Feature plan: Step 1 · Step 2 · Step 3 · Step 4

Debug mode: enabled Effort study: railspike-effort / v3/recent_activity; ledger, standing P2 enrollment Extended estimates: enabled Cycle estimate: 0.75

Problem and user stories

Readers need to see new conversation, including replies buried in older threads, without opening each discussion or interpreting technical activity records.

• As a reader, I want one Recent page showing new threads and replies so that I can catch up quickly.

• As a phone user, I want readable previews and direct post links so that I can find and open a contribution without hunting through a thread.

• As a returning reader, I want predictable paging and recovery so that interruptions do not strand me.

Core requirements

• A Recent link in ordinary site navigation opens a dedicated public-conversation page. Existing board, Activity, Forte and technical/security destinations retain their behavior.

• Show individual threads and replies together, newest first by posting time, with deterministic ties. Include human and agent contributions regardless of thread age or approval status where publicly readable; exclude bootstrap/system events and hidden or removed content under existing visibility rules. No new ranking or personal filters.

• Each entry shows the existing author/trust presentation, posting time, thread context, a short readable excerpt and an exact-post link. Handle title-only, image-only and unavailable parent context without blank cards or leaking excluded content. Keep technical source details and composing controls out of the list.

• Use native Previous/Next links and bounded pages of at most 50 entries. Unchanged data traverses without gaps/duplicates; new arrivals become visible on the first page. Invalid positions offer First page; empty pages retain return navigation. Reload/Back recovers from a failed navigation without pretending it succeeded.

• Reading and paging work without JavaScript. Phone/desktop layouts, keyboard navigation and enabled themes remain usable on first paint. Public output is shared, with no read tracking or viewer-specific server markup; refresh follows the site's existing publication contract rather than introducing live polling.

Delivery scope and completion boundary

Work type: application change. Deliver navigation, the readable paginated page, current publication/visibility integration, proportionate regression checks, touched concept documentation and this cycle's study records. No external dependencies.

Flow: 1. Open Recent from ordinary navigation. 2. Scan new contributions or page backward. 3. Open the exact post and return. 4. Reload after a connection failure or choose First page after an invalid position.

Completion requires that flow through the ordinary front controller in live and static-serving configurations, including empty/failure recovery. Release requires compatible application/read-model startup and refreshed published pages; document deployment steps and distinguish local completion from production acceptance. An unavailable offline page offers the existing reconnect/Reload/Back path, not an unrelated cached page.

Known environment: feedback includes slow Activity and phone use. Verify Recent on phone and desktop; retain separate physical-device and production limits. Do not close the existing Activity latency report without replaying its reported environment.

Risks and early validation

• Visibility/context leakage: inspect existing eligibility and parent-context behavior before Step 3; use mixed visible/hidden/removed fixtures and preserve current policy rather than redesigning retraction.

• Slow reads or oversized pages: confirm bounded selection and excerpt work before planning dependent rendering; compare growing datasets and record response/first-paint evidence. Avoid per-entry technical-history enrichment.

• Serving/navigation regressions: trace static/live routes and shared navigation before Step 3; preserve older-page URLs, first-page refresh and existing destinations. Check Word97, Chicago and Midnight icons as well as text themes. Unresolved material risks block dependent work.

Shared surfaces and concepts

Reuse the post-card (source unavailable) author/time/content helpers and exact-post behavior from thread/post pages (source unavailable). Add a compact preview partial only because full cards include unrelated controls. Preserve existing board/thread cards, profile authored-content lists, standard/Forte Activity, Activity RSS and read-API contracts; no API/feed expansion. Reuse the shared pagination contract and navigation partial (source unavailable); extend canonical site navigation and its theme-icon mapping rather than creating parallel controls.

Concepts touched: Recent conversation discovery (new, proposed inventory entry); post presentation/visibility (used unchanged, proposed entry); static publication (extend coverage); derived read model (reuse with required query/startup checks). Inventory changes stay limited to delivered behavior.

Success criteria and deferred requests

A fixture with a new thread and five new replies to an old thread shows all six separately and opens each exact post. Paging handles equal timestamps, arrivals/deletions, invalid positions and empty results; excluded content never appears. Phone/desktop and no-JavaScript flows pass, including long text, theme icons and failure recovery. Existing shared consumers pass affected checks; performance and release limits are recorded honestly.

Deferred, unapproved: last-visit/read markers, author/type filters, RSS/API expansion, ranking/self-bump suppression and job-status activity. These are separate follow-ups, not prerequisites for this slice.

Approval and study checkpoint

Approved Step 1: user selected the recommended Option A by approving Step 1. Scope v1/A and baseline 3a21fab67708c07ef77712790218e12a92c61bcd retained. Step 2 handoff, 2026-10-30T20:37:32Z: 0.75 reaffirmed, R1/P2, Codex single exposed rater; three frozen hashes reverified. Earlier exposed intake/handoff 0.75, inherited 0.5 and missing pristine intake remain unchanged. No measured labor or runtime acceptance claimed; only source/document checks performed. Planning remains uncommitted. Await Approved Step 2 before the development plan.

— Codex · 2026-10-30 UTC