The first version refused clients outright. That was right for the only
message that existed — a hosted instance telling its administrator about
their plan — and it stopped being right the moment a message needed to
reach the *clients* of a shared instance, where the administrator is the
operator and the customers are client accounts.
The unsafe fix would have been to drop the guard and let each listener
check `isStaff`. The safe one is to make every caller say who it is
talking to and have core enforce it: `show()` now takes a required
`audience` with no default, and a message aimed elsewhere is dropped
before it reaches the props. A listener that forgets therefore reaches
nobody rather than everybody, which is the direction a mistake should
fall.
An unrecognised audience reaches nobody either, and is ignored rather
than thrown — a listener aimed at the wrong people should show nothing,
not break the page it was decorating.
The old "a client is never shown one" test became "a message for staff
reaches no client, even from a listener that never checks", which is the
property that actually matters and the one the enforcement provides. Two
more pin the other directions: a client message reaches clients and no
staff, and an unknown audience reaches neither.
cloud-modules declares `staff` for the free-plan band, and its test fake
enforces the same rule, so a listener aimed at the wrong audience fails
in the package's own suite rather than passing there and misbehaving in
the host.
A message worth showing was only on the dashboard, which means somebody
who works in Files and Clients all day never meets it. It now also sits
behind an icon next to the notification bell, and that is on every page.
**One shared prop, not two.** "The same message in both places" is the
requirement, and two props would have drifted the first time anybody
edited one — so the hook moved out of DashboardController into
HandleInertiaRequests, and the dashboard reads the same shared value the
header does. The band and the dropdown also share the component that
renders the words, for the same reason: the reliable way to keep two
renderings identical is not to have two.
Renamed with it. ResolvingDashboardCallout was accurate for about an hour
and became a lie the moment it appeared somewhere else; it is
ResolvingAnnouncement now, and the prop is `announcement`. Free to rename
because nothing has shipped yet — the only other reference was
cloud-modules', by string, updated alongside.
The icon follows UpdateAvailableIcon beside it: absent entirely when there
is nothing to say rather than a dead control, and a plain dot instead of a
count, because there is only ever one of these and a "1" would invite
somebody to look for the second.
Two tests worth naming. One asserts the message reaches a page that is not
the dashboard, which is the whole point of the addition. The other asserts
a client is shown nothing even from a listener that sets it
unconditionally — a client's header carries the bell too, and staff
messages must not reach it however careless the listener.
Two seams, in the shape docs/extension-points-architecture.md settles on:
a Laravel event with a mutable payload, dispatched unconditionally, and
with nothing listening the documented default holds. A community
installation gets an empty list and a null callout, which is exactly what
it had before.
ResolvingNavigationLinks exists because the sidebar is a hardcoded array
in app-sidebar.tsx, so a package could not contribute to it at all — the
nav entry was a separate manual edit every time a package grew a screen,
and being manual it was forgotten more than once. Staff-only, decided in
HandleInertiaRequests rather than trusted to each listener: these render
in the administration area, and a client's portal shows their own files
and nothing about the installation. There is a test that a listener adding
unconditionally still reaches no client.
ResolvingDashboardCallout is one band above the widget grid rather than a
widget in it. The grid is a closed list of keys that dashboard.tsx renders
one by one and each viewer arranges, so a message that mattered would sit
wherever somebody dragged it, or under a fold, or switched off. One at a
time, first listener wins: a dashboard that can accumulate banners
accumulates them, and the second is what teaches people to skip the first.
Core learns nothing about what either seam carries. Titles, URLs and copy
all arrive from the listener, and that is not fastidiousness — the first
caller is the hosted edition's link to its own customer portal and its
pitch to free instances, which is commercial copy belonging to one
offering and has no business sitting in the public repository because the
sidebar happens to live here.
An external link renders as a plain anchor opening in a new tab, never an
Inertia <Link>: Link expects a page component back and another origin will
not give it one, so it fails without saying so. It is also never marked
active — nothing outside this app is the page you are on.
ignacionelson