onPeerActivated audit logs.
Spec §3.5, §3.6.
Test counts: 289 → 301 (+12).
Refactors the POST handler into handleLocalFriendRequest + handleFederatedFriendRequest helpers. The federated branch resolves the target domain, ensures peering, looks up the remote user, creates/hydrates a replicated stub, and writes a transactional (friend_requests + mutation_log + outbox) event with relayMessageId set. Also exports hydrateReplicatedUserProfile from federation.ts and adds the T11 happy-path test.
Third initiator path that calls remote /peer/accept. Mirrors performHandshake (auto-peer) and /peer/initiate (admin-initiate) — same try/catch parse, same null-or-non-empty-string guard. Caught in final review of #33; same root cause as Bug #1, bundled rather than fragmented to a new backlog item.
Mirrors the previous performHandshake fix for the admin-initiated path. /peer/initiate now parses the remote's instanceName from the /peer/accept response body and writes it alongside status='active'.
Bidirectional handshake exchange. Today the responder learns the initiator's instance name from request body but the initiator never learns the responder's. Adding {instanceName} to the response body lets the initiator persist it on its side (next commit). Field is optional so older peers omitting it cause no ill effect.
Previously /peer/accept read body.instanceName only when queueing for admin approval. The four paths that mutate federation_peers (rejected→active override, awaiting_approval→active, pending→active, new-peer create) all wrote status='active' without persisting instance_name. Result: every peer established via direct handshake had instance_name = NULL forever. Anywhere peerLabel was rendered fell back to origin hostname.
Active/needs_attention idempotent early-return path deliberately left alone — same security posture that already refuses to overwrite hmac_secret from unauthenticated requests on already-active peers.
Existing live NULL rows are repaired post-deploy via manual UPDATE statements (see plan).
Jannis Braun