DodoSSH/docs/adding-hosts-on-the-phone.md

# Adding hosts on the phone

The phone can read a keychain and connect through it. It cannot put anything in one. This document is the
plan for the change that fixes that, and it is written to be picked up cold — the decisions, the reasons, the
ordered work, and the traps that are already known.

> **Status: built.** All six steps. Each one compiled with the whole suite green before the next began,
> which is the rule the ordering below sets.
>
> | Step | State | Notes |
> | --- | --- | --- |
> | 1. `HostGroupSecret` grows | **Done** | Five fields, a version rule the codec did not have, a byte pin, and the "groups are flat" prose rewritten in all four places it appeared. |
> | 2. The `Tag` item kind | **Done** | Secret, codec, merge, cipher, repository, both registries, EF entity and the generated `AddTagItem` migration. |
> | 3. `HostSecret` grows, `Port` goes nullable | **Done** | `TagSet`, `TagIds`, `Port` as `int?`, `AsksForPassword`, both schema versions, and `HostInheritance` — the resolver. |
> | 4. The shared view model | **Done** | Every choke point below, plus the group editor the plan never assigned a step to and without which nothing could set a default at all. |
> | 5. The phone | **Done** | The `+`, the sheet, both editor cards, the back guard and EDIT on the connect bar. |
> | 6. Tests and false prose | **Done** | Plus a fourth "groups are flat" site in `README.md` this plan did not list, and a cross-vault resolution bug the scouting for it turned up. |
>
> **Tags shipped after the six steps, in a seventh pass.** They were storable and unreachable when step 6
> closed — a full item kind that no screen drew. Both heads now show a chip per tag on a host row and toggle
> them in the host editor, which also creates one inline, because wanting a tag and tagging a host are the
> same moment. Renaming and deleting live in a TAGS category on the keychain screen: a tag is an item so
> that renaming it is one write instead of twenty, and that rename needed somewhere to happen.
>
> That pass also made the desktop host editor scroll. A picker's height is a chip per tag in the keychain,
> so no fixed height holds it — which the layout suite caught the moment its seeder grew tags.
>
> **`HostFields.From` was answered by a refusal rather than by threading the resolver into the sync engine.**
> A relay host may not inherit its port; `HostSecret.TryValidate` refuses one that tries. A plaintext column
> derived from a *different* item goes stale when that item is edited and nothing re-pushes the hosts beneath
> it, so the relay would keep dialling the old port — which is worse than the restriction.
>
> **One decision was taken that this plan did not specify.** "Three states where there were two" is four, not
> three: a host can bind a key, bind a credential, be pinned to a typed password, or take its group's answer,
> and two nullable ids express three of those. Naming neither id now means *inherit*, so
> `HostSecret.AsksForPassword` was added to say "a typed password, even under a group that lends a key" out
> loud. Nothing stored changed meaning — no group could lend a binding before this build, so every existing
> host resolves exactly as it did.

## What was asked for

A floating `+` at the bottom right of the phone's HOSTS screen, opening a menu at the bottom offering **new
host** or **new group**.

A **host** carries: which vault it is filed into (personal or a team's), an alias, a hostname or IP address, a
group, tags, an SSH port, and a username with either a password or an SSH key.

A **group** carries: an alias, an optional parent group, and a default SSH port, username and
password-or-key — **defaults for the hosts inside it**.

## The shape of the problem

Three of those fields do not exist at any layer, and one of them is refused on the record.

| Asked for | What exists today |
| --- | --- |
| The `+` and the editors behind it | Nothing. `Theme/Phone.axaml` has no `.fab` class, and its comment says an unused style would be "a claim that the control exists somewhere". `HostsScreen.axaml`'s own v2 note says hosts are created on the desktop and sync down. *(This row named a `ConnectionsScreen.axaml` as a second site. No such file exists or ever has; and the `HostsScreen` statement is an XAML comment, so no phone screen ever rendered that sentence to a user.)* |
| Vault picker | **Built.** `VaultViewModel.TargetVaults` / `SelectedTargetVault` / `HasVaultChoice`, hidden at one vault. The desktop's `VaultScreen.axaml` already draws it. |
| Alias, hostname, port, username, key-or-password, group | **Built**, in the shared `VaultViewModel` host editor — `EditorLabel`, `EditorHostname`, `EditorPort`, `EditorUsername`, `EditorAuthenticationChoices`, `EditorGroupChoices`, `SaveHostCommand`. The phone has never bound any of it. |
| Tags | **Nothing.** `SyncEntityType.Tag = 5` and `HostTag = 6` are reserved slots with nothing behind them. `HostSecret` has no tag field. |
| A group's parent | **Refused on the record.** `HostGroupSecret`'s own remark says groups are flat because two clients can each re-parent A under B and B under A offline, a scalar merge accepts both, and the result is a cycle no reader can draw and the server cannot see, because it is inside the payload. |
| A group's defaults | **Nothing.** `HostGroupSecret` has exactly one field, `Label`. |

So the phone half is mostly wiring. The domain half is three new capabilities, and one of them overturns a
written decision.

## The three decisions

**Tags are a real vault item, and a host names them.** A tag is a shared, reusable thing — the point of it is
to put the same tag on twenty machines and filter by it later — so it needs an identity of its own, not a
string repeated inside twenty payloads. `SyncEntityType.Tag = 5` becomes a live item kind. Membership is a
`TagIds` set on `HostSecret`, **not** the reserved `HostTag = 6` join.

The reason to skip the join is that the merge does not need it. The argument for `HostSecret.GroupId` living on
the host is that filing two hosts into one group must be two writes to two items; the same holds here. What a
join would have bought beyond that is two machines tagging *the same* host without one of them losing — and
`ThreeWayMerge.Map` already gives that. It resolves a keyed collection key by key, honouring presence and
absence, which is set semantics with removals. `HostOptions` is merged through it today via `ToNameMap()`, and
a tag set keyed by tag id is the same shape. So `HostTag = 6` stays reserved and unused, and the second run
through the item-kind checklist is not spent.

**Group defaults are inherited, not copied.** A host that leaves a field blank uses its group's value; a host
that fills one in overrides it. The editor shows the group's value as the field's placeholder, so the form
says what leaving it blank will get you. Copying the values into the host at create time was the alternative
and it was rejected: it makes a group a one-shot template rather than a live default, and changing a group
would then leave every host that had ever been created under it pinned to the old value.

**Groups get a parent, and the resolver breaks cycles.** `HostGroupSecret` gains `ParentId`. The editor refuses
a parent that is already a descendant, which stops a cycle being made here; the resolver walks with a visited
set and stops at a repeat, which contains a cycle that arrives from somewhere else. A cycle therefore degrades
to a group that reads as a root — flat headings, defaults unresolved past that point — instead of hanging the
connect path, and clearing the parent in the editor is the repair. **This is the load-bearing part of the
decision:** with inheritance the chain is walked at connect time, so an unguarded cycle is not an undrawable
sidebar, it is a shell that never opens.

`HostGroupSecret`'s "No parent. Groups are flat." remark and `HostGroupSecretTests`' class remark both become
false prose and must be rewritten to say what replaced the argument, not deleted. Same for the four rows in
`docs/design-import-gaps.md` recording the phone's missing `+`.

## What the payload becomes

```
HostSecret                            HostGroupSecret
  Label                                 Label
  Hostname                              ParentId            ← new, optional
  Port            int? — null inherits  DefaultPort         ← new
  Username        null inherits, "" none DefaultUsername    ← new
  Notes                                 DefaultSshKeyId     ← new
  JumpHostIds                           DefaultCredentialId ← new
  Options
  SshKeyId        null inherits       TagSecret
  CredentialId    null inherits         Label
  AsksForPassword ← new, true only
  GroupId         null = ungrouped
  TagIds          ← new
  RelayEnabled
```

`Port` becoming `int?` is the change with the widest blast radius, and it is unavoidable: `int` with a default
of 22 has no way to say "I have no port of my own". `HostSecret.DefaultPort = 22` stays, as the last fallback
after the chain runs out.

### Three states where there were two

`SshKeyId` and `CredentialId` both null currently *means* "ask for a password each time" — a decision, not an
absence. `AuthenticationChoice`'s own remark argues at length that the two must never be conflated.
Inheritance adds a state, so the picker needs an explicit **"Inherit from group"** entry beside **"Password
(ask each time)"**, and `Bound(...)` needs to distinguish them. `Username` has the same problem: null means
"no username" today and is refused at connect; it has to come to mean "inherit", with "no username" still
reachable and still refused.

**Built as four states, not three, because two nullable ids only carry three.** Key, credential, typed
password, inherit — and naming neither id was the third and is now the fourth. `HostSecret.AsksForPassword`
carries the difference: null is "not stated", which walks the chain and lands on a typed password if the
chain lends nothing, and `true` is "a typed password, even under a group that lends a key". Only `true` is
ever written, and a decoded `false` folds back to null, so a host that never touched the field encodes
exactly as it did before it existed. `Username` needed no field — an empty string is "no username" and null
is "inherit". `Port` needed none either: there is no "explicitly no port", only 22 at the end of the chain.

Mutual exclusion moves with it. `HostSecret.TryValidate` enforces "a key or a credential, never both" per
record; a host naming a credential under a group naming a key is two individually valid records that resolve to
two bindings. **Exclusion has to be enforced at resolution**, host-over-group, and the resolver must never
return both.

## The order to build it in

Each step compiles and its tests pass before the next one starts. Steps 1–3 are the domain and are
prerequisites for everything; step 4 is the only user-visible one.

### 1. `HostGroupSecret` grows

`src/DodoSSH.Client.Domain/HostGroupSecret.cs`, `HostGroupSecretCodec.cs`, `HostGroupSecretMerge.cs`.

- Add `ParentId`, `DefaultPort`, `DefaultUsername`, `DefaultSshKeyId`, `DefaultCredentialId`.
- `TryValidate`: reject `Guid.Empty` for each id, reject a `ParentId` equal to the group's own id where that is
  knowable, apply the same 1–65535 range rule to `DefaultPort`, and refuse a group naming both a default key
  and a default credential.
- **The codec needs the host codec's rule, which it does not have today.** `HostGroupSecretCodec` stamps
  `CurrentSchemaVersion` unconditionally. Copy `HostSecretCodec.SchemaVersionFor` — a *maximum over the fields
  actually present*, not a ladder — or upgrading one machine makes every group read-only on every other. A
  group carrying none of the new fields must still encode at version 1, byte for byte.
- `HostGroupSecretMerge` gains the five fields, each a scalar.
- Add a group byte pin mirroring `AddingTheKeyField_DidNotChangeTheBytesOfAHostWithoutOne`. The group codec has
  none, and the same "old vaults must re-encode identically" argument applies to it.

### 2. The `Tag` item kind

`SyncEntityType.Tag = 5`, `CryptoSpec.AadResourceType.Tag = 8`, `ChangeEntityType.Tag = 5` and the
`PublicAPI.Unshipped.txt` line **already exist** — no contract change, no crypto-spec change, no `docs/crypto.md`
change. `LocalCacheProtector`'s AAD switch already maps `Tag`.

New: `TagSecret.cs`, `TagSecretCodec.cs`, `TagSecretMerge.cs` in `DodoSSH.Client.Domain`; `TagCipher.cs`,
`TagRepository.cs` in `DodoSSH.Client.Sync`. Edited: `Client.Sync/ItemKinds.cs` (registry entry + `TagKind`),
`VaultSession.cs` (a `Tags` repository beside `HostGroups`), `Domain/Hosts.cs` (`VaultTag`),
`Infrastructure/DodoDbContext.cs`, `Infrastructure/Configurations/HostAndSyncConfigurations.cs`,
`Api/Features/Sync/ItemKinds.cs` (registry entry + server `TagKind`).

**A server migration is required** — a tag is its own table. Generate it, do not hand-write it:
`dotnet ef migrations add AddTagItem --project src/DodoSSH.Infrastructure`, committing all three resulting file
changes. **No client migration**: `ClientCacheContext` has one `item` table keyed by `(VaultId, EntityType,
EntityId)`, so a new kind is new rows.

Four traps, all of which pass a naive test suite:

- **`TagCipher` must say `AadResourceType.Tag` as a constant, never cast from `SyncEntityType.Tag`.** Tag is 5
  on the wire and 8 in the crypto enum. A cast seals tags under `Credential`, which encrypts and decrypts
  perfectly on the machine that wrote it and is a spec violation nothing notices until another implementation
  refuses the item — and the AAD is frozen into stored ciphertext. `AadResourceTypeTests` is the test that
  catches this, and it only catches it once `PinnedPairs` and `SealSample` have a Tag arm.
- **The `ItemKinds.Registry` entry is what `SyncEngine` pulls with.** `SyncedTypes` is projected from it. Miss
  it and tags encrypt, merge and list perfectly on the machine that made them and are never once requested from
  the server.
- **`TagKind.Fields` returns `null`, not an empty `SyncPlaintextFields`.** An empty record still serialises
  `relayEnabled: false`, which invites a reader to believe the type has a relay setting that is off.
- **`ValidateFields` must refuse everything, with reasons.** There is no default; an unimplemented one accepts
  whatever arrives. `RelatedId` matters more here than it did for a group — it is the field a future `HostTag`
  would reach for, and `SyncPlaintextFields` is frozen so it cannot be removed. Follow `SnippetKind` and
  `ObjectStoreKind`, which are more complete than `HostGroupKind`.

### 3. `HostSecret` grows, and `Port` goes nullable

`HostSecret.cs`, `HostSecretCodec.cs`, `HostSecretMerge.cs`, plus a new `TagSet` value type and a new resolver.

- `TagSet` is a structural-equality wrapper in the shape of `JumpChain` — a plain `IReadOnlyList<Guid>` on a
  record gets reference equality from the compiler-generated `Equals`, which would make every host read as
  changed on every sync pass and two identical edits register as a conflict. Unlike `JumpChain` it is a *set*:
  order carries no meaning, so it sorts and dedupes, and it exposes a `ToIdMap()` for the merge.
- `HostSecretMerge` merges `TagIds` through `ThreeWayMerge.Map`, per tag, so two people each adding a different
  tag to one host both keep theirs. It is not a scalar; a whole-value merge here would silently drop one side.
- `Port` becomes `int?`. `TryValidate`'s `is < 1 or > 65535` is already false for null, which is the wanted
  behaviour but is silent — say so in a comment, and fix the message, which interpolates `{Port}` and renders
  empty for null.
- **`SchemaVersionFor` needs branches for both new fields, and this is the one that loses data if forgotten.**
  A host with `Port = null` written at version 1 omits the property (`WhenWritingNull`); an older client
  deserialises `int Port` as 0, `TryValidate` refuses it, and the item reads as **unreadable rather than
  read-only** — gone, not locked. Add `PortInheritSchemaVersion = 5` and `TagIdsSchemaVersion = 5` (or 5 and 6)
  and make both bump the maximum.
- **`AddingTheKeyField_DidNotChangeTheBytesOfAHostWithoutOne` pins the exact bytes** of a minimal host,
  including `"port":22`. A host that now inherits its port drops that key. Keep the pinned literal for a host
  with an explicit port, and add a companion for the inheriting one — do not edit the old literal to match
  whatever the code produces.
- `TagIds` must serialise **last** in `HostPayloadDocument`, and empty must serialise as absent, or every host
  in every vault looks changed on the first sync after the upgrade.

New file: the resolver. Given a host and the group list, walk `GroupId` then `ParentId` with a visited set,
returning resolved port, username and binding, plus which group each came from — the editor needs the second
half for its placeholders. It must never return both a key and a credential.

### 4. The shared view model, and the two heads

`VaultViewModel` is where nearly all of it lands, and both heads get it at once because both bind the same
properties.

The choke points, from the connect-path trace:

- **`TryBuildAuthentication(HostSecret, …)` and `TryBuildConnectionRequest(HostSecret, …)`** both take a bare
  `HostSecret` — this signature is where group context is currently lost. Both must take the resolved value.
  This is the single highest-leverage change: it is the only auth resolution in the product, and both heads
  and both transports go through it.
- The credential-username fallback becomes three levels: credential → host → group chain.
- `Complete(...)` must refuse on an empty username only *after* the chain has been consulted.
- `HostRowViewModel.Address`, `Dialled`, `TransfersViewModel`'s connected-to label and
  `TerminalWorkspace.Describe` must show the **dialled** address. `MainWindowViewModel.Rank` searches
  `Address`, so an unresolved one makes hosts unfindable by their real port.
- **`HostFields.From` in `HostCipher` must emit the resolved port.** This is the one place where an unresolved
  read is a wrong wire rather than a wrong label: it fills the relay's plaintext columns, which is what the
  *server* dials. A relay host with a null port also fails server validation outright.
- Host-key pinning keys on host and port. `ForgetHostKeyAsync` and the "pin in use" endpoint set read
  `row.Host.Port` directly — a host inheriting 2222 pins under 2222 while both look under 22.
- `HostRowViewModel.Authentication`, `SelectedHostAsksForAPassword` (in **both** `VaultViewModel` and
  `TransfersViewModel`) and `SelectedHostAuthenticationNote` all switch on the host's own two ids and must
  switch on the resolved binding, with new wording for a binding that came from a group.
- **`HostsBoundTo`** counts hosts naming a key explicitly. A key deleted while only a *group* names it warns
  nobody and then refuses every host under that group at connect time. It must walk groups too.
- The editor: load must distinguish "unset" from "explicitly this", `BuildHost` must preserve that in both
  directions, and each field needs the resolved value as its placeholder.
- `ImportViewModel.IsAlreadyPresent` compares port and username directly, so a stored host inheriting 22 will
  never match an imported host at 22 and the import screen re-offers duplicates. Decide whether an imported
  block with no `Port` should inherit rather than pin 22 — `SshConfigResolver` returns `DefaultPort` today.

### 5. The phone

`Views/HostsScreen.axaml` and `Theme/Phone.axaml`. No csproj edit — Avalonia globs `**/*.axaml`. Compiled
bindings are on, so a binding to a property that does not exist is a build error; `TreatWarningsAsErrors` is on
repo-wide, so any XAML warning fails CI.

- A `Button.fab` style, and the comment that currently refuses one rewritten to say what it now opens.
- The `+` needs a `Panel` wrapping the screen's root `Grid` so it can sit bottom-right without moving. Placing
  it inside the list row would put it above the connect bar, which appears and disappears with the selection.
- The bottom sheet follows `HostKeySheet.axaml`, the head's one existing sheet: a scrim
  (`Border Background="#9E0E1220"`, a literal because the palette holds no alpha surface), a bottom-aligned
  `Border` with `CornerRadius="22,22,0,0"`, a decorative grab handle, and **no tap-to-dismiss** unless it is
  wired by hand, because nothing on this head implements it.
- **Scrim reach is a real choice.** Declared inside `HostsScreen`, a scrim darkens the screen area only and the
  64px nav bar stays lit and tappable. To cover the display the sheet has to sit in `PhoneShell.axaml` beside
  `HostKeySheet`, which is exactly why that control lives there.
- **The back gesture needs a new guard**, above the `switch` in `PhoneShell.axaml.cs`, in the shape of the
  host-key guard: back should close the sheet or the editor rather than leave the screen. The comment on that
  method states an invariant about the switch cases staying in step with the surface tests — so add a guard,
  do not extend the switch. *(This named `IsVaultsSurface` and `IsConnectionsSurface`. Neither exists
  anywhere in the repo; the real properties are `IsMoreSurface` and `IsTerminalSurface`, and only the first
  is what the switch mirrors.)*
- The editors follow `SnippetsScreen.axaml`: a `Border Classes="card"` in the same grid row as the list,
  toggled on `IsEditing`, with the list toggled on `!IsEditing`. There is no dialog, no modal and no
  editor-screen anywhere on this head, and the reason is written down — a form stacked over the list hides what
  it is about.
- Editing an existing host comes nearly free: the shared `IsEditing` panel serves both, so the connect bar gets
  an EDIT button beside CONNECT. Not asked for, but a `+` that adds hosts with no way to correct one is a
  strange thing to ship.

### 6. Tests

House style: `Subject_Predicate`, articles included, the predicate smuggling in the reason
(`_RefusesRatherThanFallingBackToThePassword`). No `Async` suffix on test methods; always on private helpers.
Every class carries a remark naming the class of failure it exists to catch. xunit.v3 + Shouldly, with the
because-string used as prose.

- Three shared builders need the new fields: `Domain.Tests/HostFactory.cs`, `Sync.Tests/SyncHarness.cs`,
  `Sync.Tests/HostCipherTests.cs`. There is no shared group factory and with five new fields there should be.
- Three guard tests fail by design and that is what they are for:
  `HostSecretMergeTests.EveryScalarField_IsRoutedThroughAMerge` (note `GroupId` is missing from its `with`
  block today — an existing gap worth closing while there),
  `ValueSemanticsTests.TryValidate_RejectsWhatCannotBeStored`, and the two "groups are flat" remarks.
- `ItemKindsTests.ThePullFilterNamesEveryTypeThisBuildSynchronises` is an ordered list — add Tag in registry
  order. `AadResourceTypeTests` needs `PinnedPairs`, a `SealSample` arm and a `NewTag()` builder.
- `SyncEndpointTests.AHostGroupCarryingAParent_IsRejected` asserts the server refuses a plaintext `ParentId`
  with a reason containing "flat". Putting the parent **inside the payload** does not break it mechanically,
  but its stated reason becomes wrong. It should survive with a rewritten comment — the parent lives in the
  payload, the plaintext column stays refused, and ADR 0004 is why. Decide that deliberately rather than
  letting it drift.
- `Push_AnUnsupportedEntityType_IsInvalidNotAFailedBatch` picks the first type with no kind registered, very
  likely Tag today. It self-heals to `HostTag` via `Assert.SkipWhen`.
- `App.Layout.Tests` measures pixels and bends rather than breaks. Extend the seeders — nesting and a tag row
  change what the widest realistic content is — rather than the assertions. `ScreenLayoutTests.cs:1310` pins
  `ChangedFields = "Hostname, Port, Username, Options, Group"` as a literal; add `Tags` to keep it measuring
  the worst case.
- `ShellFlowTests.ReadyToConnectAsync` gives its host both a username and a port, so the inheritance tests need
  a host with neither, or the group is never the source.

## Found on the way, and out of scope

`LocalCacheProtector`'s AAD switch is missing `ConnectionLogEntry`, `ActivityLogEntry` and `ObjectStore`, so
`ConflictStore.Record` throws `ArgumentOutOfRangeException` on a conflict for any of those three. Pre-existing,
unrelated to any of this, and `Tag` is already in that switch. Worth a separate fix.

## Prose that becomes false

Not a tidy-up — these are the places the codebase currently tells a user or a maintainer that this feature is
deliberately absent, and each states a reason that will no longer hold.

- `Theme/Phone.axaml` — the "No floating action button" block.
- `Views/HostsScreen.axaml` — the v2 and v3 notes on the missing `+`.
- ~~`Views/ConnectionsScreen.axaml`~~ — **this file does not exist and never did.** The real inventory is
  the two above plus `README.md`, `docs/android-port.md` and `docs/design-import-gaps.md`. Neither phone
  site was "rendered on screen": both are XAML comments.
- `HostGroupSecret.cs` and `HostGroupSecretTests.cs` — "No parent. Groups are flat."
- `docs/design-import-gaps.md` — the **Add host** row, the two floating-button rows, the "Tag / HostTag still
  reserved and unused" paragraph, and the tag-chips and groups-on-a-team's-hosts rows in the Hosts table.