Paul HittandClaude Opus 5
88397a8bda
The two engines both had a notion of "this story, wherever it is read", and kept it in different fields. This app put it in `id`. The iPhone numbers its rows locally in `id` and kept the shared identity in `key`. One name, two meanings, so a story travelling between the two phones came back unrecognisable and the import filed it as a second copy of itself. `key` is the identity now and `id` is written by neither engine. A local handle has no business in a shared shape. `id` is still read as a fallback for files written before this was settled, and only when it is a STRING. A number there is the writing device's row handle: stringifying it produced a confident, meaningless identity, which is the original bug reached by another path. A story with neither falls back to its post time, the same value the iPhone falls back to, so the two still land together. Two tests were pinning the old contract rather than testing it. One asserted the internal id came from the shared `id` when both were present; the other was called `a numeric story id from the iphone becomes a usable name`, which is the bug stated as a requirement. Both rewritten, and the new sibling covering the post-time fallback is what caught the numeric case above. 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.