signal-bot/DOCS-signal-envelopes.md
Krzysztof kuhy Rudnicki 6bde3493a4 feat: rewrite the bot so it runs, and gate it like the other repos
The bot did not work. `run.sh` started a FastAPI app whose
`@app.on_event("startup")` awaited `asyncio.gather()` on two infinite
tasks, so uvicorn never finished starting up and no HTTP was ever served;
the readme's `python main.py` was a no-op with no `__main__` block and no
`uvicorn.run()` call. All three CI workflows were red, one referencing an
`environment.yml` that does not exist.

Rewritten as a package behind an injectable transport seam, which is what
makes the offline environment possible.

Bugs fixed:
- startup deadlock: lifespan spawns the loops instead of awaiting them
- sticker filter read dataMessage.sticker even on syncMessage envelopes, so
  the account's own stickers were never filtered (e038772, 53028cc, 07fa90d,
  2416cef all fought this symptom)
- no websocket reconnect: a container restart killed the bot silently
- blocking `requests` inside async functions stalled the event loop
- every counted message DMed the whole tally to the bot itself
- images were written to CWD under a filename taken from the remote URL
- one global 10s cooldown shared across all users and commands
- dead code: RECEIVE_URL, get_attachments (no call site), USER_MESSAGE_COUNT
- .env.sample declared PRIMARY/SECONDARY_PHONE_NUMBER and MODE, none read

Scoping is now an enforced invariant. A linked device receives every DM and
every group on the account; GROUP_ID was the only thing narrowing that and
defaulted to "". Config refuses to start unscoped, direct messages are
dropped explicitly rather than by a falsy check, and a scenario asserts that
DMs and other groups produce zero outbound messages.

Offline environment: fake_signal/ serves the real protocol surface, so the
unmodified bot connects to it by pointing API_BASE_URL at it. scripts/e2e.sh
boots both, replays 7 scenarios and exits non-zero on mismatch. A local
Signal server is not achievable (signal-cli compiles its endpoints and trust
store in; Signal-Server needs FoundationDB), so faking this boundary is the
only way to test every feature without an account.

Transport pinned to bbernhard/signal-cli-rest-api:0.100 with
MODE=json-rpc-native. The readme pinned 0.167-dev; the dev tag series counts
separately, so that was older than 0.100, not newer. /v1/receive is only a
WebSocket in a json-rpc mode, so the mode is verified at startup.

Repo standards: ruff select=ALL, mypy --strict, 189 tests at 100% branch
coverage, 250-line cap, exact pins at newest stable, shared gates delegated
to ~/utils, one CI workflow replacing three red ones. No noqa, no
type: ignore, no coverage omits anywhere.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_013yaBT45KhHqxTKVCTA87iy
2026-08-29 13:05:42 +02:00

2.5 KiB

Signal envelope shapes

Reference for the two JSON frames signal-cli-rest-api pushes down ws://…/v1/receive/{number}. signal_bot/models.py flattens both into one IncomingMessage; these are the shapes it flattens.

From another account: dataMessage

{
  "envelope": {
    "source": "NAME",
    "sourceNumber": "PHONE_NUMBER",
    "sourceUuid": "SOURCE_ID",
    "sourceName": "USER_DEFINED_NAME",
    "sourceDevice": 69,
    "timestamp": 1719177917717,
    "dataMessage": {
      "timestamp": 1719177917717,
      "message": "MESSAGE_CONTENT",
      "expiresInSeconds": 0,
      "viewOnce": false,
      "sticker": { "packId": "166dd1b5…", "stickerId": 6 },
      "groupInfo": { "groupId": "ID_OF_GROUP", "type": "DELIVER" }
    }
  },
  "account": "BOT_ACCOUNT_PHONE_NUMBER"
}

From the bot's own account: syncMessage.sentMessage

Because the bot runs as a linked device, the account's own outgoing messages come back as sync messages. Same fields, one level deeper.

{
  "envelope": {
    "sourceUuid": "SOURCE_ID",
    "sourceName": "USER_DEFINED_NAME",
    "timestamp": 1719177728639,
    "syncMessage": {
      "sentMessage": {
        "destination": "DEST_NAME",
        "destinationNumber": "DEST_PHONE_NUMBER",
        "timestamp": 1719177728639,
        "message": "MESSAGE_CONTENT",
        "sticker": { "packId": "166dd1b5…", "stickerId": 6 },
        "groupInfo": { "groupId": "ID_OF_GROUP", "type": "DELIVER" }
      }
    }
  },
  "account": "BOT_ACCOUNT_PHONE_NUMBER"
}

The trap this caused

The original bot read envelope.dataMessage.sticker even when the frame was a syncMessage. Its own stickers therefore never matched the sticker filter and were counted as messages. Four consecutive commits (f1931b8, b325126, 62352e5, d35aa59) fought the symptom.

models.py resolves the payload first — dataMessage or syncMessage.sentMessage — and reads sticker, reaction, message and groupInfo off whichever it found. tests/test_models.py asserts both shapes.

No groupInfo means a direct message

A frame without groupInfo arrived in a one-to-one conversation. A linked device receives every one of those on the account, so counting.is_watched_group rejects them explicitly rather than relying on a falsy comparison. See the scoping scenario in fake_signal/scenarios/.

Frames the bot ignores

Receipts, typing indicators and anything else with no dataMessage and no syncMessage.sentMessage parse to None and are dropped.