Support treating rooms with functional members as DMs

[Setom29]

Currently, if a room contains 2 human users + 1 functional member (service account marked via m.functional_members state event), the room is still classified as a group chat in Element.

This has several side effects:

• The room appears under “Rooms” instead of “People”.
• Only group call (Jitsi) options are available, rather than the direct 1:1 call UI.
• Both clients see it as a group, even though functionally it’s a 1:1 conversation with a helper bot.

Why this feels inconsistent

According to the functional_members spec, functional members are meant to be invisible in the core user experience. They should not affect:

• Calculated member count
• Room name
• Room avatar

This strongly implies that when deciding whether a room is a direct message (DM) or a group, functional members should also be excluded.

Without this behavior, the presence of a single service account “breaks” the DM classification and downgrades the experience to a group chat, even though the social reality of the room is two humans talking.

It would be very helpful if rooms with 2 people and functional members were still treated as DMs.

By ignoring functional members when deciding room type, the behavior would better match the intent of the spec and keep the expected experience:

• Rooms stay under People instead of Rooms

• Direct call options remain available

• Service accounts stay “invisible”

This change would make it possible to add helper bots or service accounts into DMs without breaking the DM classification or user experience.