[baxen]

What

Opening a channel or DM now clears its sidebar row: the bold name, the mention dot and the thread dot. The Dock dot follows the rows. Nothing gets marked read. Unread threads keep their dots in the timeline, in Activity → Threads and in the channel activity popover, and New messages still marks the entry boundary. Anything that arrives after you leave lights the row again.

Requested in Buzz: clear the channel dot on click, but leave threads nominally unread (clear mentions too; Dock follows the row; top-level messages are not marked read on click).

How

• seen:<channel> frontier (unread.ts). enterChannel hides everything in the row in memory for the whole visit, including arrivals during it. leaveChannel records the newest retained verified event time and saves it as seen:<channel>, but only when that save would actually hide something the saved mark doesn't already hide. Revisiting a quiet channel writes nothing.
• UnreadSnapshot.row: channel snapshots gain row counts (observedCount, attentionCount, threadCount) that leave out evidence through the seen cut. Under explicit unread intent (manual channel unread, a message marked unread) row is omitted, so the row shows the whole channel again, thread dot included. observedCount/attentionCount are unchanged.
• Consumers that follow the row: UnreadBadge (bold, unread state, mention dot, thread dot), ordinaryUnread, the Dock indicator, useUnreadChannelIds(…, shown = true) (only the sidebar Unreads filter). The floating unread cues read the badge DOM, so they follow automatically. Unread-first search, the Solo inventory, mark-read menus and shortcuts, the timeline boundary, Activity and the popover keep the raw unread.
• No boundary regressions: the seen save goes through a new reads.see(), which bumps the journal but not unread.revision() (intentRevision). Otherwise a seen save landing just after the next channel's visit capture would drop that channel's New messages divider.
• Retention: seen marks rank last, and override ancestry never pins them. A channel read covers them.

Sync cost: seen:<channel> rides the existing n-blob NIP-RS publication (#1286), debounced at 5s; one ~55-byte key per channel, overwritten in place. Attention receipts (seen:msg:<id>) stay on this device and are never published.

Tests

• unread.test.ts: row quiets on open while observed counts, Activity and per-message attention stay unread; arrivals during the visit; seen: saved on leave; revision() unchanged by the seen save (fails with reads.revision); a later reply relights; a preloaded mark quiets after reload; marking a message or the channel unread omits row; a quiet revisit writes nothing.
• read-state-retention.test.ts: seen marks are not override ancestry and go last (fails without the change: "Read override ancestry capacity reached").
• ChannelSidebarItem.test.tsx: row counts drive the badge markers.
• indicator-unread.test.ts: the Dock clears on open and relights on a later arrival.
• Browser journeys: the fixtures open with Alpha selected, so journeys that asserted Alpha's row unread while it was open now read the engine (tests/browser/unread-state.mjs) or read state, and assert the row is quiet. sidebar-unread uses Beta for the ordinary-unread row and cue; sidebar-collapsed-unread leaves Alpha and publishes a later broadcast reply to relight it. The selected-unread-row ink check is gone: an open row is only unread through Mark unread now.
• pnpm typecheck, full vitest run (1031 files), and the changed journeys in chromium and webkit locally.

Deferred

• Not exercised in the running app yet. Human test: open a channel with an unread followed-thread reply and a mention; the row clears at once; the thread dot still shows on its reply summary and in Activity → Threads; leave, post a new reply from another account, and the row relights; relaunch, and quiet rows stay quiet.
• Older clients observe seen: from peers but ignore it, and never republish another device's value (feat(read-state): n-blob NIP-RS sync with a 30-day floor, frontier only #1286 own-frontier rule).

Attention receipts (907b5a46, Lain + Meli)

The row cut was a timestamp, so a mention delivered after the visit at the same second, or backdated by a slower sender clock, stayed hidden in the sidebar and Dock. Now:

row hides an unread entry when
  visit open                      -> everything
  ordinary                        -> created_at <= seen:<channel>   (synced)
  attention (mention, broadcast,  -> its own seen:msg:<id> receipt  (local, like msg:)
    DM, conversation reply)

• The row cut is the seen argument isUnread already takes, so explicit unread intent and overrides still show.
• Seen marks save in one quiet readMessages batch, which replaces see/saveQuiet. The journal counts quiet saves (quiet, validated as 0 <= quiet <= revision), so another window's seen save no longer drops this window's New messages divider. That was the deferred two-window gap.
• The local reserve no longer protects row marks as inherited floors (found by Meli: 1,000 receipts evicted real read receipts under an override).
• Accepted tradeoffs, in docs: an ordinary message with an equal or older timestamp stays quiet (bold only, like activity:). A fresh or second device relights attention rows until they are read (feat(read-state): n-blob NIP-RS sync with a 30-day floor, frontier only #1286's msg: limitation).

Validation at 907b5a46:

• Full vitest: 19,753 passed, 22 skipped.
• 88/88 unread browser journeys pass in Chromium and WebKit (unread, thread-unread, sidebar-unread, sidebar-collapsed-unread, membership, navigation-mute-read, activity-navigation-focus, large-channel-unread).
• A production-frontend + production-broker journey in both engines: same-second and backdated mentions relight, reload stays quiet, a fresh install restores the channel cut from the relay, and published blobs carry only channel keys.
• Each new unit test fails under its mutant first.

Not run: a native Tauri build, a real relay, or mobile.

[kalvinnchau]

🤖 Two findings: background arrivals in the selected conversation are suppressed from unread indicators, and channel reads leave redundant local receipts.

[kalvinnchau]

🤖 [P2] Preserve the Dock indication for background arrivals

With a channel or DM selected, switch to another app or hide Buzz, then receive a peer DM or mention in that conversation. enterChannel keeps its row cut at Infinity for the whole visit (unread.ts:2765,738), so this row count stays zero even though reading is disabled while unfocused (use-reading.ts:95–96) and the raw unread count increases. The previous raw-count projection lit the Dock; this projection suppresses it. Gate advancing the seen cut on reader visibility/focus, or preserve the raw Dock count for background arrivals. Add an unfocused-arrival regression case. This is source-traced; native Dock execution was not performed.

[kalvinnchau]

🤖 [P3] Prune message seen receipts covered by channel reads

covered() checks a seen:msg:<id> receipt only against an exact msg:<id> frontier. Channel catch-up advances the channel frontier instead, leaving receipts for already-read messages in the journal. A targeted test reproduced: mention at t=100 → enter/leave → receipt saved → markChannelRead("room") advances beyond 100 → receipt remains, including after another channel read. These redundant keys consume the bounded journal/reserve and compete in recency retention; production-scale impact is unmeasured. Apply the same message/channel coverage logic used for msg: marks and add a channel-read pruning regression test.

[tellaho]

🤖 Design review at a1100968. Opening a channel or DM should dismiss its sidebar/Dock cues while keeping messages and threads unread.

Must fix — new attention must still reach you while Buzz is in the background. Leave a conversation selected, switch to another app, then receive a DM or mention there: its sidebar and Dock remain quiet. This is the existing code-review finding. Leaving the conversation also saves those arrivals as seen, so they can stay absent from sidebar Unreads afterward. Limit ongoing quieting to the visible active visit and preserve cues for background arrivals; cover background arrival → switch channel.

Evidence: unread.ts:730–788,2750–2768, MessageManagement.tsx:352–395, use-reading.ts:90–98, and indicator-unread.ts:80–82.

Activity and thread-level unread remain available; Mark unread restores the row. Another device can relight unread attention, as documented.

Source review only. No supplied screenshots; native Dock, multiple devices, keyboard/focus, themes, window sizes and enlarged text were not exercised.