Bring Remotes to the app

[simonhamp]

Brings the web's Remotes (direct messages) to the app. Remotes takes Saved's place in the tab bar, and Saved opens from your own profile.

What's in it

Remotes tab. The web's inbox: Open, Stashed, and Fetched while devnull takes requests. They're pages you swipe between, like the Log and Notifications. The pager's tabs are text only, so Fetched's request count goes in its label ("Fetched · 2"). Each row shows the partner's avatar ringed in their lane (or two of an org's people), the name and handle (or "org · N"), and the last message in the web's words ("you: …", "Ada: …" in an org, "sent an image", or the org event). On the right it shows "N ahead" in your lane, or the relative time. Your own last message wears the web's pushed or pulled glyph. Pull to refresh and paging work as on the web. The tab badge is the unread count the web's nav shows.

New remote and New org. The web's two buttons sit at the top right of the inbox, with its icons (users-round and square-pen). New remote finds a developer by name or handle and opens your conversation with them in the picker's place. New org takes an optional name and people, up to the web's 100 with you, shows them as chips you tap to take back out, and opens the new org. Someone you can't reach shows the web's reason ("doesn't follow you", "has remotes off", "the org is full (100)") and can't be picked. A term nobody matches gets the web's fatal: nothing matches '…'.

Thread. Opens on the latest message, at the bottom:

• Yours on the right in your lane, theirs on the left.
• Day markers, HEAD · N new where you left off, org events as log lines, and the author over a run of someone else's messages in an org.
• Reply ghosts, images, link cards and reaction chips.
• The web's status under the right message: staged, pushed, "pulled 14:05", or "pulled by …" in an org.
• A tap on a message shows React and Reply right beside its bubble, with the web's icons, as the web shows them on hover. They fade in and slide a few points into place. The bubble's row always keeps their slot, so a long message wraps short of it and nothing moves. React opens a sheet with the web's quick reactions (😂 ✅ ❤️, swapped for ones you use more) and more emoji. A double tap toggles a heart. I dropped the long press I had first because it was unreliable.
• Swiping a message sideways replies to it, as the web does on touch screens: someone else's to the right, your own to the left. The field takes focus. Other swipes, like a flick while scrolling, do nothing.
• The nav bar menu has View profile and Stash or Pop, with the web's archive icons.

Composer. In the bottom bar, with the same room above and below the field so it sits evenly on the keyboard. "@ada is typing…" shows under the title in the nav bar rather than above the composer as on the web. A line in the bar hid messages before they reached its border.

• Push shows the message staged at once, then pushed. If devnull refuses it, it shows rejected with retry, which resends under the same client id.
• Typing pings go out at most every 3 seconds, as on the web.
• The counter appears from 1,600 of 2,000.
• When the composer can't push, the bar says why in the web's words. A request gets Drop and Merge.

Account. The web's Remotes switch, word for word, under Pastéis mode. Under it, Share pulls and, only while devnull offers it, who can push to you. Each saves optimistically and goes back with the web's error if devnull says no.

Profile. Someone else's profile gets the web's Remote button beside Follow when you could push to them: they follow you, or devnull takes requests. Your own profile gets a Saved button in the nav bar beside Account.

Remotes off. The tab shows the web's 404 for /remotes, word for word, with "Back to your log", since that's what the web shows.

How new messages arrive

Polling, like the web. There are no websockets yet.

• The inbox polls every 15 seconds while it's showing.
• A thread polls for messages after the last one, plus reactions changed since the version it saw. It polls every 2 seconds within a minute of anyone writing or typing, and every 4 seconds otherwise. The web does 1.5 and 4; #[Poll] ticks every 2 seconds and an idle thread skips every other tick.
• Polls go out on the background lane (RefreshesInBackground) and are never cached. Only a thread's first page and the inbox are kept, so opening one is instant.
• New messages are marked pulled as they arrive, since the thread is on screen.

The thread is a scroll-anchor="bottom" scroll view with each message as its own row. This PR bumps nativephp/mobile-ui to combined/dev-null-app b70ef42 for NativePHP/mobile-ui#141. With that, a message arriving follows you if you're at the bottom and leaves you alone if you're reading back. Before, it yanked you down. The view also adds the home indicator at its end while the keyboard is down, so the thread pads its end for the composer bar alone and sits right above it with the keyboard up or down. Nothing else in the lock moved.

API it needs

Each part has its own upstream PR. Until one lands, that part of the app just doesn't answer.

• feat: turn Remotes on and off and change their settings from the API nunomaduro/dev-null.sh#649: the switch and settings, plus remotes on /me
• feat: list and open conversations in Remotes from the API nunomaduro/dev-null.sh#654: inbox, threads, read state, link cards, signed image URLs
• feat: push messages in Remotes from the API nunomaduro/dev-null.sh#665: pushing messages (stacked on #654)
• feat: react to messages in Remotes from the API nunomaduro/dev-null.sh#656: reactions
• feat: stash conversations and merge or drop requests in Remotes from the API nunomaduro/dev-null.sh#657: stash, merge and drop
• feat: say you are typing in Remotes from the API nunomaduro/dev-null.sh#658: typing
• feat: start remotes and orgs from the API nunomaduro/dev-null.sh#734: people search and creating orgs, for New remote and New org

A devnull without #649 sends no remotes on /me, and the app takes that as on, so the tab doesn't show the 404 just because the API is older.

Not in this PR

• Sending images. Signed requests can't carry files until the commit-images API change adds multipart signing. Received images show.
• Org management. Adding and removing people, renaming and leaving stay on the web. Creating one is in.
• Swiping inbox rows to stash. I tried it, but row swipes fought the swipes between tabs, so it's out. Stash and Pop stay in each thread's menu.
• Deleting or editing messages. The web has neither.
• Saved at the top left of your profile. The nav bar can't hold a leading button yet. Adding one is a core change, and mobile-air's combined branch currently also carries the 4.1.0 PHP binaries pin from Install the PHP binaries that grow the frame buffers #18, so it waits for Install the PHP binaries that grow the frame buffers #18. For now Saved sits beside Account.

Checked on a simulator

On an iPhone 17 Pro simulator (iOS 27), I ran this against a local devnull with all six API PRs merged. Two test users talked to each other: local_dev in the app, and dking on the web in a browser.

• Inbox with "2 ahead" and the tab badge.
• Thread with a code span, a link card, and HEAD.
• local_dev pushes and sees staged then pushed. The web shows it, and dking's messages show pulled on the web.
• dking types on the web and the app shows "@dking is typing…".
• dking's message arrives by polling within about a second, and the app pulls it.
• Reactions both ways: 🚀 from the app shows on the web, and ❤️ from the web shows in the app.
• A reply with its ghost.
• An org dking created on the web shows up through the 15-second inbox poll, with its event line, author header and "pulled by".
• An image dking sent loads through the signed URL.
• Remotes off shows the web's 404, and turning it back on brings the conversations back.
• Saved opens from the profile, and Remote on dking's profile opens the thread.
• With messages arriving: reading a few rows up, the view stays put. At the bottom, it follows.
• Dark mode.

The simulator reached the local API at 127.0.0.1. A cloudflared tunnel was refused by this session's permission settings, so no tunnel was involved. UIMenu items (the thread's ⋯ menu) didn't take AXe taps, so View profile and Stash are covered by feature tests only.

Inbox	Thread	Typing	Reactions

Org	Remotes off	Account	Remote on a profile

Following at the bottom, then staying put while reading back:

The screenshots are on the orphan branch remotes-screenshots, to delete after merge.

Since then, against the same local API with #734 added, I checked on the simulator:

• the two buttons;
• New remote's hint and its no-match line;
• New org's layout;
• swiping between Open and Stashed;
• the tighter Push box.

The same build is on Simon's iPhone against that API over the LAN. AXe's typing didn't reach the simulator this time, so search results, picking and swipe to reply are covered by feature tests only so far.

Known rough edges

• Message times are in UTC. That's the app's timezone. The scheduling PR's Timezone reads the phone's, and once it lands, Display::clock() should use it the way the day labels will.
• Don't merge before the API. Until #654 is on dev-null.sh, the inbox gets a 404 and the tab would show the "Remotes off" page.

Tests

Feature tests for the inbox and its pager, the thread, swipe to reply, New remote and New org, the Account section, the Profile button and the cache. All 920 pass, and Pint is clean.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code