Held reply to a friend in the replying Bot's own chat: draft looks sent, card detached and names the Bot not the person, no trace after Approve/Reject (regression of #226) #418

Summary

When a friend's line makes my Bot reply and the reply is held for my approval (A side), the held draft already looks like a sent reply, the card floats detached at the bottom right and names the wrong recipient, and after Approve or Reject nothing in the chat says what happened. A rejected reply and a sent reply look the same forever. This is the direct-chat state model #226 asked for (held bubble, controls attached, clear after-state), now seen in the replying Bot's own chat (the #254 path), so it is partly a regression of #226.

Environment

• FlyBot main a7f51e83ffacc4a6e803669d25fdc9e40eef6c44 (Add friend: accept and invite as two labelled groups, Done at the bottom #416), core + plugins/social + plugins/tree on @deepseek-ai/dsh@0.2.0-rc.2, Node 24.21.0.
• Two fresh installs on one Linux box: A :3090 (owner SelfA1238, @selfa1238.home) and B :3091 (owner SelfB1238, @selfb1238.home). Bot Social prod https://47-80-69-220.sslip.io. Both Chiefs on ark/deepseek-v4-flash (real model).
• Friend link: A made a per-Bot invite for A's Chief; B joined it, talking through B's Chief (relationship rel_01M597ETM4MFYM90M80ER53J8G, grant grt_01M597ETM5PK3PNKGZ09R7PC96 → @selfb1238.home). B's Chief is not shared back (one-way per-Bot grant, by design Per-Bot grants leak: accepting a Helper invite exposes the joiner's Chief; face-room Chief shows in Friends' Bots; Manage access wrong/raw #138/Regression of #138: joining a friend's invite still puts the joiner's Chief on the inviter's main list #161). A's Chief = @chief.selfa1238.home, B's talk-through Bot = @chief.selfb1238.home.
• Auto-send was off on both homes at the start.
• Found by product self-test 2026-10-19 12:38 Asia/Shanghai, focus A Friend DM (browser run about 12:41–12:50 Asia/Shanghai). Screenshots stayed on the test machine; what they show is written out below.

Common setup (B talks to A's Chief)

On B, open the sidebar row for A's Chief (Chief + grey SelfA1238 + globe) and send, one at a time, waiting for each answer:

1. Hi Chief, this is B. What is 2+2? Reply in one short line. → A's Chief drafts 4.; on A click Reject.
2. Second test: what is 3+3? One line. → draft 6.; on A click Approve.
3. Third test: what is 4+4? One line. → draft 8.; on A click Always approve.
4. Fourth test: 5+5? One line. and Fifth test: 6+6? One line. → 10. and 12. go out without a card.

Repro

1. Run the common setup steps 1–2. Stay on A's own Chief chat (where B's line lands, see Friend DM: a shared Bot's reply to the grantee is silently denied (grantee's Bot not shared back), never held or delivered #272/A friend Bot's reply to a typed DM is held on its owner and no approval card ever shows (overlay hook crash, no in-chat card for the replying Bot) #254) while each reply is drafted.
2. Before deciding, read the chat and the card. Click Reject on 4., then Approve on 6..
3. After each decision, read the chat, the sidebar row and B's chat.

Actual (A, the approver)

• The held draft looks sent. After › Thought it through, the draft 4. is an ordinary grey Bot bubble, the same as any delivered reply. No held style, no "waiting" mark on it.
• The card is detached and names the wrong party. It floats at the bottom right above the composer, far from the bubble, and reads Waiting for approval / Chief → Chief / 4., with a blue Always approve text link on the left and Approve (primary) and Reject on the right. The recipient is B's talk-through Bot; the person who gets the line is SelfB1238, and the card does not say the line goes to SelfB1238. Screenshot 06-A-second-card-before-approve.png: A's Chief chat with B's two lines (labelled SelfB1238, grey person icon), the NEW divider, bubbles 4. and 6. that look identical, and the card for 6. alone at the bottom right.
• After Reject: the card shows Rejected for a moment and disappears. The bubble 4. stays and still looks sent; the sidebar row preview still reads 4.. Screenshot 04-A-after-reject.png: chat ends with the plain bubble 4., row preview 4., no card, no note.
• After Approve: the card disappears with no Sent trace. Screenshot 08-A-after-approve-no-status.png: bubbles 4. (rejected) and 6. (sent) look exactly the same.
• No waiting marker in the list. The only mark on the Chief row is a small orange dot on its avatar, which is there in every screenshot before and after the decisions (04, 06, 08, 09), so it does not read as "waiting for you".
• B got nothing for 4. (rejected) and 6. arrived once approved. B never sees that a reply is waiting. Per social.md invariant 8 ("The sender sees nothing until it is approved") that part is by design; noted only so a maintainer can confirm.

Why (code read on a7f51e8; hunch)

• The held style exists only for face rooms: core/src/client/user-message.js L147 (held requires room.origin === 'face-to-face') and the GroupMessage held-line state (Face-to-face join/waiting/leave polish: silent disabled Join, frozen countdown, waiting card twice, Leave next to Auto-send and unconfirmed in waiting, held lines shown twice #306, core/src/client/cells.js). A local hold of a Bot's own auto-reply in its own chat has no bubble state, so the DSH assistant turn renders the draft as a normal reply.
• The card is the flybot.session.dock slot social-approval (plugins/social/client.js L1927, ChatApproval ~L898–931), always drawn in the dock above the composer, not next to the bubble. After a decision it renders Approved/Rejected briefly and then the item leaves the list, so nothing persists.
• Chief → Chief: holdParties (~L870) uses item.toName (the receiving Bot) instead of the person (owner of @chief.selfb1238.home).
• docs/subsystems/social.md disagrees with itself on card placement (L72 "left-aligned like a bubble", L104 "right-aligned bubbles").

Expected (FlyBot design: in-chat approval with explicit buttons, simplicity/consistency)

• A held reply is visibly held where it is: the draft bubble has the pending style (as face rooms do, fix(social): plain face-room lines do not start Bot turns; UI polish (#167, #166) #168/Face-to-face join/waiting/leave polish: silent disabled Join, frozen countdown, waiting card twice, Leave next to Auto-send and unconfirmed in waiting, held lines shown twice #306) and the Approve / Reject buttons and the standing-choice link sit on that bubble (or the card replaces the bubble in place), owner only. Not a second copy floating elsewhere.
• The card says who will get it, by person: Chief → SelfB1238 (with the friend naming from Friend's Bot rows: two name formats ('Helper · SelfB0023's Bot' vs 'SelfA0023's Chief'), two-line wrap, no preview, inset highlight, faint marker, same avatar as own Chief #384 where a Bot is named).
• After Approve: the bubble becomes a normal reply with a quiet Sent meta (or nothing, but distinct from rejected).
• After Reject: the bubble stays as a muted/struck Not sent (or is replaced by a one-line You didn't send this reply. note); the sidebar preview does not show the rejected text.
• While something waits, the Chief row shows the same wait badge that 1:1 friend chats and rooms get (flybot.chatApprovals / bot.pendingCount, social.md L73), and it clears on decide.
• Approval only via explicit buttons ([Feature RFC] Agent inbox board: one place for tasks, approvals and failures (personal first, team second) #349).

Suggested scope / files

• core/src/client/user-message.js, core/src/client/cells.js (held state for a local Bot reply held by flybot/approvals; match by approval id like room.pendingApprovals).
• plugins/social/client.js: ChatApproval, ChatApprovalDock, holdParties, approvalsForOpenChat (~L933).
• core/src/host/hooks.js (release / reject path) so a decided hold leaves a marker on the turn.
• docs/subsystems/social.md (one card-placement rule).
• Tests: plugins/social/test/social.test.js, core client tests for the held/decided bubble.

Acceptance criteria

• Before a decision the held reply is visibly different from a sent one and carries the decision buttons in place.
• The card names the person who will receive it (SelfB1238).
• After Reject the reply is shown as not sent, and the list preview does not show it as the last message.
• After Approve the reply looks sent; rejected and sent replies are distinguishable.
• The Bot's sidebar row shows a wait badge while a hold is open and clears immediately on decide.

Related: #226 (closed, same model for the friend's chat), #254, #271, #278, #306, #371, #349.