Friend's line on the sharing home: lands unmarked in the Bot's own chat with no unread badge, first line needs a reload; social/overview lists no per-Bot friendships #420

Summary

On the home that shared a Bot (A), a friend's conversation is close to invisible: B's lines land inside A's own Chief chat between A's own messages, with no unread count or badge; the very first line took about 25 s and only showed after a page reload; and nothing on A (or B) lists the friendship except Chief → Sharing → People with access. The local API agrees: social/overview returns no friends on either home, although the per-Bot friendship is active.

Environment

• FlyBot main a7f51e83ffacc4a6e803669d25fdc9e40eef6c44 (Add friend: accept and invite as two labelled groups, Done at the bottom #416), core + plugins/social + plugins/tree on @deepseek-ai/dsh@0.2.0-rc.2, Node 24.21.0.
• Two fresh installs on one Linux box: A :3090 (owner SelfA1238, @selfa1238.home) and B :3091 (owner SelfB1238, @selfb1238.home). Bot Social prod https://47-80-69-220.sslip.io. Both Chiefs on ark/deepseek-v4-flash (real model).
• Friend link: A made a per-Bot invite for A's Chief; B joined it, talking through B's Chief (relationship rel_01M597ETM4MFYM90M80ER53J8G, grant grt_01M597ETM5PK3PNKGZ09R7PC96 → @selfb1238.home). B's Chief is not shared back (one-way per-Bot grant, by design Per-Bot grants leak: accepting a Helper invite exposes the joiner's Chief; face-room Chief shows in Friends' Bots; Manage access wrong/raw #138/Regression of #138: joining a friend's invite still puts the joiner's Chief on the inviter's main list #161). A's Chief = @chief.selfa1238.home, B's talk-through Bot = @chief.selfb1238.home.
• Auto-send was off on both homes at the start.
• Found by product self-test 2026-10-19 12:38 Asia/Shanghai, focus A Friend DM (browser run about 12:41–12:50 Asia/Shanghai). Screenshots stayed on the test machine; what they show is written out below.

Common setup (B talks to A's Chief)

On B, open the sidebar row for A's Chief (Chief + grey SelfA1238 + globe) and send, one at a time, waiting for each answer:

1. Hi Chief, this is B. What is 2+2? Reply in one short line. → A's Chief drafts 4.; on A click Reject.
2. Second test: what is 3+3? One line. → draft 6.; on A click Approve.
3. Third test: what is 4+4? One line. → draft 8.; on A click Always approve.
4. Fourth test: 5+5? One line. and Fifth test: 6+6? One line. → 10. and 12. go out without a card.

Repro

1. On A, open A's own Chief chat and leave it open.
2. On B, send the first line of the common setup to A's Chief. Time how long until it shows on A, without touching A.
3. Look at A's sidebar (Chief row, Social region) while the line arrives and after.
4. Send the next lines from B and watch A again.
5. Read-only API on both homes: flybot/social/overview, flybot/social/friends, flybot/social/remote-bots (POST /api/bot with {"endpoint": …}).

Actual

• First line: did not appear on A for about 25 s; it showed only after reloading A's tab. Lines 2–5 appeared live.
• Where it lands: in A's own Chief chat, under A's own earlier messages (Chief's intro), as a grey bubble with a small SelfB1238 label and a generic grey person icon. Screenshot 06-A-second-card-before-approve.png: A's Chief chat, intro bubble, then SelfB1238 lines mixed with Chief's replies. There is no header, chip or divider that says "this is SelfB1238 talking to your Chief through Bot Social" beyond the tiny name label.
• No unread/badge: the Chief row on A never showed an unread count or badge for B's lines; only the preview text changed. (Not separately tested with A sitting in another chat; the row looked the same throughout.)
• Friendship invisible: the sidebar Social region is empty on both A and B; there is no list of friends anywhere. The only trace on A is People with access SelfB1238 (@selfb1238.home) under Chief → Sharing (shot 10-A-sharing-no-autosend-control.png). B sees A's Chief in the main list (that part matches the design).
• API: social/overview on A and on B → {"home":"@selfa1238.home"|"@selfb1238.home","friends":[],"incoming":[],"outgoing":[]}. social/friends on B → A's Chief (@chief.selfa1238.home, grant grt_01M597ETM5PK3PNKGZ09R7PC96); on A → [].

Why (code read on a7f51e8; hunches)

• friendsOverview (plugins/social/src/social.js L1649–1657) calls list_friends with homeArgs() only, i.e. the home identity. Per-Bot invites hang the relationship on member identities (@chief.selfa1238.home ↔ @chief.selfb1238.home); setAutoAccept (~L2155–2160) already says so and asks every identity. So overview misses every per-Bot friendship, and its incoming/outgoing would miss per-Bot requests too (the Add friend panel reads them, plugins/social/client.js L1440/L1512).
• Unread: friend lines are posted into the Bot's own session (social.md invariant 8, A friend Bot's reply to a typed DM is held on its owner and no approval card ever shows (overlay hook crash, no in-chat card for the replying Bot) #254/Friend DM: a shared Bot's reply to the grantee is silently denied (grantee's Bot not shared back), never held or delivered #272), which is the user's own chat, so the normal "new message from my Bot" logic does not treat them as unread.
• First-line delay: inbox poll is inboxPollMs 15 s (social.md L149); the extra wait plus needing a reload suggests the open client does not pick up the first inbound turn on that session. Not verified.

Expected (simplicity, usability)

• A friend's line arrives live (within one poll, no reload) and the receiving Bot's sidebar row gets an unread badge until the chat is seen.
• In the chat, a friend's line is clearly from that person (their name per Friend's Bot rows: two name formats ('Helper · SelfB0023's Bot' vs 'SelfA0023's Chief'), two-line wrap, no preview, inset highlight, faint marker, same avatar as own Chief #384 style, a person avatar, and on first contact a quiet line like SelfB1238 is talking to Chief through Bot Social).
• social/overview lists active per-Bot friendships (and per-Bot pending requests) on both homes, consistent with social/friends and People with access.
• Design question for the maintainer (do not guess): should a grantee's conversation stay mixed into the Bot's own chat, or get its own thread under that Bot (Chief · SelfB1238)? And should a friend with no Bots shared to me appear once in the list as the person (suggested in Accepting an invite briefly publishes the joiner's (unshared) Bot on the inviter's home: dead 'no longer shared with you' chat opens on load; friend invisible in Social #303)? If the answer is "no", the empty Social region is fine and only the badge/live delivery parts apply.

Suggested scope / files

• plugins/social/src/social.js friendsOverview (ask the home and every member identity, dedupe by relationship_id, like setAutoAccept).
• Unread/badge for inbound friend turns: core sidebar unread (core/src/client/sidebar.js, core/src/client/sources.js) and the inbound posting path (pollOnce in plugins/social/src/social.js, core/src/host/remote-chat.js).
• Live first delivery: the inbound delivery → client feed path (core/src/host/flybot-feed.js).
• Tests: overview with a per-Bot relationship returns the friend; inbound friend line marks the row unread.

Acceptance criteria

• First friend line shows on A within one poll without reload.
• A's Chief row shows an unread badge for a friend's line while A is elsewhere; it clears once seen.
• social/overview on A and B lists the A↔B per-Bot friendship.
• Maintainer decision recorded on thread vs mixed chat; implemented accordingly.

Related: #275 (NEW divider on this same line), #272, #254, #303 (closed), #261, #349.