Public Access
jaap-jan
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Three things a machine that has been set up could not do. Unlock now takes Enter, which is the gesture everybody makes after typing a password and which did nothing until they found the button. Signing in survives a relaunch. The refresh token is kept in the local cache, sealed under the vault's own cache key, so a later launch resumes the session through the refresh grant with no browser and nobody present — and because it is sealed under that key, only an unlocked vault can resume it. A locked client therefore cannot reach the server at all, which is a consequence worth stating rather than working around; docs/crypto.md §3.2 records it. Every sync pass asks the shell for a connection rather than reading one captured at unlock, so a laptop that unlocked on a train is online within a minute of finding a network, with nothing pressed. Unlocking itself still never waits on a socket. Signing out empties this machine: the profile, the cached items, the outbox and this machine's device key, with the account's row withdrawn when the server can be reached. It asks first and says what it costs — the outbox count when the vault is open, an admission that it cannot be counted when it is not, and the shells that keep running either way. The vault is on the server and is untouched, which is what makes the same button the only honest answer to a forgotten passphrase, so it is on the unlock screen as well as in preferences. It cannot end the session at the identity provider, and says so. Two defects surfaced on the way. The synchronisation pass that runs when the vault opens never ran at all: the loop is started from inside the unlock command, so the busy flag it yields to was raised by that command — the first sync was a minute late on every launch. And signing in from preferences while unlocked threw an unlock screen over an open vault whose keys were still in memory. The unlock card and the new confirmation live in their own controls because MainWindow cannot be laid out headless, so markup left inside it is markup no test can measure; both are now measured at the window's minimum size in the shapes that grow. What is still unverified is the composed window itself.
193 lines
19 KiB
Markdown
193 lines
19 KiB
Markdown
# What the design asked for and this build has not got
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The Avalonia client's interface was rebuilt from a Claude Design project — a five-screen spec covering
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the chrome, hosts and terminals, file transfer, the vault, teams, and preferences.
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Most of it landed. This file is the rest: every element of that design with nothing behind it, which
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project each piece would have to land in, and **what the shipped interface does instead**. That last
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column is the important one. This codebase states its limits rather than implying them — the README does
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it for revocation, for relay session recording and for what locking does not do — so nothing here was
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rendered with invented data to make a screenshot look finished. Where a feature does not exist, the
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interface either omits it or says so.
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Read alongside [the milestone plan](../README.md#milestones). Most of what follows is not a defect; it is
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M2 and M3 arriving in a design before it arrives in the code.
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## The shape of the problem
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Three facts explain nearly every row below.
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**An SSH connection here opens exactly one channel.** `ISshConnection` offers `OpenShellAsync` and nothing
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else (`src/DodoSSH.Client.Ssh/SshConnection.cs`). No SFTP subsystem, no port forwarding, no ProxyJump. That
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one fact removes the whole file-transfer screen, the `FORWARDS` chip, the status bar's port list, and every
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`via bastion-eu` in the design.
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**Teams are schema and nothing else.** The `team` and `team_membership` tables exist from the first
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migration, with entities in `DodoSSH.Domain/Teams.cs` and a `TeamRole` enum — and no endpoint reads or
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writes any of it. `VaultAccessService.ResolveAsync` returns `Denied` for every vault that is not the
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caller's own personal one. That removes the Teams screen entirely, and with it every role chip, scope and
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"shared with" affordance the vault screen was drawn with.
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**The client has no preferences store.** It writes exactly two files — `cache.db` and `device.key` — and the
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cache has six tables, none of them settings. Nothing on the design's TERMINAL preferences panel can be
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saved, and there is no frame on the terminal data plane that would carry a change to the renderer anyway.
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One thing cuts the other way and is worth knowing before planning any of this: **the wire protocol already
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reserves the slots**. `SyncEntityType` (`src/DodoSSH.Contracts/SyncEntityType.cs`) has `HostGroup = 4`,
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`Tag = 5`, `HostTag = 6`, `HostCredential = 7`, `Snippet = 8` and `PortForward = 9` — reserved, unused, and
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already covered by the AAD resource-type table. Groups, tags and snippets are new item types on an existing
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protocol rather than a protocol change.
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---
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## Chrome — titlebar, nav rail, status bar
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| Design element | Layer | What it would take | What ships instead |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| Org chip `dodotech / platform` | contracts + server | An organisation name a client can read. `VaultSummary.TeamId` exists and is always null. | The vault's own name, and the account this machine is enrolled as. |
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| `SYNCED` dot, always green | client-app | Nothing — the design's claim is simply unconditional. | Green **only** when a connection is held, the last sync pass actually reached the server, and the outbox is empty; otherwise `UNREACHABLE`, the count of changes still waiting, or `OFFLINE`. Holding an `IVaultServer` proves a sign-in once succeeded and nothing more, so a laptop whose lid has been shut all afternoon still has one — reachability comes from the outcome of the last pass. A permanently green light is the same as no light. |
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| `VAULT SYNCED 11:02` | client-session | `StoredSyncState.LastPulledAt`/`LastPushedAt` are persisted, but `VaultSession` exposes the store as `internal`. A property away. | Omitted. The one honest sync fact — the outbox depth — is in the titlebar and the status bar. |
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| `⌘K` command palette running commands | client-domain | A snippet or saved-command item type (`SyncEntityType.Snippet = 8` is reserved). | Ctrl+K opens a real host search that connects on Enter. The box says "search hosts", not "search hosts · run command". |
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| Status bar `· via bastion-eu` | client-ssh | Jump-host execution. See below. | Omitted. |
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| Status bar port forwards | client-ssh | Port forwarding. See below. | Omitted. |
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| Status bar `sftp · 2 transfers` | client-ssh | File transfer. See below. | Omitted. |
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| Status bar `locks in 09:41` | client-app | An idle auto-lock. See preferences below. | Omitted. |
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| IBM Plex Mono / IBM Plex Sans | ui | Shipping the font files as `AvaloniaResource` and registering them. The design loads them from Google Fonts, which a desktop app cannot. | Inter (already embedded) for prose, and the system monospace stack the terminal already names. Named once in `App.axaml` as `MonoFont`, so the substitution is reversible in one place. |
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| `⌘K`, `⌥↵` | ui | Nothing; the design is Mac-flavoured. | `CTRL K`. Development is Windows-only today (`docs/platform-flags.md`). |
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**Also worth knowing:** custom chrome went in as `SystemDecorations="BorderOnly"`, not by extending the
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client area. `ExtendClientAreaChromeHints` was removed in Avalonia 12, so extending leaves the system
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caption buttons and window title drawn on top of the application's own — two sets of window controls, and
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"DodoSSH" printed twice. Measured, not assumed.
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---
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## Hosts + terminal
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| Design element | Layer | What it would take | What ships instead |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| Tag chips (`nginx`, `eu`, `pg16`) | client-domain | A tag item type and a host-tag join. Both reserved on the wire (`Tag = 5`, `HostTag = 6`), neither implemented, plus a payload schema bump on `HostSecret`. | Omitted. The filter box searches name, address and notes instead. |
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| Groups `PRODUCTION` / `STAGING` / `PERSONAL` | client-domain | A host-group item type (`HostGroup = 4`, reserved) or a group field on `HostSecret`. | One collapsible heading, named after the vault — the only grouping a host actually has. A second appears when a second vault becomes reachable. |
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| Group badge `TEAM·PLATFORM` | server | Teams. | Omitted. |
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| Per-host status dot, three colours | client-ssh | The amber state would mean "reachable but not connected", and nothing here ever probes a host. | Two states, both real: green when a terminal is open on that host, grey when not. |
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| `· ⤷ bastion-eu` in the host subtitle | client-ssh | **Jump hosts are data-only.** `HostSecret.JumpHostIds` is a `JumpChain` that is stored, encrypted, synced and three-way merged — and nothing reads it at connect time. `SshConnectionRequest` carries one host. | Omitted. The stored chain is preserved untouched by every edit. |
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| `SPLIT ⌘D` and side-by-side panes | client-ssh + ui | The renderer stacks panes and shows one (`terminal.css`: `.pane { position:absolute; inset:0; display:none }`). Tiling needs a real pane geometry and a splitter. | Omitted. Tabs ship instead, over the same one-WebView multiplexing. |
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| `⇄ FORWARDS · 2` | client-ssh | Port forwarding. `SyncEntityType.PortForward = 9` is reserved; nothing in the SSH layer forwards anything. | Omitted. |
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| `SNIPPETS` panel, `↵` to run | client-domain | A snippet item type (`Snippet = 8`, reserved). | Omitted. |
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| Broadcast to all panes (`⌥↵`) | client-ssh | Input is routed strictly by session id in `TerminalDataPlane.Dispatch`; there is no fan-out. Needs splits first. | Omitted. |
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| Pane header `24ms` | client-ssh | Round-trip measurement. SSH.NET offers no RTT API. | Omitted. |
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| Pane header `aes256-gcm` | client-ssh | **The closest miss on this list.** `SshNetConnection` holds the `SshClient`, so `ConnectionInfo.CurrentServerEncryption` is right there — it just is not on `ISshConnection` or surfaced by `TerminalWorkspace`. | Omitted; the tab strip shows the account and endpoint actually dialled. |
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| Pane header showing the running command and `following` | client-ssh | The host moves opaque bytes and never parses terminal output. Would need shell integration (OSC 133) on the remote. | Omitted. |
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| A `local · zsh` tab | client-ssh | Every session here is an SSH channel. Needs ConPTY and a second session kind. | Omitted. |
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| Tab strip `+` button | ui | Not missing so much as redundant: the real operation is *select a host, press Connect*, which the sidebar already is. | Omitted. Connect opens a tab; Ctrl+K opens one by name. |
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| Terminal font size (`--termfs`, 11–16px) | client-storage | See preferences. | Fixed at the renderer's 13px. |
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---
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## File transfer (the design's SFTP screen)
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Nothing on this screen exists. It is listed in the nav rail and reaches a screen that says so, naming the
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milestone and what is missing — see `ShellScreen` for why it is not simply dropped from the rail.
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| Design element | Layer | What it would take |
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| --- | --- | --- |
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| SFTP itself | client-ssh | An SFTP subsystem channel on `ISshConnection`. There is no `SftpClient`, `ScpClient` or transfer type anywhere in `src/`. |
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| Remote listing with `NAME/SIZE/MODIFIED/PERMS` | client-ssh | The channel, plus a listing record and a POSIX mode formatter — nothing in the repo formats a `drwxr-xr-x`. |
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| Local listing | client-app | The App project contains no `System.IO` usage at all. The only paths this client knows are its own two files. |
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| Path breadcrumbs, per-host last directory | client-storage | Navigation state for two panes, and somewhere to persist it. There is no settings table. |
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| Transfer queue, progress, throughput | client-ssh | A transfer engine. **Do not reach for `CreditWindow`** — that is a 256 KiB flow-control window for terminal output, not a transfer primitive. |
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| `resume supported` | client-ssh | Offset-based reads and writes, plus partial-transfer bookkeeping that survives a restart. |
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| `sftp over bastion-eu` | client-ssh | Jump hosts, as above. |
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---
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## Vault
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The screen ships and is real: four categories over the vault's four item types, one table, a detail pane,
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and both editors. What follows is what the design drew around them.
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| Design element | Layer | What it would take | What ships instead |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| `ACCESS` column and `your access → CONNECT-ONLY` | server | Per-item ACLs. `EncryptedPayload.DataKeyId` is documented as the seam for per-item grants **in M5**. `VaultSummary` does carry an opaque `int Permissions`, but nothing gives the bits a meaning on the wire — `PermissionFlags` itself lives in `DodoSSH.Domain` — and those are per *vault*, never per item. There is no `ConnectOnly` role in `TeamRole` at all. | Omitted. The column shows sync state instead — whether a change is still sitting in this machine's outbox — which the design had no column for. |
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| `SHARED WITH · 6` avatars | server | The whole sharing stack: grants, a member directory, and re-wrapping a vault key for another account. | Omitted. |
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| "Private key never leaves the vault. Sessions sign through the team agent (dodod)" | client-ssh | **Both sentences are false here, and the second cannot be made true by this architecture.** There is no agent of any kind, and the connect path decrypts the private key and hands the bytes to SSH.NET. | Omitted. The key editor already says what is true: the key and its passphrase are encrypted here and never reach the server in a readable form. |
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| Scope rail: `PERSONAL` / `TEAM · PLATFORM` / `TEAM · DATA` | server | Team vaults. `VaultAccessService.ListAsync` filters to personal vaults owned by the caller. | The real vault list, which today has one entry, with a line saying why. |
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| `SCOPE` column | server | As above — and note scope here is a property of a *vault*, never of an item. | Omitted. |
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| `LAST` column (`11:02`, `1d ago`) | contracts | No last-used timestamp at any layer. `VaultItem<TSecret>` is `(id, secret, version, three sync flags)`. | Omitted. |
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| `FINGERPRINT` for SSH keys | client-domain | `SshKeySecret` has no fingerprint field, and computing one means parsing key formats the type deliberately stores verbatim. | The `DETAIL` column carries what *is* known — whether a passphrase and a public half are stored. Pins show their real fingerprint, in full and untruncated. |
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| `•••• rotated jul 14` for passwords | client-domain | `CredentialSecret` has no rotation date or password age. | The account the password is for. |
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| `IDENTITIES` category | contracts | A new item type, not even reserved in `SyncEntityType`. | Omitted. |
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| `CERTIFICATES` category, `expires 2026-09-01` | contracts | Same ladder, plus certificate parsing. | Omitted. |
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| `18 items · 12 shared` | server | The sharing stack. | `N items · N not synced`, counted over the rows on screen. |
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| `added by anna@dodotech.dev` | contracts | The server records `CreatedByUserId`, but `SyncChange` carries no actor field and no other user's name is fetchable. | Omitted, and the detail pane says in one line that items record no author, no timestamps and no sharing. |
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| `created 2026-03-14` | client-sync | Recoverable in principle — entity ids are UUIDv7 and carry a timestamp — but nothing surfaces it. | Omitted. |
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| `TEST CONNECT` | ui | Connecting is host-scoped, not credential-scoped: there is nothing to test a credential *against* without a host. | Omitted. |
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| `REVOKE` | server | Revoking someone else's access needs grants to revoke. Deleting an item is a different act and is already there. **ADR 0001** also constrains how any future revoke may be presented: revocation is not retroactive. | Delete, named for what it does. |
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| `SSH KEY · ED25519` | client-domain | No algorithm field, and deriving it means parsing the armour. | The type without the algorithm. |
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| One `+ ADD CREDENTIAL` button | ui | — | Two buttons, one per kind that can be added. "Credential" is a specific item type in this codebase (a username and a password), so using it as an umbrella word would collide with the vocabulary. |
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| — | — | — | **`HOST KEYS` is the reverse case:** a fully-backed, shipped category the design had no slot for. It is in the rail. |
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---
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## Teams
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Nothing on this screen exists. It is in the nav rail and reaches a screen that says so.
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| Design element | Layer | What it would take |
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| --- | --- | --- |
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| The team itself | server | Team endpoints. The server has eight routes and none is about people. |
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| Shared vaults | server | Vault creation, grants, and membership evaluation. Exactly one vault exists per user, created as a side effect of enrollment. |
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| Roles (`OWNER`/`ADMIN`/`MEMBER`/`CONNECT-ONLY`/`VIEWER`) | contracts + server | `TeamRole` exists in `DodoSSH.Domain`, is read by no code path, has no wire representation, and has no `ConnectOnly` member. |
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| Members table | server | A member DTO and a directory endpoint. |
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| `2FA ENFORCED` and the per-member 2FA column | server | No two-factor concept exists anywhere — the only hit in the whole worktree is an aside in `docs/crypto.md`. |
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| `LAST ACTIVE` | server | `UserAccount.LastSeenAtUtc` exists and is written at just-in-time provisioning and at enrollment, and never on an ordinary authenticated request — so the column cannot answer "last active". |
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| Avatars | server | `MeResponse` has no picture field, and no other user's display name is fetchable. |
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| Pending invites, resend, revoke | server | An invitation entity, a token with a lifetime, and an outbound mail path. `MembershipStatus.Invited` and `TeamMembership.InvitedByUserId` are the only hints, and nothing writes them. |
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| `SSO · OIDC · okta.dodotech.dev` | server | Per-team SSO. Authentication is one global JWT scheme bound to one authority. |
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> **A trap for whoever builds this.** `GET /api/v1/meta` advertises `features: ["teams"]`
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> *unconditionally* (`MetaEndpoints.cs`). Do not gate a Teams screen on that string — it is true of every
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> deployment today and means nothing.
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---
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## Preferences
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The screen ships with what is real — this machine's device key, locking, syncing, and signing out — and
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lists the rest as absent rather than omitting it silently.
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> **Signing out is not on the design and is here anyway.** The design has no way to leave a machine, and
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> without one there is no way to hand a laptop on, to enrol a second account, or to get past a forgotten
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> passphrase — which is unrecoverable by construction, so the unlock screen would otherwise be a dead end.
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> It empties the local cache and withdraws the device key from the account; it cannot end the session at the
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> identity provider, and says so.
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| Design element | Layer | What it would take |
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| --- | --- | --- |
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| Any preference, saved | client-storage | A seventh table in the client cache, or a preference item type in the vault. Which one matters: the vault syncs, so a preference stored there follows you between machines, and a terminal font size probably should not. |
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| Terminal font, size, cursor style, cursor blink, scrollback | client-terminal | The store, **and** a frame to carry it. `TerminalServerOpcode` has four values (`Output`, `SessionOpened`, `SessionClosed`, `SessionActivated`) and none carries an option. |
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| Font family picker offering IBM Plex Mono | ui | Shipping the font, as above. |
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| Audible bell | client-terminal + ui | xterm.js 6 removed `bellStyle` and `bellSound`; what remains is an `onBell` event, so the page would have to make the sound itself. |
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| `GENERAL` section | ui | There is no general setting to put in it. The theme is fixed by decision, and window size is not persisted. |
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| `KEYS & AGENT` section | client-ssh | **There is no agent, at all** — no own agent, no forwarding, no Pageant or OpenSSH-agent interop. |
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| `SYNC & VAULT` section | client-domain | Nothing here is adjustable. The auto-sync interval is a `private static readonly` with a remark arguing for its value. |
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| `SECURITY & SSO` section | server | The SSO half needs team endpoints; there is no policy for the screen to show. |
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| `SHORTCUTS` section | ui | There is no keybinding infrastructure and no rebinding surface. |
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| Auto-lock after idle | client-session | An activity source, a decision about what counts as idle, and — the hard part — a policy for a shell mid-job. `LockAsync`'s own remark already argues that an unattended timeout which killed a running job would be worse than the exposure it removed. |
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| Require biometric to sign | crypto | Three separate falsehoods in one row. There is no signing service — the private key is decrypted and handed to SSH.NET whole, so there is no per-signature moment to interrupt; there are no connect-only keys; and per-use consent would need the key to live in the TPM, which is a different key hierarchy from the one in `docs/crypto.md`. |
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| Pill toggle switches | ui | Purely presentational — `App.axaml` has no `ToggleSwitch` selector, so Fluent's default would appear un-themed beside the hairline chrome. |
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---
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## Two things the import changed on purpose
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**Hosts left the vault column.** They have their own sidebar beside the terminal, and the vault screen
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holds keys, passwords and pinned host keys. This follows the design, and it is also the better split: the
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host list is what you look at while you work, and the rest is what you go and manage. `VaultSection` lost
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its `Hosts` member and gained `All`.
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**Tabs moved to the shell, not the vault.** Locking disposes the vault and deliberately leaves shells
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running, so a tab list rebuilt per unlock would lose track of sessions that are still connected — the very
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sessions the unlock screen already counts. `TerminalWorkspace` gained `SessionActivated` on the wire,
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`IsSessionLive`, and a `SessionEnded` event so a tab can stop claiming to be connected.
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