ios-current-direction.md

Native iOS Current Direction

Status: canonical active direction

Last reconciled: 2026-10-25

GitHub Issues hold the iOS work queue, as for the rest of the repository (see AGENTS.md). This page holds the canonical product shape and the standing priorities that iOS issues follow. Dated specifications, implementation plans, audits, handoff exports, and rebuild notes remain useful historical evidence, but they do not authorize new work unless this page links them under Current authorities or Current priorities.

Current authorities

1. coven-design-language.md - tokens, accessibility, motion, copy, and interaction quality.
2. This document - current native iOS product shape and priority order.
3. specs/ios-new-chat-project-contract.md
   • project-bound creation, persistence, retry, forwarding, voice, import, and offline replay invariants. Project choice belongs to a conversation, not the application shell.
4. design-handoff/IMPLEMENTATION-STATUS.md
   • evidence of what actually landed and what was deliberately not adopted.

When these disagree with an older iOS note or plan, the order above wins.

The dated superpowers/specs/2026-08-03-ios-chat-familiars-first-design.md remains implementation lineage for the current app. Its one-familiar-row Chats default is superseded by the chat-only direction. Pin, mute, archive, rename, duplicate, export, bulk delete, unread, session selection, exact Familiar identity, and one-visible-conversation behavior remain requirements until intentionally migrated by the active program.

Current product direction

• Native iOS is chat-only: conversations, chat search, familiar selection within chat, permissions, and configuration that enables or customizes chat.
• Chats opens to global conversations, including direct and group chats and sessions started on other devices. Hydrated sessions appear once, not once as a local thread and again as a server row. Pins, archive visibility, title/familiar search, and the familiar and project filters organize the list without a global project filter. The project strip appears when chats span more than one project, as one menu at accessibility text sizes; it narrows only the visible list and never changes a chat's binding or the application's scope.
• The drawer contains Chats, recent conversations, New chat, Search chats, and Settings. There is no Tasks, Automations, Projects, Needs You, standalone Familiar hub, workspace browser, global search, or terminal destination.
• Familiar identity remains authoritative and visible in conversations and participant selection; it is not an invitation to an operational hub.
• A registered project is an exact conversation-level execution/access binding. New chat can select eligible access locally; it never changes the application's scope. Opening existing history preserves that chat's root, session identity, participants, draft, and queued targets.
• Cached history may remain readable while membership or authority data is loading, stale, degraded, disconnected, or unavailable. New sends and protected mutations remain fail-closed until exact current binding and grant data is known.
• Unassigned remains a recovery-only classification inside history, never a writable project, new-chat default, or separate workspace destination.
• Familiar continuity, revision, embodiment, provenance, and authoritative IDs must not be reconstructed from display name, prompt, avatar, or model.
• Settings round trips and access-catalog refreshes do not remount Chats or destroy its selection. iPhone launches to the list unless an explicit chat intent is present; iPad keeps its list/detail layout.
• The native iOS Terminal, PTY transport, xterm WebView, terminal composer, slash-command route, generated bundle, and tests remain retired. Desktop and web terminal surfaces are unaffected.
• Chats and Settings retain one editorial title language while keeping the controls and navigation behavior specific to each destination.
• Chats continues to protect conversation context at accessibility sizes (its header title moves below the controls instead of wrapping mid-word when a narrow column leaves no room) and uses a floating Search/New Chat dock that compacts in landscape and caps its width on iPad; the active program changes the row organization, not those quality requirements.
• Chats names the visible conversation count for its current organization and scope, and offers only truthful shortcuts when the list is sparse.
• Settings contains appearance, permissions, connection, security, chat notifications/export, and legal information. Promotional/community browsing is outside the mobile chat surface.
• The open drawer preserves spatial context by presenting the live destination as a rounded, offset page.
• Theme values come from ChromePalette; Dynamic Type, VoiceOver, Reduce Motion, Reduce Transparency, focus return, and 44-point targets remain release requirements.

Active program

The chat-only implementation shipped in #5379 (2026-09-12). Its retired Bead, cave-iusli, no longer owns work. The maintainer explicitly approved replacing the workspace roadmap, recorded on #5290. This supersedes the product expansion in #5290, including project workspaces, Tasks, Needs You, and operational Familiar hubs. cave-quv9h's native Automations destination conflicts with this boundary and must not be added.

The dated project-workspaces specification remains historical evidence, not a second active roadmap. Its useful requirements for exact object ownership, cached reads, fail-closed writes, migration, accessibility, and physical-device performance remain applicable. Superseding that roadmap does not constitute passing its device baselines, authorization exercises, or release gates.

Current priorities

1. Shipped (#5379): the chat-only shell and conversation list retired non-chat navigation and external entrypoints rather than hiding them. Keep them retired.
2. Preserve reliability, pairing, honest failure states, draft durability, queued-target immutability, and exact chat/project authorization contracts.
3. Use one disposable list projection for local/server deduplication, counts, sorting, and chat search; do not scan full transcripts to organize every row.
4. Keep New chat/import choice local and revalidate participants and access before creation. Reject retired task links without loading task surfaces.
5. Improve information density only with truthful operator context; do not invent attention, activity, status, progress, membership, or backend capability.
6. Keep source contracts and native simulator/device coverage aligned with every intentional behavior change.

Non-goals

• No desktop/web redesign in this program.
• No new project, chat, session, task, Familiar, or attention authority.
• No chat project-binding move.
• No project browser, project creation/deletion/re-rooting, or Git management UI. Permissions needed for chat remain available.
• No inferred urgency or model-generated Needs You eligibility.
• No simulator timing represented as physical-device percentile evidence.
• No release or TestFlight publication authorization.

Historical-document policy

• Files under docs/**/plans/, dated specs, audits, and handoff exports are records of decisions and implementation lineage.
• Completed checklists stay completed; do not resume unchecked boxes from an old plan merely because they remain in the file.
• A historical document becomes active again only when this page names it under Current priorities and a current GitHub issue defines the remaining work.
• Contradictory workspace expansion, terminal, bottom-tab, ambient-project, familiars-first default, unified-recents-without-project-binding, or tokenless-auth plans are explicitly superseded.