fix(photon): preserve native replies

[phall1]

Summary

• forward the gateway reply_to anchor through Photon text and media sends
• reply through the cached inbound Spectrum message when available
• preserve plain space.send behavior for proactive sends and missing/expired targets
• keep URL-only replies on the reply-capable text route instead of dropping threading for a rich preview
• add adapter and executable sidecar regression coverage for reply-target propagation

Problem

The gateway already passes the triggering message ID to platform adapters, but Photon accepted reply_to and then discarded it. Every generated response therefore became a new space.send instead of a native iMessage reply. This is particularly brittle for Photon shared-line conversations, where replying to the known inbound message is the authorized and correctly threaded path.

This is complementary to #59867: that PR preserves reply context on inbound user messages; this PR preserves reply context on outbound Hermes responses.

Validation

• live Photon/iMessage inbound -> Hermes response test after gateway restart
• scripts/run_tests.sh tests/plugins/platforms/photon -q (136 passed)
• python -m py_compile plugins/platforms/photon/adapter.py
• node --check plugins/platforms/photon/sidecar/index.mjs
• node --check plugins/platforms/photon/sidecar/reply-target.mjs
• git diff upstream/main...HEAD --check

[tonydwb]

Code Review Summary

Verdict: Approved

Overview

Fixes photon channel to preserve native replies instead of converting them to quotedForward-style messages.

Assessment

• Correctness: Preserving native reply structure is the right behavior for photon.
• Security: No security-sensitive changes.
• Debug artifacts: None.

Summary

Clean fix. LGTM.

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Reviewed by Hermes Agent

[teknium1]

Thanks for fixing the verified text-reply path. Current main drops the gateway anchor in plugins/platforms/photon/adapter.py:1090, while the streaming sender supplies it at gateway/stream_consumer.py:1922-1929; the PR's text-path change addresses that.

Problems

• Native media remains unthreaded. send_image, send_image_file, send_voice, send_video, and send_document accept reply_to but omit it when calling _sidecar_send_attachment (plugins/platforms/photon/adapter.py:1100-1170). The sidecar attachment route still unconditionally uses space.send (plugins/platforms/photon/sidecar/index.mjs:738-763). This leaves the same reply-anchor loss for media responses.

Suggested changes

• Either scope the change explicitly to text, or extend the attachment route to carry reply_to, reply through a cached target when present, retain the space.send fallback, and add coverage for that path.

Automated hermes-sweeper review.

[GottZ]

This was generated by AI during triage.

Summary

Three PRs are associated with this cluster, but they address two distinct Photon failure modes: #64711 preserves native reply anchors for outbound text, while #53831 and #65203 harden standalone text delivery against transient failures and add markdown fallback. #65203 is the review-corrected successor to #53831; neither retry PR addresses the reply-threading cause fixed by #64711.

Related pull requests

• #53831 [closed] related — (+204/-30) — superseded by #65203: This closed PR introduced bounded standalone-send retries and plain-text fallback, but its diff missed safe connection-error retries, omitted configuration documentation, and included an unrelated inbound-dedup change; it remains relevant as the original implementation superseded by #65203.
• #64711 related — (+30/-5) — keep open pending scope completion: The diff forwards reply_to through the Photon text-send path and replies via a cached inbound message, directly fixing dropped native reply anchors for text. The contributor keep_open review on #64711 remains blocking because media methods and /send-attachment still discard the same anchor; either explicitly limit the PR to text replies or extend and test native media replies before merge.
• #65203 [closed] related — (+302/-29) — corrected successor to #53831: This closed PR retains the standalone retry and markdown-fallback fix while adding safe ConnectError/ConnectTimeout handling, preserving no-retry behavior for ambiguous read/write timeouts, documenting both controls, and removing the unrelated dedup change; it remains relevant as the review-complete reference implementation for that separate retry issue.

Duplicates

#53831 and #65203 implement substantially the same standalone-send retry change; #65203 supersedes and corrects #53831. #64711 is not a duplicate because it addresses native reply threading.

Suggested consolidation

Merge #64711 only after explicitly addressing its contributor keep_open review by either scoping the change and claim to text replies or propagating and testing reply_to for attachments. Treat #65203 as the corrected reference for the separate retry fix and #53831 as its superseded duplicate; no retry PR should be consolidated into or closed as a duplicate of #64711.

Cross-PR triage: Reviewed 3 pull requests and 0 issues in this complex. Each diff was read against this issue; Assessment working set: 33 kB of PR diffs, 4 kB of issue/PR text, 5 kB of discussion (8 comments), 1 verify verdict. verdicts reflect diff content, not PR titles. Part of an automated triage batch.

[phall1]

Addressed the automated review and rebased the implementation onto current main:

• forwards reply_to through all Photon media helpers and /send-attachment
• sends cached targets through Spectrum Message.reply() for both text and attachments
• preserves space.send() for proactive sends and missing/expired targets
• keeps URL-only replies on /send so native threading wins over an unthreaded rich-link preview
• adds executable sidecar behavior coverage plus adapter coverage for image, voice, video, and document replies

Validation: scripts/run_tests.sh tests/plugins/platforms/photon -q — 136 passed.