cinny/LOTUS_BUGS.md

Lotus Chat — Bug Report & Technical Audit

Date: June 2026

This document tracks identified bugs, edge cases, and architectural discrepancies found during the audit of the Lotus Chat codebase. Recommended fixes are provided for each item.

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🚩 Critical & UI Bugs

1. Drag-and-Drop Overlay Persistence

File: src/app/hooks/useFileDrop.ts Status: Confirmed (Backlog item #!BUG)

• Issue: The file drop overlay remains visible if a user drags a file over the browser window and then moves the mouse out of the window without dropping.
• Root Cause: The dragleave event does not reliably decrement the internal dragCounter when the mouse leaves the browser viewport entirely.
• Recommended Fix: Update the handleDragLeave function to detect when the mouse has left the window by checking if evt.relatedTarget is null.

2. Stale Member List in Verification Banner

File: src/app/hooks/useDeviceVerificationStatus.ts Status: High Priority

• Issue: The "Unverified Device Warning" banner may fail to appear for users who join a room after it has already been opened in the client.
• Root Cause: The memberIds array is memoized only on room.roomId. New members joining the room do not trigger a recalculation of the list, meaning their devices are never checked.
• Recommended Fix: Add the room's joined member count to the memoization dependencies.

3. Night Light Overlay Coverage (Portal Issue)

File: src/app/pages/App.tsx Status: UI Consistency

• Issue: The Night Light (blue light filter) overlay is rendered inside the #root div. However, Cinny's modals, tooltips, and popouts are rendered inside a sibling #portalContainer.
• Impact: Modals and tooltips will appear at full brightness, bypassing the filter.
• Recommended Fix: Move the NightLightOverlay component to the end of document.body or utilize a Portal to render it inside #portalContainer with a high z-index (e.g., 9999).

4. Decrypted Media Memory Leak (Gallery & Lightbox)

File: src/app/features/room/MediaGallery.tsx Status: Performance / Memory

• Issue: Every image in the gallery history is decrypted and converted to a Blob URL simultaneously.
• Impact: Scrolling through long room histories can consume gigabytes of RAM, as Blob URLs are not revoked until the gallery is closed.
• Recommended Fix: Implement virtualization for the gallery grid. Only decrypt and create URLs for items currently in or near the viewport.

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🎨 UI/UX & Visual Consistency

1. Search Button Hidden in E2EE Rooms

File: src/app/features/room/RoomViewHeader.tsx Status: Major UX Regression

• Issue: The message search icon is hidden in encrypted rooms.
• Impact: Users cannot access the "Encrypted Room Search" feature (local cache scan) from the room header, even though the feature is implemented and functional in the search page.
• Recommended Fix: Remove the !encryptedRoom condition from the Search button renderer in the header.

2. TDS Design Law Violations (Hardcoded Hex)

Files: src/app/components/GifPicker.tsx, src/app/components/VoiceMessageRecorder.tsx Status: Styling Integrity

• Issue: Multiple custom components use hardcoded hex values (e.g., #FF6B00, #060c14) instead of the CSS variables defined in lotus-terminal.css.ts.
• Impact: These components will not adapt if theme tokens are updated in the central TDS file, and they bypass the "Design Law" established in the backlog.
• Recommended Fix: Replace all hardcoded hex values with var(--lt-accent-orange), var(--lt-bg-secondary), etc.

3. Missing CSS Variable --bg-surface-variant

Files: src/app/features/message-search/MessageSearch.tsx, src/app/components/VoiceMessageRecorder.tsx Status: UI Bug

• Issue: Components use var(--bg-surface-variant), which is not defined in either index.css or lotus-terminal.css.ts.
• Impact: Backgrounds for the voice recorder and search cache panels appear transparent or fall back to browser defaults.
• Recommended Fix: Define --bg-surface-variant in both global themes and the TDS theme, or switch to using --bg-surface-low.

4. Recent vs. Top Emoji Logic Discrepancy

File: src/app/plugins/recent-emoji.ts Status: Logic Inconsistency

• Issue: The "Quick Reactions" hover bar is described as showing the "3 most recently used emojis." However, the implementation sorts by usage count, meaning it actually shows the "most frequently used" emojis.
• Impact: If a user uses a new emoji, it will not appear in the quick reactions until its total usage count exceeds the current top 3. This contradicts user expectations for a "recently used" list.
• Recommended Fix: Update getRecentEmojis to sort by the order in the array (which is unshifted in addRecentEmoji) or add a timestamp to each emoji entry in the account data to allow true chronological sorting.

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🔍 Technical Refinements

1. Incomplete Python Comment Highlighting

File: src/app/utils/syntaxHighlight.ts Status: Medium Priority

• Issue: Python comments (#) are only highlighted if they appear at the very start of a line. Inline comments like print("hello") # comment are treated as plain text.
• Recommended Fix: Update the detection logic to allow # after whitespace or tabs.

// Recommended
(i === 0 || code[i - 1] === '\n' || code[i - 1] === ' ' || code[i - 1] === '\t')

2. Duplicate Bookmarking Race Condition

File: src/app/hooks/useBookmarks.ts Status: Data Integrity

• Issue: Rapidly clicking the bookmark button can trigger multiple setAccountData calls that read from the same stale local cache, potentially overwriting each other.
• Recommended Fix: Implement a queue or locking mechanism for account data updates to ensure atomicity.

3. Presence Updater Matrix Base URL Access

File: src/app/hooks/usePresenceUpdater.ts Status: Best Practice

• Issue: The code uses a hacky cast: (mx as unknown as { baseUrl: string }).baseUrl.
• Recommended Fix: Use the standard SDK method mx.getHomeserverUrl().

4. Encrypted Search Misses Historic Events

File: src/app/features/message-search/useLocalMessageSearch.ts Status: Functional Limitation

• Issue: The search only scans room.getLiveTimeline().getEvents().
• Impact: If a user has scrolled back and loaded historic messages into linked timelines, those messages will be ignored by the search.
• Recommended Fix: Iterate through all timelines in the room's primary TimelineSet using room.getUnfilteredTimelineSet().getTimelines().

5. useAccountDataCallback Memoization Risk

File: src/app/hooks/useAccountDataCallback.ts Status: Maintenance Risk

• Issue: The hook attaches/detaches a Matrix event listener every time the onAccountData callback changes. If a component using this hook does not memoize the callback (via useCallback), the listener will be churned on every render.
• Impact: Potential performance degradation and subtle event-handling bugs if listeners are added/removed multiple times per second.
• Recommended Fix: Add a JSDoc warning to the hook file instructing developers to always wrap the callback in useCallback.

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📝 Documentation & Accessibility

1. Documentation Discrepancy (EC Spotlight)

Files: LOTUS_FEATURES.md vs matrix/README.md

• Issue: LOTUS_FEATURES.md claims there is an "Auto-revert spotlight on screenshare" feature. matrix/README.md correctly states this was removed as it broke fullscreen views.
• Action: Update LOTUS_FEATURES.md to remove the mention.

2. Presence Badge Accessibility

File: src/app/components/presence/Presence.tsx Status: Accessibility

• Issue: aria-labelledby refers to a Tooltip ID that may not be in the DOM when the badge is first read by a screen reader.
• Recommended Fix: Add a descriptive aria-label directly to the Badge component (e.g., aria-label="Status: Online").

3. Missing Status Tooltip on Text

File: src/app/features/room/MembersDrawer.tsx Status: UX Improvement

• Issue: In the members drawer, the status message text is truncated but does not have a tooltip. The tooltip only exists on the small presence dot.
• Recommended Fix: Wrap the status text in a TooltipProvider to allow users to read long status messages.