archy/docs/paid-content-recovery-followup.md

Paid content: recovery before response headers

Status: OPEN, identified during IndeeHub rental integration on 2026-10-06. This is a source-confirmed gap. No new real-money failure was induced.

Confirmed boundaries

api/rpc/content.rs::handle_content_download_peer_paid checks the existing purchase index and FIPS route before calling a wallet. It persists ownership through content_owned::record_purchase_stream only after successful response headers. Thus the previously qualified interrupted cached-body/seek cases do not establish recovery during wallet preparation or after seller settlement but before headers reach the buyer.

Cashu send_token_at may swap inputs remotely before saving the local wallet and returning the prepared token. Its deterministic output derivation supports wallet restoration, but is not a correlated purchase operation journal. Concurrent mutations also need an operation-wide wallet reservation/commit boundary, beyond the existing atomic file writer. Fedimint operation IDs and out-of-band note recovery must be handled using that backend's actual semantics.

The seller currently redeems a presented token in content_server::serve_content after preparing readable media. It does not persist a Cashu purchase receipt that can authorize subsequent delivery without attempting redemption again. A token hash alone is not evidence that redemption settled.

Immediate correction being qualified

Choose the ecash backend before either wallet operation begins. An explicit choice remains pinned; automatic selection reads the home-mint spendable Cashu balance and selects Fedimint only when that balance is insufficient. Never fall through to another wallet after an attempted operation returns an error: the remote mint may already have consumed inputs. Reject unknown method names. This prevents a second backend operation in the same RPC; it does not solve crash recovery or make a fresh user retry safe.

Required implementation and acceptance

1. Persist an unpredictable purchase ID and immutable seller/buyer/content/hash, terms, amount, method and protocol capability before any mint/spend. A damaged or ambiguous journal must block a second payment, preserving original data.
2. Journal wallet input reservations and recoverable output derivation/operation IDs before a remote mutation. Commit wallet change, prepared token and operation result durably. Serialize all competing wallet mutations, including receives, melts and restores, without deadlocking nested operations.
3. Persist the seller's receipt/settlement transition. Recover ambiguous receipt writes through correlated wallet operation results, not balance changes or acceptance of the client's claimed outcome. Repeated delivery requests for the same settled purchase must not redeem/pay again.
4. Bind delivery authorization to authenticated buyer and immutable content/terms, with an unpredictable capability. Never turn a public on-chain address into a bearer authorization credential. Negotiate updated peer capability; do not assume old nodes implement this receipt protocol.
5. Retain prepared tokens privately until delivery or confirmed refund settles. Record actual refunded amounts/fees. A failed refund is not proof of payment failure and must not clear an ambiguous purchase for another charge.
6. Exercise interruption at every write/send/receipt boundary, duplicate requests, process reconstruction, full restart, corrupt journal, disk-full, changed offers, wrong buyer, incompatible peer, and mint/federation rejection. Prove wallet conservation and one settlement with disposable deterministic fixtures before bounded live payments. Keep rented cache authorization separate from permanent paid-file ownership.

The existing two-node 1-sat purchases and cached-delivery tests remain valid for their documented scope. They must not be relabeled as acceptance of these open initial-payment/recovery requirements. No additional real payment is needed to prove the immediate backend-selection regression.

Backend-selection qualification

The immediate correction passes 12 focused content RPC tests, including injected ambiguous Cashu/Fedimint failures proving the unselected wallet future is never polled, explicit-choice preservation and unknown-method rejection. The full isolated suite passes 1,749 tests, zero failures, five existing ignored tests. Logs: /tmp/archy-peer-payment-selection-tests.log and /tmp/archy-peer-payment-selection-full-tests.log. Only the required isolated runner was used. No live wallet data or real payments were involved. This is source/test qualification; production build and deployment are separate.

Recovery-metadata prerequisite qualified (2026-10-06)

Seed reads now distinguish genuine absence from I/O failure. Loading a damaged recovery source returns an error instead of silently enabling random outputs. A configured recovery source must reserve/derive outputs successfully before a mint request; derivation/counter failures no longer fall back to random secrets. Legacy wallets which genuinely have no seed retain their existing output path.

Counter reservations reject empty/corrupt/unreadable existing files rather than resetting to zero. Updates use an owner-only sibling temporary file, file flush, atomic replacement and directory flush before returning a usable reservation. Invalid derivation is rejected before reserving counters. Existing counter serialization within the management process is preserved; this is not a claim that a new cross-process wallet lock or the purchase journal has been implemented.

Six new regressions cover damaged seed/counter reads, preserved damaged files, concurrent reservations/reload/private permissions/temp cleanup, invalid keysets, no silent random-output fallback and explicit legacy behavior. Wallet-focused isolated result:150passed,0failed,1existing ignored. Full isolated result: 1,755passed,0failed,5existing ignored. Evidence: /tmp/archy-wallet-recovery-prerequisites-tests.log and /tmp/archy-wallet-recovery-prerequisites-full-tests.log.

Read-only checks found well-shaped seed/counter JSON on dev and Yaya; no secret values were printed and no wallet files were changed by those checks. Production build/deployment of this prerequisite remains pending. Durable initial purchase intent, mint-operation recovery, seller receipt and refund recovery remain open.

Strict-schema follow-up: an existing counter document must actually contain its counter map. Empty JSON objects and null maps are rejected without modification, not deserialized as a fresh zero state. The full isolated suite again passes 1,755tests,0failures,5existing ignored in /tmp/archy-wallet-recovery-strict-schema-full-tests.log. No live deployment or claim of complete initial-payment recovery is implied.

Additional wallet boundaries found during review (6 October)

Source review of ecash::melt_tokens, swap_between_mints and MintClient::melt_tokens found further work required before full recovery can be accepted. The melt path does not currently submit or retain fee-change outputs, and the caller does not require a PAID response before proceeding. Cross-mint recovery records are written after the remote operation, leaving an interruption window. These are source findings, not newly induced live losses.

The implementation must account for NUT-05 quote states and NUT-08 change using the mint's advertised support, preserve uncertain operations, and verify amount conservation. Reference specifications: https://github.com/cashubtc/nuts/blob/main/05.md and https://github.com/cashubtc/nuts/blob/main/08.md .

Wallet-wide serialization must also include network changes and streaming revenue writes; a load/save outside the operation lock can overwrite another mutation. Current empty-wallet-file handling, file permissions and directory fsync require review as part of durable storage. Counter fail-closed tests do not establish that this larger transaction journal has been implemented.

Wallet storage durability follow-up

Existing empty/whitespace wallet files now fail closed instead of reporting zero; only a missing file creates fresh state. Atomic saves use unique0600 temporary files, file and directory fsync, and cleanup on failure. Concurrency tests prove whole-file replacement (not read-modify-write serialization), private permissions and retained targets on rename failure. Wallet tests:57passed. Full backend qualification passes in /tmp/archy-wallet-storage-tls-full-tests.log. No live wallet was altered. Operation serialization and recovery journal remain open.

Serialized wallet mutations and seed durability

The wallet now serializes public mutations by canonical node data directory, including network changes and seed establishment/import. Independent node fixtures retain separate locks; nested send/swap paths use private implementations under the outer lock. Streaming revenue records use the same boundary, and direct wallet saves are restricted to the wallet module. This is in-process serialization, not a cross-process transaction journal or a claim that an entire payment RPC is recoverable.

Damaged network configuration now errors instead of silently choosing mainnet; only an absent configuration retains the historical mainnet default. The previous seed is durably copied to a unique private backup before atomic replacement, rather than moved away before the replacement write succeeds.

Final isolated suite: 1,764 tests pass, zero failures, five existing skips. Log: /tmp/archy-wallet-mutation-seed-final-tests.log. Regressions include eight simultaneous real HTTP/curve-signed fixture receipts plus sixteen history writes, preserving255sats and24entries; canonical/symlink lock identity; damaged network configuration; and simultaneous seed establishment/unique retained backups. No live wallet data or additional real payments were used.

Still required: correlated purchase and mint-operation journal, recoverable prepared outputs, quote/change handling and seller receipts, interrupted-operation recovery and complete timed-playback integration. Higher-level Minibits claim and purchase flows must pin their network/terms across their entire business operation; serializing individual wallet calls alone does not provide that contract.

Recoverable prepared Cashu swaps

MintClient now separates preparation from execution. Prepared requests contain the exact outputs and private unblinding material, can survive serialization, and validate their mint, commitments, values and keyset before execution. Debug output omits bearer secrets. Recovery uses the original outputs, matches returned curve points independently of response ordering/hex case, and rejects partial, duplicate, unknown or mismatched signatures. An empty restore response remains uncertain; it is never interpreted as permission to spend again.

Real HTTP/curve fixtures simulate a mint consuming inputs and returning500instead of its successful response. A reconstructed client recovers the original valid proofs without a second swap. Negative tests cover changed preparation and malformed recovery. The first run failed an overly strict test comparing JSON bytes with unordered map keys; the corrected test compares semantic contents. Original log: /tmp/archy-prepared-swap-tests.log. Final complete isolated backend suite: 1,767 pass, zero failures, five existing skips, in /tmp/archy-prepared-swap-final-full-tests.log.

This introduces the request/recovery primitive. Existing swap callers still execute immediately; durable wallet reservations and the correlated purchase journal are not wired yet. No live money, wallet state or app deployment changed.

Operation journal qualification in progress

A separate private write-ahead store now records immutable operation ID, network, mint, amount and purchase-context hash alongside the exact request material. Records advance from prepared to saved result to committed; they cannot skip the saved-result boundary. Retries retain the original request, changed terms are rejected, and damaged/unsupported/oversized records block a fresh operation. Files use0600, the journal directory0700, atomic replacement and file/directory flushes. A wallet mutation guard scopes writes to the canonical node directory. The checksum detects accidental corruption; it is not authorization against a process able to edit the node's private state.

The initial full isolated run passed1,773tests with zero failures and five existing skips (/tmp/archy-send-journal-full-tests.log). Review subsequently added explicit sat-unit validation and a negative regression. The final full isolated run also passed1,773tests, zero failures and five existing skips (/tmp/archy-send-journal-final-tests.log). This storage module is not yet connected to wallet reservation/commit or paid-file purchase/receipt handling and has not been deployed. Do not infer complete payment recovery from the storage tests.

The next integration must reserve selected inputs with an operation owner before any remote request, recover the exact prepared outputs, and commit change/history once. A restored result must match all outputs; absence is not proof of failure. An input-state response must account for every requested proof without foreign or duplicate entries. Pending/spent/unknown states must never authorize a new payment. See the current NUT-07 and NUT-09 specifications. Wallet integration still needs crash-boundary fixtures, followed by purchase-context and seller-receipt integration before any new paid-content acceptance claim.

Additional restore checks retained for the next batch

Review of seed restore found that the current NUT-07 consumer verifies response length but not each returned proof identifier. Match every response to the exact requested curve point and reject unknown state values before crediting proofs. Do not treat a same-length response as sufficient. Also prevent a seed scan from making reserved outgoing operation outputs available before that operation's result/commit is recovered. These are source findings; no live restore was run.

Wallet reservation/commit boundaries qualified

The journal can now durably reserve its exact inputs with an operation owner, refuse another operation's reservation, and commit its saved token/change/history once. Recovery after purse-save but before journal-phase-save uses the same stable transaction ID. Changing the selected network cannot redirect that commit into the other purse. Outgoing swap proofs are retained as locally spent, alongside spendable change, so they are not immediately rediscovered as wallet funds.

Four additional regressions cover local restart boundaries, competing operations, network switching and a real HTTP/curve-signature lost-response scenario. The latter reconstructs the journal, restores the original swap outputs, commits twice, and verifies one mint swap, one history entry,4sats sent and4sats change from8. Full isolated qualification:1,777passed, zero failures, five existing skips, /tmp/archy-journal-wallet-commit-tests.log. No real sats or live wallet data used.

These methods are not yet wired into the purchase RPC or a remote-operation executor. Seller receipts, delivery capabilities, ambiguous refunds, melt/change and seed-restore interaction remain open. A passing commit primitive is not full paid-content recovery acceptance.

Seed-restore interaction qualified

NUT-07 responses now require one correctly identified state per requested proof in protocol order, with only defined states accepted. Duplicate requests, foreign or duplicated response identifiers, omissions, reordered entries and unknown states fail closed. Hexadecimal case differences remain accepted.

Seed restore inspects the private send journal before contacting the mint: it blocks unresolved operations for the selected network/mint and excludes committed outgoing token secrets even after legacy purse pruning/removal. Damaged journal records block restoration rather than disappearing from the decision. Other network/mint operations do not block an unrelated valid restore. Prepared swap requests also must cover the bound payment amount before being recorded.

Full isolated qualification:1,779passed, zero failures, five existing skips, /tmp/archy-journal-restore-boundary-tests.log. These source changes remain undeployed. The higher-level purchase/receipt executor remains open.

Recoverable send executor qualified locally

The caller-owned operation now reserves inputs before remote spending, restores the original saved swap after an ambiguous response, and commits its original token/change/history once. Changed payment terms reject reuse. A spent input with no recoverable output blocks another swap. Exact sends support compact v2 wire keyset IDs while retaining the full wallet ID. Seed restoration canonicalizes curve points, rejects foreign or duplicate metadata, and requires durable counter advancement before crediting recovered funds.

The first test run exposed compact-ID comparison and uppercase restore-point matching defects; both were fixed. The final isolated run passed1,783tests with zero failures and five existing skips: /tmp/archy-recoverable-send-executor-final-tests.log. No real payment or deployment was performed. Purchase RPC integration, durable seller settlement/receipt recovery and the end-to-end acceptance remain open.

Recovery preflight now rejects malformed or unsupported restore responses before reserving or spending inputs, and refuses already-issued newly derived outputs. Required restore fields cannot silently default to empty. The malformed-response regression verifies unchanged spendable balance/no swap, then successful retry when the mint responds correctly. Full isolated1,784passed initially; combined catalog-route qualification1,785passed, zero failures/five existing skips.

Recoverable incoming settlement — implementation under qualification

A separate private receive journal now binds a caller-owned UUID to its original network, canonical mint, token hash, agreed minimum net price and purchase-context hash. Incoming proofs are claimed outside the spendable purse. Claims use their mint and secrets, so another operation cannot redeem a differently encoded token or an overlapping subset. The legacy receive entry point also checks these claims.

Preparation verifies recovery support and mint fees before any swap. The exact prepared outputs are then saved before POST. An ambiguous response resumes the same outputs with NUT-09; empty restoration requires every original input to be strictly UNSPENT before the identical request can be retried. No automatic refund is inferred from a missing response. Mixed-mint and non-sat tokens are outside this primitive's deliberately narrow contract.

Commit order is Result → Committing → atomic purse save → Committed. Committing stores a hash of the exact pre-save purse bytes (absence differs from an empty file). The purse contains an independent received:<UUID> commitment marker, separate from prunable history; it contains no bearer proofs. A retry either finds that marker or requires the exact unchanged pre-save purse. A changed purse whose marker is missing causes a manual-recovery hold. In particular, an older wallet writer dropping markers is not treated as permission to re-credit the receipt. Markers must not be compacted with ordinary history. A completed journal receipt returns its original net amount even if the wallet/history was subsequently pruned; it never reconstructs funds merely because its caller retries.

Pending settlement blocks seed restoration for the bound network/mint. Committed incoming outputs remain ordinary wallet funds, subject to the existing mint-state checks during seed restoration; they are not outgoing-token exclusions.

This is a source implementation under test, not a deployed seller receipt or purchase protocol. No real payments were made. Purchase authorization, delivery capabilities, transport correlation, refunds, and Fedimint/melt remain separate open requirements. Test results will be recorded after the isolated runner exits.

Resumed settlement qualification — 6 October

The interrupted session's receive journal, executor and four regression tests were recovered intact from the existing worktree. The old focused log stopped at compilation; it does not establish a test pass. No wallet data was restored, replaced or modified to resume this source work.

Review also found that verify_and_receive_payment, used by the legacy content server, needed the same incoming-proof claim check as ordinary receive_token. It now refuses to redeem another settlement's claimed proofs, including when the mint still considers those proofs unspent. An additional HTTP/curve regression covers a rejected first POST, legacy redemption refusal, a malformed state reply blocking a second POST, and then verified-unspent retry using the exact original request. The new regression must pass before qualification is claimed.

Next integration boundary remains buyer purchase intent → recoverable sender → correlated seller settlement → durable delivery receipt/capability. The current handle_content_download_peer_paid still calls the legacy sender and records ownership after headers; content_server::verify_payment_token still calls the legacy payment verifier. These call sites are not yet the new purchase protocol. Do not deploy these primitives as a claim that pre-header paid-file recovery is complete. Keep the original payment/receipt context for retries and do not send another payment to recover delivery.

Resumption compile checkpoint: /tmp/archy-resumed-receive-tests.log finished compilation successfully in 10m20s, but the requested wallet::payment_tests filter matched zero tests (1,794 filtered out). This is compilation evidence only, not a focused test pass. The module is wallet::ecash::payment_tests. Final-source qualification must include the later legacy-claim guard and fifth receive test; its build is queued behind coordinated IndeeHub/browser/image checks to avoid competing heavy jobs on the development node.

Next implementation batch: purchase/receipt contract

The next source batch should introduce content_purchase journals and protocol fixtures before switching the live RPC entry points. Bind a versioned UUID, verified buyer/seller DIDs, content SHA256/size, immutable terms hash, Cashu network/mint, gross token amount and minimum seller net amount. Account for mint fees explicitly; sending the displayed net price is not sufficient when the seller pays an input fee. ContentItem currently has no content hash, so obtain a stable readable content snapshot and authenticated offer before spending.

The existing content_auth v1 signature covers GET/path/range/time, not payment headers or request bodies. Add a separately domain-separated signed-body proof for purchase requests covering method/path/audience/body hash; do not treat plain X-Federation-DID or appended unsigned purchase headers as authentication. PeerRequest::send_json already provides the transport operation.

Persist the seller contract before calling recoverable receive with its UUID and context hash; persist receipt/capability after settlement. Authenticated status lookup by the same buyer must recover a lost receipt without another redemption. Buyer intent precedes recoverable send and retains its original token privately; retries resume that purchase and retrieve the receipt, rather than refunding or creating another payment after an ambiguous response. Reject unsupported protocol versions before spending. Cover changed content/terms, wrong buyer, duplicate requests, expired offers, interrupted writes and lost settlement/receipt replies with deterministic fixtures before any live purchase acceptance.

The next batch now exists as the initially unreferenced core/archipelago/src/content_purchase.rs: strict versioned contracts/context hashes, private original buyer tokens, seller settlement and durable random receipts, buyer receipt/delivery states, and cross-process journal locking with flushed atomic private records. Six temporary-directory tests cover restart, exact replay, changed terms/results, expired new offers versus existing recovery, foreign receipts, corrupt/nonregular records and invalid state transitions. It performs no wallet or network operations. Root integration will declare the module for combined qualification; passing tests are still pending. Callers must authenticate offer/receipt provenance and discover/reuse an existing purchase UUID before generating another one; this primitive does not yet supply that business-level lookup or the transport/serving integration.

Review caught a cancellation ordering issue in the asynchronous rename commit point. Purchase journals and the existing purse/send/receive writers now perform rename plus directory flush synchronously while their guard is held, so cancelled async work cannot later overwrite a newer writer. A deterministic purchase test pauses after flushing the temporary file but before commit, cancels the writer, then verifies that a subsequent token commit survives and the stale temporary file is removed. This is a source correction awaiting the combined isolated run.

Next RPC/UI batch acceptance must also include node-side discovery of an existing pending purchase by authenticated buyer/seller/content before minting a fresh UUID. Caller-only UUID retention is insufficient after lost browser/client state. The current journal's UUID binding does not yet implement this lookup. The UI must show reserved/pending funds separately from spendable funds; a spendable balance of zero must not be presented as zero total owned funds while an operation still holds them. Neither requirement is satisfied by the wallet primitive tests.

Transport integration detail: the new v2 peer proof hashes the exact request body. PeerRequest::send_json currently serializes independently inside its FIPS/Tor helpers. Add a serialize-once POST-bytes transport before wiring purchase routes; sign and send those exact bytes, rather than signing a separately serialized JSON value then allowing another .json() call to choose the wire bytes. Existing content dispatch currently routes GET reads only, so POST purchase routes remain a separate integration step. Existing v1 GET authentication must remain compatible.

Combined resumed qualification passed — 6 October

The full isolated runner passed 1,808 tests, zero failures, five existing ignored tests, with no filter. Compilation took 9m07s; isolated execution took 15.01s. This includes all five recoverable-receive regressions, six purchase journal tests (including cancellation ordering), eleven media-registration tests, and the independently coordinated v2 request-authentication coverage. Only scripts/test-backend-isolated.sh executed backend tests.

Evidence: /tmp/archy-resumed-combined-backend-tests.log. The exact tested coordinated tree was HEAD 1c6daab92a4e7c9fa70b81489c355a35163369b5 plus git diff HEAD --binary, SHA256 e9a8d75a81a966904d0929a1a1869adb892d266ef1b6b59580b7543a6b0ca7a4, saved privately at /tmp/archy-resumed-combined-tested-source.patch. New source SHA256 values:

• content_purchase.rs: 5d597f48c24ab96d4a7ee348ef641cc1f2d98c411574c46f14c579bea9930e84
• wallet/receive_journal.rs: 43333ec21a6b1f7613078083d8114ef934bd44af69c9e93138e58a419cb919ac
• media_registration.rs: 45450e99b50eff3d1115c2b9787e7235e9772209151a06fd09d62c47d0bd93a5
• Its fixtures/v1.json: 8fbfcbc3beb0b4758fadf677c39c688d55a89ed200d8a7cd8741de0da569feb3

All captured source hashes were rechecked unchanged at test completion before this evidence update. Machine-readable provenance is in /tmp/archy-resumed-combined-source-provenance.json. The test suite's isolated subprocess case also prints a one-test result; it is not a second full run.

No real payment, wallet replacement, deployment or release occurred. The current purchase module is a qualified local journal primitive, not a wired purchase RPC, authenticated seller offer/receipt transport, or serving capability. Scratch acceptance/deadline/executor work in /tmp/archy-purchase-executor-next is separate and is NOT included in these test results. Explicit seller acceptance before buyer spending and retained late-settlement eligibility are the next batch.

New live report: failed Lightning blocks the other payment methods

The 6 October operator test reproduced a distinct payment-choice dead end. Yaya's outgoing LND record at 23:23:41 UTC is a 2-sat terminal FAILED payment with FAILURE_REASON_INSUFFICIENT_BALANCE. The old backend turned that state into an RPC exception; PeerFiles retained its invoice as unresolved and hid ecash forever. The generic frontend Lightning helper also treated unknown returned statuses as success. Both source paths now distinguish failed, pending and succeeded.

The frontend keeps the failed attempt's receipt/history, but permits another method only after an explicit returned failure or read-only lnd.paymentstatus confirmation for that saved hash. It supports old deployed backends that throw for terminal failures. An existing saved attempt can be checked without asking for another invoice or sending another payment. Unknown, unavailable, possibly settled and corrupt saved attempts remain blocked from a second payment; delivery recovery remains available. This does not cancel the seller's invoice or claim that an externally displayed invoice cannot subsequently be paid.

Focused qualification passed 108 tests across PeerFilesLightning and rpc-client: /tmp/archy-payment-switch-ui-tests.log. Coverage includes returned terminal failure, old-backend exceptions, persisted failed-attempt recovery, ambiguous status retaining its block, and unknown status never becoming success. The new Rust LND status test is awaiting the coordinated combined isolated backend run. These changes are not yet claimed deployed or accepted on the three real nodes.

Separate live evidence must remain open: Yaya's 100-sat ecash request to Archi Dev Box at 23:25:16 UTC encountered an unavailable FIPS route/connection timeout; the existing backend logged reclaim at 23:25:33. Investigation did not initiate that reclaim or any payment. Dev's FIPS/backend services and listeners were active, but the journals show repeated control-socket/seed/peer connection timeouts. Framework access was restored and actual hostname framework-pt verified. At 23:24:58 its seller catalog pruned Photos/web54321-balanced-2.mp4 because its backing file was missing; neither supported source path exists. This is separate from the closed historical Framework LND-startup incident. Raw node journals and sanitized payment summaries are retained privately under /tmp/archy-payment-switch-incident/ (mode 0600).

Acceptance still requires real-node no-charge checks of failed-Lightning method switching, unknown/settled delivery recovery, reconnect and cross-method state, seller missing-file/changed-catalog feedback, and FIPS delivery between Yaya, Framework and dev. No new real payment, proof mutation, data deletion, or pending state reset was performed during this investigation.

Further review separated three remaining cases from that targeted fix. An old failed local receipt must not be reused automatically for a newly displayed QR; request a fresh seller invoice. Known in-flight Lightning recovery should return promptly with retained receipt and a check-later action, instead of locking the UI behind a long delivery request. Spending RPCs must use a single network attempt: automatic timeout/502 retries of legacy ecash purchase or on-chain send can otherwise repeat a mutation. These frontend refinements and two additional regressions are prepared; their focused rerun is queued behind backend isolation.

The larger payment-flow followup remains required: persist per-item on-chain address/amount before broadcast, preserve txid and uncertain send state on close and reload, and resume seller/status/cache lookup rather than issue another send. Persist ecash dispatch intent and recover through authoritative backend purchase state rather than call a potentially spending legacy endpoint as a status check. Unpaid/failed/ambiguous/settled states must stay distinct across method changes; externally exposed QR invoices/addresses remain payable until their actual expiry or cancellation, and local attempt failure is not evidence of their cancellation. Browser storage is supplemental only: server-owned pending lookup must survive lost client state and another browser. This cannot be called fully fixed by the current Lightning-only recovery improvements.

Current no-payment route check: Yaya's FIPS request to dev's /health timed out before TCP connection after four seconds; the same FIPS endpoint on dev returns 200 locally. The target matches dev's live fips0 address, backend is listening, and nft accepts TCP 5679 on fips0. Both mesh daemons report connected common peers, but no direct link between those two nodes. Further mesh routing diagnosis is required; no firewall or daemon state was changed. Framework's live FileBrowser bind mounts point to filebrowser and filebrowser-data; both were searched for the stale filename, with no match. The persistent ext4 mount is present and its Photos/Videos directories exist. This establishes absence from the current Cloud roots, not deletion everywhere or a justification to rebuild any buyer receipt.

The final focused frontend rerun passed 110 tests across two files in 8.52s (/tmp/archy-payment-switch-ui-tests-final.log), including the fresh-QR and prompt pending-status cases. The combined isolated backend batch passed the LND status regression and all purchase-executor tests, but was not an overall pass: 1,821 passed, one failed, five ignored. Its failure is in the separately owned FIPS duplicate-identity transport assertion; follow-up is underway. The urgent frontend source is frozen for the coordinated production build.

Subsequent read-only route checks by the coordinating agent returned Yaya→dev health 200 twice (2.57s and 0.49s total), with no restart or configuration change. The earlier four-second connect timeout remains valid evidence of an intermittent mesh route problem, not a claim of permanent loss of connectivity.

Resumed live qualification and incremental UI deployment

The d94ff097 compatibility fix passed 110 focused frontend tests and the production UI build. Yaya now serves UI index SHA256 df53b2cae3e8c26c5899fa34a688d1a09dbb250cc7922020301250195cd54a83. Deployment verified the backend binary, session key and every app container's identity/start time remained unchanged. Evidence: /tmp/archy-payment-switch-yaya-deploy.log; rollback: /var/lib/archipelago/support/payment-switch-ui-20261007T000429Z-3702073/rollback.sh. This is the failed-Lightning compatibility fix, not acceptance of every payment method or deployment of the new durable purchase backend. No payment was sent by these checks.

Yaya-to-dev FIPS health probes subsequently recovered without a configuration change or restart. Five further requests returned HTTP 200, taking 0.49–1.14 seconds (/tmp/archy-payment-route-health-samples.json). Earlier 4-second connection timeouts and the delivery failure remain valid evidence of an intermittent path; this does not establish sustained media-route reliability.

The next combined isolated backend run passed 1,821 tests with one failure and five ignored tests. All 377 captured source/build inputs were unchanged. The failure exposed a purchase binding check using a federation display loader that deduplicates onion records. The correction reads the original records under the store lock and rejects ambiguous bindings or mismatched DID/public-key pairs; its rerun is pending. Installer, settlement executor and LND status tests passed within this failed combined run; the full batch is not qualified yet.

Dev subsequently completed the same UI deployment with matching served index, unchanged backend/session/app containers and rollback at /var/lib/archipelago/support/payment-switch-ui-20261007T000454Z-2324163/rollback.sh. Evidence: /tmp/archy-payment-switch-dev-deploy.log. Framework is reachable and healthy but runs a different backend/UI revision; this incremental deployment has not changed it.

Read-only real-attempt validation: Yaya's existing lnd.paymentstatus RPC returns failed, Insufficient channel balance, and 2 sats for the operator's reported Lightning attempt. This verifies the deployed compatibility UI's recovery lookup against the actual existing backend, rather than only fixtures. Private evidence: /tmp/archy-payment-switch-incident/yaya-failed-lightning-rpc-result.private.json. The check did not pay, retry a payment, change a receipt, or infer seller invoice cancellation. Browser interaction with the operator's own saved attempt remains separate from this read-only RPC verification.

Combined qualification after resumed integration

The full isolated backend rerun passed 1,848 tests with zero failures and five existing skips. All 385 recorded source, build and fixture hashes remained unchanged. Evidence: /tmp/archy-qualified-candidate-backend-rerun-tests.log and /tmp/archy-qualified-candidate-backend-rerun-provenance.json. Earlier failed runs remain recorded. This qualifies the current backend primitives and Browse path repair locally; production build and live deployment checks are next. Complete purchase callers, app registration/publication and timed playback acceptance remain open. No real payment or public publication was performed.

Qualified backend deployed to all three working nodes

Local commit b52214f7 passed 1,848 isolated backend tests (zero failures, five existing skips); all 385 source/build/fixture hashes stayed unchanged. The release build completed successfully. Backend SHA256: 697f71af4eb1d7160f16ce97bb21d2238a4adf477990888d9877ba943691d1e4.

The same binary is now installed on dev, Yaya and the actual Framework node. Each deployment preserved node identity, session key, signed node catalog, UI, stopped/uninstalled choices and all app container IDs/start times. Health passed on all three; authenticated owner RPC passed on dev/Yaya. Framework's password was accepted, but its normal dashboard login still requires the operator's TOTP code, so that authenticated dashboard check remains open. Rollback scripts and receipts are retained under each node's support directory and locally in ~/.local/state/archipelago/release-qualification/backend-b52214f7/.

Yaya now advertises the installed V4V /browse route. Real mobile (390px) and desktop (1440px) checks passed Browse, native Nostr login, same-frame playback, previous/next/shuffle and decoded artwork. Evidence is in the native-player follow-up. The native private app image/catalog were not changed.

This deployment includes file availability and minimum on-chain amount checks and the tested recovery primitives. The complete new purchase caller and IndeeHub publication/playback integration remain under development; these are not claimed accepted. No new real payment or public publication was performed.