feat(web): make a dead connection unmistakable instead of a red dot

Opening Codeman with nothing reachable (phone off the tailnet, VPN down,
server stopped) rendered a normal-looking UI: the service worker serves the
cached app shell, every /api call fails, and the only tell was an 8px red dot
in the header corner. On a phone that reads as "there are no sessions".

Two surfaces, chosen by whether there is anything worth looking at:

- Full-screen overlay while no server state has loaded this page load. It
  names the host, lists the three things to check (network, VPN/Tailscale,
  server), counts down to the next retry, and offers "Retry now" plus
  "Show cached view" to demote itself to the banner.
- Non-blocking banner once state HAS loaded, so a mid-session drop leaves the
  terminal scrollback readable.

A 2.5s grace keeps a COM deploy (SSE is back in ~200ms) from flashing the
banner every release; navigator.onLine === false skips the grace, since the
device saying "no network" is never a blip. Retry re-arms the terminal
WebSocket as well as SSE: planWsReconnect can give up outright, and the SSE
backoff caps at 30s, so waiting it out is not always an option.

The decision is pure (computeConnectionLossUi in constants.js, unit-tested in
a node VM like the WS reconnect policy); app.js only writes the DOM.
This commit is contained in:
Codeman maintainer
2026-08-09 15:56:44 +02:00
parent b1614e89fc
commit 696339fe12
7 changed files with 675 additions and 1 deletions
+79
View File
@@ -180,6 +180,81 @@ function planWsReconnect(code, attempt) {
return { action: 'reconnect', delayMs };
}
// Connection-loss UI policy.
//
// With the service worker serving the cached app shell, Codeman still *renders*
// when the server is unreachable (phone off the tailnet, VPN down, server
// stopped): a dashboard with no sessions and an 8px red dot in the header
// corner. That reads as "there are no sessions", not "you are not connected".
// This decides what the app surfaces instead:
//
// 'overlay': full-screen "can't reach Codeman". Used while the page has
// never loaded server state, where the UI behind it is empty
// anyway, so blocking it costs nothing and explains everything.
// 'banner': non-blocking bar under the header. Used once state HAS loaded,
// so the terminal scrollback stays readable while the link is down.
// 'hidden': connected, or still inside the grace window.
//
// Grace: a COM deploy restarts the server and SSE is back in ~200ms. Shouting
// on every deploy trains the user to ignore the warning, so a transport that is
// merely *not yet connected* gets CONNECTION_LOSS_GRACE_MS to recover.
// `navigator.onLine === false` skips the grace entirely: the device itself is
// saying there is no network, which is never a 200ms blip.
//
// Pure: no DOM, no timers, no side effects. `now` is passed in.
const CONNECTION_LOSS_GRACE_MS = 2500;
function computeConnectionLossUi(input) {
const {
isOnline = true,
status = 'connected',
everLoaded = false,
downSince = null,
now = 0,
nextRetryAt = null,
overlayDismissed = false,
retryPending = false,
} = input || {};
const hidden = { mode: 'hidden', kind: 'connected', title: '', detail: '', retryInSec: null };
// The browser's own offline flag outranks the transport state: no network
// means no reconnect is coming until it returns.
const hardOffline = !isOnline || status === 'offline';
if (!hardOffline) {
if (status === 'connected') return hidden;
const downMs = downSince == null ? 0 : Math.max(0, now - downSince);
if (downMs < CONNECTION_LOSS_GRACE_MS) return { ...hidden, kind: 'connecting' };
}
// Dismissing the overlay ("show cached view") demotes it to the banner for
// the rest of this outage, never back to invisible.
const mode = everLoaded || overlayDismissed ? 'banner' : 'overlay';
// A retry the user just triggered has no scheduled time; the caller renders
// an indeterminate "Retrying…" for null.
const retryInSec =
retryPending || nextRetryAt == null ? null : Math.max(0, Math.ceil((nextRetryAt - now) / 1000));
if (hardOffline) {
return {
mode,
kind: 'offline',
title: 'No network connection',
detail: 'This device is offline. Codeman is showing the last cached view.',
retryInSec,
};
}
return {
mode,
kind: 'unreachable',
title: "Can't reach the Codeman server",
detail:
'This device has a network, but the Codeman server is not answering. ' +
'If you reach Codeman over Tailscale or a VPN, check that it is connected.',
retryInSec,
};
}
if (typeof window !== 'undefined') {
window.WEBGL_FALLBACK = WEBGL_FALLBACK;
window.evaluateWebGLLongTaskTrip = evaluateWebGLLongTaskTrip;
@@ -190,6 +265,10 @@ if (typeof window !== 'undefined') {
window.CodemanWsReconnect = {
plan: planWsReconnect,
};
window.CodemanConnectionLoss = {
compute: computeConnectionLossUi,
GRACE_MS: CONNECTION_LOSS_GRACE_MS,
};
}
// Scheduler API — prioritize terminal writes over background UI updates.