Piik/docs/project-memory.md

Project Memory

Last updated: 2026-08-21

Confirmed Intent

• Build low-latency game sharing for one broadcaster and trusted friends; public or large broadcasts belong on OBS/Twitch-class services.
• Browser first. Viewers use desktop/mobile Web; an optional sender requires a proven browser capability gap.
• Use a small central service for access, rooms, signaling, deterministic topology, STUN, observability, and bounded SFU-root capacity.
• Minimize server bandwidth. Ordinary peer ICE is STUN-only. Failure tries restart, rebuild, alternate peer and bounded SFU/UDP roots; only then may the controller authorize short-lived TURN for one selected exceptional edge before clear failure. TURN is transport, not topology.
• The current release budget is two downstream edges per non-server node, including ordinary Web relays; upstream receive is free and UA/visibility do not change it. SFU normally feeds one or two roots that retain peer descendants; separately capped server edges may serve exceptional viewers that cannot attach behind a healthy root. A future evidence-driven tier may change the ceiling only through the owning requirement and design.
• Two-tree packet/layer striping may reduce endpoint upload toward one stream bitrate, but needs a bounded multi-parent, loss, sync, churn, and latency experiment; it is not in the current full-stream chains.
• Direct/peer keeps per-PC stock GCC. Active SFU publishes exactly q,h at a HIGH ceiling; built-in BWE may forward LOW. The zero-descendant quality/resource gate is next; if it passes, no app media selector is built. Explicit quality, manual activation, and custom/native remain fallbacks.
• A later explicit quality fallback evacuates children under a generation guard first. Autonomous BWE enters suspect; confirmation evacuates children, and no confirmed FALLBACK parent remains. Root-with-children impact is a default-on gate; capacity returns after longer recovery plus cooldown. Self-report alone never triggers it.
• Site access protects room creation, Host publication, and every code-only Viewer entry. A valid room-scoped fragment grant bypasses that site gate; otherwise site access is checked before public-watch or a private room password. Persist neither raw credential; keep accounts, ACLs, users, and session tables out.
• Prefer primary sources, maintained implementations, target-device evidence and sanitized production stats. Ordinary-PC synthetic runs prove only correctness/interoperability; never use them to calibrate performance or block a reversible standard API. Keep accepted truth in Git and replace stale facts in place.
• Migrate client, server, and deployment atomically. After a canary, delete superseded config/wire/parsers/tests; do not retain compatibility layers, dual writes, or a second architecture without a current consumer. Git history owns the old implementation.
• Deploy after narrow tests, independent review, one local full gate, and rollback preflight. Build/test off the 960 MiB production host; prepare audited dist with one bounded production install. Actions remain for a necessary main/release gate only.

Current Recommendation

• Keep desktop Chrome/Edge and the responsive Web viewer as the baseline. Observe Android Chrome and iOS Safari compatibility without assigning a separate relay-capacity class.
• Keep Viewer playback on one persistent, user-started audible media element while hidden. Continuity evidence uses media/connection counters; hidden video composition is presentation-only, and iOS lock-screen, reclamation and background reconnection remain device gates.
• Use direct host P2P for one or two viewers, then the bounded controller for every room when PEER_ASSISTED_MEDIA=true. Room 1 is historical smoke, not a runtime gate; resource, quality, recovery, SFU/UDP, bounded-failure, and browser/mobile evidence remain separate.
• Browser relays resend remote MediaStreamTrack values and re-encode at each hop; WebRTC does not guarantee a shared encoder across peer connections, so measure the cost.
• Keep experiments bounded: the standard representation sequence is below; native RTP relay, encoded-object striping, and FEC remain separate.
• Production Web prefers H.264 through standard ordering, keeps the browser fallback list, and requests SFU H.264 with backupCodec=false; VP8 is used only when H.264 is unavailable. This is not a second encoder stack or shared-encode proof. ADR-0006's browser bridge remains no-go.
• Mobile endpoints are Web Viewer-only. Current Android/iOS browsers do not expose Web Host capture; AirPlay/system mirroring is Viewer-local output.
• ADR-0005: direct/peer UDP -> bounded SFU roots -> selected-edge TURN. The deployed controller caps pending/answered peer-selected at one per room; Host ingress is independent. A pre-ecc794d exact-source/production-media canary proves active Host ingress only. Ordinary peers stay STUN-only.
• The controller is process-enabled, not room-allowlisted: PEER_ASSISTED_MEDIA=true gives every normal room the same direct/peer -> SFU -> selected-edge path with per-room state. Room 1 is historical smoke. Preserve sticky P2P, one active upstream and break-before-make; recovery gets one attempt per layer (ICE restart, same-parent rebuild, alternate peer, then SFU), never three identical retries.
• C+B quality reparenting is edge-local and cooldown-bound; no score, timer, or global parent penalty.
• Flagship media is UDP; HTTPS/WSS stays TLS/TCP; the old release remains rollback-only.
• Treat settings as ceilings and degradation as unclassified. Use correlated Host A+B/Viewer C and one-variable evidence; never force AV1, infer by UA, or create a composite score.
• Web window/system-audio requests are browser hints; tracks use music. P2P/relay/SFU senders request 128,000 bit/s and SFU disables DTX; this is a ceiling, not a quality/stereo guarantee. Native Win11 process audio stays source-only; one Viewer got 495 Opus packets.
• Presence reports exact active upstream and feeds Host topology; it does not prove media. Status and details stay neutral until local/current media evidence, then label P2P/SFU and actual TURN; append its protocol only from local relay stats. Web Host names stay socket/localStorage-only; Native remains outside the boundary.
• Do not add scene detection, dynamic-FPS control, or forced AV1 without negotiation, encode, game, CPU/GPU, and sender evidence.
• ADR-0002 grant/public access, the v3 room-password migration, and Web Host display names are deployed. Names/presence remain session-only without account or roster tables.

Current Execution Principle

• Parallel flagship work; minimum relevant checks and rollback proof. Research plus target-device/production evidence drives product choices; synthetic runs cover only correctness/interoperability. Active text is current, Git owns history, and no-consumer layers are deleted.

Current Implementation

• The repository is one npm package using Node.js 24, React, TypeScript, Vite, native WebRTC, ws, Zod, Vitest, and separate coturn.
• Production is exact 1331fbddb59fc2b0b99ba9e5ee4848768ae907c8; source/dist artifacts are 606,386/355,113 bytes, with hashes in deployment; cutover 848.008 ms lock/626.778 ms stop-health/560.282 ms switch-health; rollbacks 261e980, 691863e, 6634cb9.
• Web keeps one SFU stream, clears unavailable video, exposes evidence-backed routes/transports and paused preview, and drops signals to a grace-retained offline current-edge target. Routing is automatic; entry/nickname UI is live; Native remains source-only.
• Web relay is cap2 with one upstream; child3 rejects and no UA/visibility split exists.
• Four services are active/running at NRestarts=0; local/public health are 200. SQLite v3 has five rooms, SHA-256 aef724ae52c4107be8ec8791e72f8dcaa11b0ec849fb432d022e2cfb9cfe0974, owner/mode screener:screener/0600.
• Production keeps ordinary ICE STUN-only, SFU roots <=2, selected-edge UDP TTL 120, and one pending/answered peer-selected attempt per room excluding Host ingress. This rollout ran no browser/media/SFU/TURN/performance canary; earlier exact-16f6eab evidence proves active Host ingress only.
• Production requires independent SITE_ACCESS_PASSWORD: its stateless cookie authorizes creation/Host and code-only Viewer attempts; private grants stay direct, while public/private code entry needs site access alone/plus room password. Env/endpoint/cookie/nginx naming migrated atomically; failures remain neutral; there are no accounts/JWT/session rows. Local gate:access-privacy proves fragment isolation, site/grant transport-log absence, and raw room-password SQLite absence; room-password WebSocket/log ingress and live/headful evidence remain open.
• Production uses nginx, Node.js 24.19.0, coturn 4.17.2, and LiveKit 1.13.5 on UDP 7882 (TCP fallback off). Ordinary peer ICE receives no TURN; the selected-edge tuple is configured only for the current controller edge, with no credential pre-advertised to ordinary peers. Coturn retains the old authenticated-relay ports. Services are healthy with zero restarts.
• ADR-0005 rejects PEER_ASSISTED_ROOM_IDS; PEER_ASSISTED_MEDIA=true enables every room and ordinary peers stay STUN-only. Initial or active Host ingress may consume one bound relay-only grant; ready/abort clears it and failure restores peer baseline. Stale room-ID config fails startup; screener-v2 is the only deployed wire.
• Web SFU uses LiveKit 2.22.0 q,h; local SFU/UDP and selected-TURN ingress work, while BWE remains open. P2P now reapplies its selected profile after each answer on the same sender. A local A/B supports the lifecycle candidate, but natural ramp, real capture, production, and SFU validation remain open.
• Chrome 151 five-Viewer 720p30 cap2 evidence: Host/relay fanout two; both relay children +80 decoded frames/~1.1 MB; every Viewer decoded; clean stop. Functional only; resource and heterogeneous-network behavior remain open.

Provisional Quality Targets

• Controlled direct path at RTT no more than 40 ms and loss no more than 1%: glass-to-glass p50 no more than 150 ms and p95 no more than 250 ms.
• Regional SFU/UDP roots under the same endpoint conditions: glass-to-glass p95 no more than 350 ms; optional TURN is measured separately.
• First picture within 3 seconds after a watch request, excluding explicit permission time.
• A 60 fps profile must not remain below 50 decoded fps for more than 5 seconds without a visible downgrade or limiting reason.

These are measurement gates, not performance claims.

Open Decisions

• Sustainable count by hardware, quality, network, and route: finish instrumented 1/3/5/8, then pass a 20-viewer matrix before changing the accepted target default to 20.
• Whether ADR-0004 passes re-encoding, depth-three/eight-viewer latency, reparenting, silent-partition, and representative resource gates.
• Selected-edge: active Host-ingress function passes; initial ingress, peer-selected, expiry/failure, mobile, resource and bandwidth gates remain. The bearer is non-revocable until expiry; performance follows later and Media TCP is out.
• Exact mobile Viewer lifecycle behavior across autoplay, rotation, iOS lock-screen/page reclamation, background reconnection and network changes.
• Project license and distribution model, which determines whether GPL/AGPL sources can move beyond study-only use.
• Initial deployment regions and expected mainland China, Hong Kong, and overseas network mix.
• Whether voice chat ever enters scope or Screener stays complementary to an existing voice application.
• Production calibration of reparent thresholds and any adaptive codec policy. Hardware attribution gates claims, not H.264 preference; #28's minimum-of-two rule is not a candidate.

Source Of Truth

• Current phase is in docs/status.md; requirements/design, ADRs, research, deployment and maintenance are indexed by docs/README.md.