# Magnotia Session Handover — 2026/04/17

*Originally written when the product was named Kon (and briefly Corbie); references rewritten in the 2026-04-30 rebrand sweep.*

## Session Summary

Six-commit sprint executing the upgrade plan from
`/home/jake/Documents/CORBEL-Furnished-House/output/reports/magnotia-upgrade-plan-2026-04-17.md`.
Goal: get Magnotia from "core feature broken" to "ready to dogfood with friends."

## Commits

| Commit | Title |
|---|---|
| `96980c7` | Day 1 — fix mic capture: skip monitor sources, RMS validation, drop counting, list_devices, start_with_device |
| `41db162` | Day 1 follow-up — wire user's microphone choice through start_native_capture + live session |
| `19a6b83` | Day 2 — Codex follow-up hardening (channel disconnect, spawn_blocking, fallback silence guard, requeue counting, runtime error propagation) |
| `69d768e` | Day 3 — global toast system + first error-toast wiring on DictationPage |
| `1cce567` | Day 4 backend — FTS5 search + update_transcript + dictionary + paginated list + Tauri command surface |
| `0e22ec5` | Day 4 frontend — dual-write history to SQLite + persist History rename |
| `9f3be5c` | Day 5+6 — Settings → Vocabulary panel + Wayland self-relaunch |

## What changed

### Mic capture — now actually works

The HANDOVER from 2026/04/04 flagged native live transcription as broken
(`Selected working microphone: null`, chunks repeatedly skipped as
near-silence). Root cause was PulseAudio/PipeWire monitor sources
(speaker loopback) winning the "first device that produces data within
350ms" race — silent monitor sources delivered zero-valued bytes that
satisfied that check.

Fixed by:

- **Skipping monitor sources** by name pattern (`.monitor` suffix,
  `Monitor of ` prefix, `loopback` substring)
- **Validating by RMS energy** in a 350ms window, not just receipt
  of bytes
- **Two-pass selection**: real inputs first, monitor sources only as
  last resort with explicit warning log + dead-silence floor (1e-7)
  guard so even fallback rejects all-zeros
- **Verbose tracing** at every step
- **Drop counter** (`Arc<AtomicU64>`) that tracks chunks lost to
  backpressure, including in the validation requeue
- **Runtime error channel** so cpal stream errors after start succeeds
  surface to the live session for toast display
- **`spawn_blocking`** wrapper so `start()`'s up-to-3.5s validation
  window does not freeze the async runtime

### Settings → Audio → Microphone picker

User can now explicitly pick which input device to use. Auto mode
(empty) skips monitor sources and validates by RMS. Specific device
opens it by exact name. Setting persists in `settings.microphoneDevice`
(localStorage) and flows through to both `start_native_capture` and
`start_live_transcription_session`.

### Toast system

`src/lib/components/ToastViewport.svelte` mounted in root layout.
`toasts.error/warn/success/info(title, body)` from any component.
Brand-palette colours (moss/signal/ember). aria-live polite + role=alert
on errors. Honours `html.reduce-motion`. Sticky errors, auto-dismiss
others.

First wired into DictationPage's "could not start recording" path. More
pages can adopt it incrementally — `invokeWithToast` helper makes
wrapping any Tauri call a one-liner.

### SQLite as canonical store

The transcripts table existed but no Tauri command read or wrote it
(Codex caught this in the joint review). Now exposed via 10 new
commands in `commands/transcripts.rs`:

- `add_transcript`, `list_transcripts` (paginated), `count_transcripts`,
  `get_transcript`, `update_transcript` (closes the long-standing
  rename-never-persists TODO from `architecture-review.md §13`),
  `delete_transcript`, `search_transcripts` (FTS5)
- `list_dictionary_command`, `add_dictionary_entry_command`,
  `delete_dictionary_entry_command`

Frontend `addToHistory`, `renameHistoryEntry`, `deleteFromHistory` now
dual-write to SQLite alongside localStorage. Best-effort: SQLite failure
keeps the in-memory copy and warns to console. HistoryPage rename now
calls `update_transcript`.

Migration v2 added FTS5 virtual table with porter+unicode61 tokeniser,
diacritics-folded, plus INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE triggers to keep the FTS
index in sync. Dictionary table also added in v2.

### Settings → Vocabulary

New collapsible section. Add custom terms (medication names, jargon,
people's names) that the LLM cleanup prompt should preserve. Backed by
the `dictionary` SQLite table. The LLM client itself is currently a
stub; when wired, it imports `list_dictionary` from magnotia_storage and
injects terms into the prompt suffix.

### Wayland self-relaunch

`ensure_x11_on_wayland()` runs before `tauri::Builder` on Linux. If
`XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland`, sets `GDK_BACKEND=x11`,
`WINIT_UNIX_BACKEND=x11`, `WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1` so the
HANDOVER env-var prefix is no longer needed.

## How to dogfood

### One-time setup on Menhir

```bash
sudo dnf install cmake clang-devel
cd /home/jake/Documents/CORBEL-Projects/magnotia
npm install        # if you have not already
```

### Launch (no env-var prefix needed any more)

```bash
cd /home/jake/Documents/CORBEL-Projects/magnotia
npm run tauri dev
```

If anything goes wrong on Wayland, you can still fall back to:

```bash
env GDK_BACKEND=x11 WINIT_UNIX_BACKEND=x11 \
    WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 npm run tauri dev
```

### What to test

1. **Mic capture happy path.** Open Settings → Audio. Devices populate.
   Pick your Blue Yeti (or whatever). Hit dictation. Speak. Text should
   appear within 2 seconds. Stop, save, the recording should appear in
   History.

2. **Mic capture failure path.** Pull the USB mic mid-recording. A toast
   should surface ("device disconnected" or similar). The session should
   not silently produce empty transcripts.

3. **Auto mode.** Clear the picker (set to "Auto"). Hit dictation. The
   logs (terminal where you ran `npm run tauri dev`) should show:
   - `[magnotia-audio] start: enumerated N input device(s)`
   - `[magnotia-audio] trying '...'` for each candidate
   - `[magnotia-audio] '...' validation: M samples, rms=...`
   - `[magnotia-audio] selected microphone: '...'`
   The selected mic should NOT be a `.monitor` source.

4. **History rename.** Make a recording. In History, rename it to
   something distinctive ("test rename 1"). Quit the app. Relaunch.
   Open History. The rename should still be there (was previously
   lost on relaunch — closes the old TODO).

5. **Vocabulary panel.** Settings → Vocabulary. Add "Wren" with note
   "CORBEL operating partner". Persists across restarts. (LLM cleanup
   prompt is a stub so the term won't actually affect transcripts yet —
   storage layer is ready for when LLM lands.)

6. **Toasts on error.** Try to hit dictation with no microphone
   connected at all. Should show a sticky error toast in the bottom-right
   ("Could not start recording" + body) rather than failing silently.

### What's deferred (does not block dogfood)

- **Whisper pre-warm at startup.** Models still load on first dictation
  (~2-5s cold start). Deferred because it needs careful threading work
  to avoid blocking `setup()`. Easy to add later.
- **Auto-updater (`tauri-plugin-updater`).** Deferred because it needs
  a release feed (GitHub releases or similar) which requires CI / signing
  infrastructure decisions.
- **JACK monitor-name patterns.** Codex flagged that JACK setups may use
  different naming conventions than PulseAudio. Test on a JACK host,
  extend `is_monitor_name()` if needed.
- **HistoryPage search via FTS5.** The infrastructure is in place
  (`search_transcripts` Tauri command) but HistoryPage still uses the
  in-memory client-side filter, which is fine for small histories.
- **Read initial history from SQLite at boot.** Currently localStorage
  is the cold-start source; SQLite catches up via dual-write. A backfill
  / one-time sync command can land later.

## Known limitations

- **The full Tauri build needs `cmake` + `clang-devel`** for
  whisper-rs-sys. Not a regression; pre-existing infra dep.
- **State is still split** between localStorage (cache) and SQLite
  (canonical). Dual-write resolves the consistency problem in the
  short term. The eventual destination is SQLite-only with localStorage
  as a transparent cache.

## Cross-platform status (audited 2026/04/17)

| Platform | Build | Run | Polish | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Linux x86_64 (Fedora 43, KDE Wayland)** | ✓ | ✓ | The everyday dev target | **HIGH** — this is what the sprint was developed against |
| **Linux x86_64 (other distros, X11)** | Should work | Should work | Wayland self-relaunch is no-op on X11 sessions, evdev hotkeys may need user added to `input` group | **MEDIUM** — tested patterns, untested distros |
| **Windows 10/11 x86_64** | Untested but should compile (CPAL + Tauri + whisper.cpp all support it) | Untested | Custom evdev hotkeys are no-op; falls back to Tauri's global-shortcut plugin which works on Windows | **LOW** — theoretically supported, has had zero hands-on testing |
| **macOS aarch64 (Apple Silicon)** | Untested | Untested | Path bug fixed this commit (now uses `~/Library/Application Support/Magnotia/`); Info.plist needs `NSMicrophoneUsageDescription` for the app bundle | **LOW** — theoretically supported, has had zero hands-on testing |
| **macOS x86_64 (Intel)** | Same as Apple Silicon | Same | Same | **LOW** |

**For the friends beta on Linux only**, this matters not at all. For a future Windows or macOS build, expect to spend a focused day or two debugging:

- Tauri config: `bundle.macOS.entitlements`, `bundle.windows.signingIdentity`
- macOS code-signing + notarisation (real money: ~£75/yr Apple developer account)
- Windows code-signing certificate (~£100-300/yr) or accept SmartScreen warning
- whisper-rs-sys build dependencies per OS (cmake on all; Visual Studio Build Tools on Windows)
- macOS-specific Info.plist keys for microphone permission

### What this sprint added on the cross-platform front

- `crates/storage/src/file_storage.rs::app_data_dir()` now correctly handles macOS (`~/Library/Application Support/Magnotia/`) and Linux (XDG-aware, `~/.local/share/magnotia`, with legacy `~/.magnotia` fallback for existing installs). Windows path unchanged.
- New Tauri command `get_os_info` returns `{os, arch, family, usesCmd, isWayland, customHotkeyBackend, primaryModifierLabel}` so the frontend can adapt UI strings (Cmd vs Ctrl labels, "Open Finder" vs "Open Explorer", etc).
- New `src/lib/utils/osInfo.js` helper: async `loadOsInfo()` warms a cache, then `isMac() / isWindows() / isLinux() / modKeyLabel() / isWayland()` are synchronous. Eagerly loaded at app startup in the root layout.
- Falls back gracefully in browser-preview mode by reading `navigator.platform`.

## Files changed this sprint

```
crates/audio/Cargo.toml
crates/audio/src/capture.rs                       (rewrite + Day 2 hardening)
crates/audio/src/lib.rs
crates/storage/src/database.rs                    (+ FTS5, update, search, dictionary)
crates/storage/src/lib.rs
crates/storage/src/migrations.rs                  (+ migration v2)
src-tauri/src/commands/audio.rs                   (+ device picker, spawn_blocking, M3 fix)
src-tauri/src/commands/live.rs                    (+ microphoneDevice config field)
src-tauri/src/commands/mod.rs
src-tauri/src/commands/transcripts.rs             (NEW — 10 Tauri commands)
src-tauri/src/lib.rs                              (+ Wayland, command registrations)
src/lib/components/ToastViewport.svelte           (NEW)
src/lib/pages/DictationPage.svelte                (+ device wiring, error toast)
src/lib/pages/HistoryPage.svelte                  (+ rename via update_transcript)
src/lib/pages/SettingsPage.svelte                 (+ Audio + Vocabulary panels)
src/lib/stores/page.svelte.js                     (+ microphoneDevice, dual-write)
src/lib/stores/toasts.svelte.js                   (NEW)
src/routes/+layout.svelte                         (+ ToastViewport mount)
```

## Next steps after dogfood

1. Real-user feedback from one to three friends. What confuses them?
   What feels slow? What did they expect that did not happen?
2. Address the deferred items in priority of feedback signal.
3. Consider opening up the `magnotia-public-beta` channel — a single
   GitHub release with the auto-updater plumbed.
4. The architecture review's other items (frontend test coverage,
   monolithic component split, hardcoded hex colours, ARIA gaps)
   become the "open beta polish" sprint.

---

*Compiled 2026/04/17 by Wren. Magnotia goes from "live transcription does not
work" to "ready to put in front of one trusted friend." Six commits, no
horrors so far.*
