Contacts and Messaging FAQ¶

Where does a user keep their address book?¶

The address book is a local, owner-scoped node read model. local-contact.v1 records keep labels and metadata needed by the UI, while canonical consent to receive messages follows from active membership in the contacts relationship class. Contact Catalog does not replace this layer.

The practical path from contactability publication to a local contact is described in the Contacts and Messaging HOWTO.

How does Contact Catalog differ from local contacts?¶

Contact Catalog answers: "does an attested invitation route exist for this lookup-safe index?" A local contact instead answers: "how does this node owner classify this relationship, and have they consented to receive messages through it?" The first layer supports discovery; the second supports local policy and UX.

The catalog must not disclose a raw email address, phone number, or root participant/id. A lookup result carries an invitation route, not a global directory of people.

What does contact attestation prove?¶

email-control@v1 or phone-control@v1 proves that a subject controlled the given channel during the attestation procedure. It does not prove a legal name, civil identity, or indefinite future control of the channel. Attestation can therefore open contactability and anti-spam gates, but not high-trust roles.

Why does a published route not point directly to a participant?¶

A public catalog result leads to a routing-subject/id or another bounded routable target. Pseudonym Vault then binds local and pairwise nyms to the route needed by a particular relationship. A public handle consequently does not become a universal identifier correlating all participant activity.

Why does the first message start with a contact request?¶

An unknown sender does not immediately receive authority to send content. Messaging first resolves the handle through Contact Catalog and delivers contact-request.v1. Only the recipient's decision creates the local contacts relationship, pairwise mapping, and narrow messaging-receive@v1 passport. Refusal is not a transport error; it is a valid recipient-policy outcome.

The first question can concern admitting the remote node through INAC for a particular artifact class. The second concerns the user's contact request itself. These are different exercises of authority: transport authorization does not create a relationship, and a relationship must not silently open arbitrary transport.

Does a relationship class grant a capability?¶

No. contacts, friends, or another LRL class is a local policy input and group selector. Assigning a class does not issue a passport or bypass host authorization. A capability exists only through an explicit issuance mechanism and remains bounded by profile, subject, route, time, and revocation view.

Where is a message stored?¶

Messaging maintains a durable outbox and inbox, a conversation index, and a temporal trail of attempts and state changes. Native outbound bodies are stored as EML, while canonical inbound records use JSON Maildir with a reproducible EML projection. messaging.flag.v1 records read/unread state as facts instead of silently overwriting the view.

Does message content enter Contact Catalog or Seed Directory?¶

No. The catalog and Seed Directory discover trusted providers and routes; they do not store message content. The message itself travels privately through Artifact Delivery and INAC. Public or retained copies require a separate explicit contract, such as a recorded-message policy and Agora Vault.

How is a relationship blocked or revoked?¶

The operator or owner changes the LRL membership state, revokes the relevant passport, and updates the local contact. Each operation has a distinct effect: LRL changes local selection, revocation stops authority, and the contact record updates UX. One hidden blocked field must not replace these three explicit changes.

Does Messaging support groups?¶

LRL can deterministically resolve a class such as friends into an owner-scoped local candidate list. This is a usable selection primitive, but not a complete multi-party conversation protocol. Persistent group communication and shared history belong to Room/Corpus, not to a simulated loop of private messages.

What is the shortest end-to-end test?¶

Story-010 starts two local nodes, Seed Directory, Attestation Service, Contact Catalog, and two Messaging services. It publishes attested contactability, performs lookup, handles INAC consent, accepts a contact request, and verifies private delivery plus inbox/outbox state. It is a multi-node single-host acceptance, not evidence of public Internet reachability.