Paul HittandClaude Opus 5
611a16d0b3
There is no push on Android, by choice: no Firebase, no Play Services, nothing that needs a Google account to receive a message. MessengerService IS the delivery path, so whether it is running is whether the phone can be reached at all. It was declared without `stopWithTask`, which defaults to true, so swiping the app out of Recents destroyed it. Nothing brought it back: START_STICKY covers a process the system killed for memory, not a task the user removed. The phone then went silent until somebody opened the app again. From the outside that is a phone that does not ring, does not receive, and collects everything in a burst when it is next opened, which is exactly what a week of "Android answers then hangs up", "the call just goes away" and "the story never appeared" looks like. Nobody would guess that closing the app from Recents is what did it. Observed on a real handset: last poll 11:08, forty-two envelopes still waiting on the relay thirteen hours later, while the iPhone on the same account was current. iOS was never affected because APNs wakes it. Verified in the compiled APK, not just the source: aapt2 shows `android:stopWithTask=false` on the service in the installed manifest. 1474 unit tests green. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Flamenet Messenger. Android
The Android app, and the two libraries under it. The product's site is at https://flamenetmessenger.com.
engine/ the protocol: X3DH, Double Ratchet, sealed sender, safety numbers,
key transparency. Plain Kotlin/JVM — no Android in it at all.
client/ the relay transport: HTTP, auth, the §8 routes.
app/ the Compose app.
interop/ the cross-engine driver; not shipped.
engine and client are deliberately plain JVM libraries. The protocol has
nothing to do with Android, and keeping it off the platform means their tests
run anywhere a JVM does, no SDK, no emulator, no device, which is also what
lets them gate in CI on Linux:
./gradlew :engine:test :client:test
The app's own unit tests need the Android SDK but still no emulator (Robolectric):
./gradlew :app:testDebugUnitTest
Where it stands
PARITY.md is the definition of done for this app, read that, not this. Every row there names the iOS file it came from so it can be re-checked rather than trusted. Headlines: messaging, groups, attachments, voice notes, stories, calls, sealed sender, key transparency and the encrypted vault are built and tested, and a cross-platform round trip against iOS is verified.
If a claim here ever disagrees with PARITY.md or with the tree, believe those, and fix this.
Why the engine came first, and is held to the vectors
An Android client needs the protocol implemented a third time, and the third
implementation is the one that finds the places where the specification says
less than the two existing engines quietly agreed on, but only if it is
written against the spec and the published vectors rather than against a
reading of our own Swift and JavaScript. So the engine is held to
test/vectors/protocol-v1.json in
flamenet-e2e, the same file the
other two engines are checked against, read from that repository rather than
copied here, because a copied vector file drifts and a drifting vector file
stops being a check. PublishedVectorsTest looks for it beside this checkout
and fails loudly if it cannot find it; FLAMENET_VECTORS overrides the search.
Two implementations that agree may both be wrong in the same way, especially when one was written while reading the other. The audit-path ordering in §19 is the worked example: a top-down reading of a bottom-up path produces the correct root for every left-spine index, so it passes any test that only checks index 0. The vector file pins a right-descending index for that reason, and the Kotlin tests assert both that the published path verifies and that the same path reversed does not.
If this engine ever disagrees with the file, the interesting question is which of the three is wrong, not this one by default.
Contributing and security
- CONTRIBUTING.md, building (JDK 21,
JAVA_HOMEis not optional on a Mac), the test gate, and the platform traps that cost an hour each. - PARITY.md, what iOS does, what this does, and what is left. It is the definition of done for this app.
- SECURITY.md, threat model and where to send a vulnerability report. Not an issue tracker matter: security@flamenetmessenger.com.