The app forgot everything it did the moment it exited. The Rust half
logged through env_logger to stdout only -- invisible to anyone who
launched from a desktop icon, and on Android worse than that: stdout is
not logcat, so the backend produced no visible output at all on the
platform carrying this project's hardest bugs. The autoplay deadlock,
the truncated-stream restart and the background-audio stall were all
diagnosed by talking a user through `adb logcat`, because there was no
other way to see anything. A panic left nothing behind at all.
Logs now go to a size-capped rotating file, to logcat on Android, and to
the webview console in dev. A panic is recorded with its backtrace before
the process dies. The frontend's messages are forwarded into the same
file, so one timeline holds both halves of the app in order -- which is
what makes a race between them legible after the fact, and races between
them are the expensive bug class here.
Redaction runs in the log FORMATTER, not at export time. A credential
sitting in a file on the device is already a disclosure; stripping it on
the way out would be too late. The exporter redacts a second time to
cover files written by builds that predate this. api_key, X-Emby-Token,
Authorization, "AccessToken" and Token="..." all reduce to [REDACTED],
while host, item ids and filenames are deliberately kept -- a log scrubbed
of those is one nobody can debug anything from. Server URLs keep scheme
and host and drop any embedded user:pass@.
Two things the tests caught that review would not have:
- redact_headers recursed on its own output. The replacement keeps the
header NAME, so the next call matched the same header forever; the
test died with a stack overflow. It is a forward scan now.
- The frontend forwarder used `void plugin.error(...)`. `void` discards
a promise's value but not its rejection, so in any webview without
IPC -- a unit test, SSR, a browser preview -- every log line became an
unhandled rejection. 20 of them showed up the first time coverage
ran. Each call now attaches a catch.
Only info and above cross the IPC boundary: debug is per-tick player
state and forwarding it would be thousands of calls a minute for output
nobody reads. A failing forwarder never propagates and never prevents the
console write.
Nothing is transmitted anywhere. The export writes a zip and reports its
path; the user attaches it themselves, which is also what keeps this from
becoming telemetry. An Android share intent is explicitly out of scope --
it is Kotlin work that belongs with the other native code.
The panic hook chains to the previous hook rather than replacing it,
because utils/lock.rs installs a silencing hook around tests that provoke
poisoned locks on purpose.
Spec in docs/specs/diagnostics-and-logging.md; UR-078 / DR-218 / UT-209.
Verified: 1079 frontend tests and the coverage gate, 759 Rust tests,
clippy -D warnings, svelte-check 0 errors, and cargo check for
aarch64-linux-android.
Specs index
Feature specs for JellyTau. Start a new one from SPEC-TEMPLATE.md and run it past SPEC-REVIEW-CHECKLIST.md before accepting it.
What lives here
Only work that has not shipped. Once a spec is fully implemented its design is folded into the architecture docs — which are the maintained description of the build — and the spec file is deleted. Git history keeps the original, including its rejected alternatives and acceptance criteria; the architecture docs keep the reasoning that a future change still needs.
So: a file in this directory is a promise, not a description. If you want to know how something works, read docs/architecture/. If you want to know what is planned, read here.
Status vocabulary
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Proposed | Written, not accepted. Nothing built. |
| Accepted | Agreed as the design; implementation not started or not finished. |
| Partially implemented | Some parts shipped; the spec names what is left. |
| Design authority | No code of its own — it records a decision later specs act on. |
Next free requirement ids (always re-check requirements.md before allocating): UR-077, IR-033, DR-215. Three specs below suggested ids that have since been taken by other work; each carries a ⚠️ note at the top.
Partially implemented
| Spec | What landed | What is left |
|---|---|---|
| frontend-domain-model.md | Catalog surface: MediaKind, from_jellyfin isolated, ticks → ms |
primaryImageTag → imageId (~30 sites); player/session/reporting tick math; stream.type |
| libmpv2-migration.md | LICENSE |
The libmpv → libmpv2 crate swap |
| read-through-media-cache.md | DR-126…128, DR-133…138 — cache entries are download rows; local playback of downloads | DR-121/122/124/125 — the player quality selector and the read-through capture |
| scoped-search-boundary-implementation.md | Stage 1: SearchScope owned by Rust (DR-063…067) |
Stage 2: result-side grouping (GROUP_ITEM_TYPES still in searchScope.ts) |
Not started
| Spec | Blocked on / note |
|---|---|
| build-provenance.md | build.rs is still bare. ⚠️ suggested id DR-093 is taken. |
| player-facade-enforcement.md | ~60 commands.player* sites still outside the facade; no lint rule. ⚠️ suggested id DR-095 is taken. |
| windows-native-audio-backend.md | Blocked on the libmpv2 swap. ⚠️ suggested id IR-030 is taken. |
Design authority
| Spec | Role |
|---|---|
| playback-backend-unification.md | Why video cannot unify onto one native engine and audio can. The audio half has since shipped on Android; Windows has not. |
| scoped-search-boundary.md | The boundary design the check:boundary rule came from. Stage 1 built. |
| scoped-search.md | Superseded in part — its "frontend only, no Rust changes" decision is the leak the boundary spec reversed. UX still current. |
Where the shipped specs went
Sixteen specs were folded into the architecture docs and deleted (2026-08-21). Where to look for each:
| Shipped work | Now documented in |
|---|---|
| Account menu & global chrome | 02-svelte-frontend.md — App Shell and Chrome |
| Library mosaic | 02-svelte-frontend.md — Library Mosaic |
| Series current-episode navigation | 02-svelte-frontend.md — Series and Episode Navigation |
| Downloads as an offline library | 02-svelte-frontend.md — Downloaded Browse |
| Favourites browsing | 01-rust-backend.md — Favorites System |
| Streaming bitrate cap | 01-rust-backend.md — Streaming quality ladder |
| Locally-indexed search | 03-data-flow.md — Search Flow; 01-rust-backend.md — Background workers |
| Offline downloaded-only filter | 06-downloads-and-offline.md — Offline Catalog Visibility |
| Audio equalizer · Android audio settings parity | 05-platform-backends.md — Audio settings on ExoPlayer |
| Android native video spike | 05-platform-backends.md — Native Video Compositing |
| Video background audio | 05-platform-backends.md — Background Audio Handoff |
| Traceability gate repair | traceability-ci.md |
| Boundary tripwire hardening | scripts/check-frontend-boundary.sh (its header is the spec) |
| Playback docs corrections · req-coverage script removal | Nothing to document — both were corrections that have been applied |