The community has a page, and the page is its invite

A fourth About page, `Join Discord`, sitting between the author and the ask:
what is this, who made it, where is everyone, how do I help. Like its three
siblings it is written markdown under assets/pages, reads nothing and
transmits nothing, and keeps a CLI face — `meshterm discord`.

It is short on purpose. The invite link, and the code for it in a `qr` fence,
because on a PicoCalc there is no clipboard and the code is how a link leaves
the screen at all.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

meshterm/assets/pages/discord.md

@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+## Join the Discord
+
+Questions, ideas, bug reports, and mesh talk.
+
+- *https://discord.gg/AZwe5Uvb3S*
+
+```qr
+https://discord.gg/AZwe5Uvb3S
+```

meshterm/tools/about.py

@@ -1,14 +1,15 @@
-"""The About MeshTerm tools: the three pages under the menu's last section.
+"""The About MeshTerm tools: the four pages under the menu's last section.
 
-*About MeshTerm*, *About the author*, *Support MeshTerm* — in that order, which is
-the order a stranger asks the questions in: what is this, who made it, how do I help.
+*About MeshTerm*, *About the author*, *Join Discord*, *Support MeshTerm* — in that
+order, which is the order a stranger asks the questions in: what is this, who made it,
+where is everyone, how do I help.
 Each is a page rather than a feature: it reads nothing, transmits nothing, and needs no
 device, so it opens straight to its screen (see :mod:`meshterm.ui.about`) instead of
 prompting for anything first.
 
 Each also keeps a CLI face — ``meshterm about``, ``meshterm about-author``,
-``meshterm support`` — printing the same page to the terminal, so the answers are
-reachable from a shell without launching the full-screen session.
+``meshterm discord``, ``meshterm support`` — printing the same page to the terminal, so
+the answers are reachable from a shell without launching the full-screen session.
 
 The pages themselves are written in markdown under ``meshterm/assets/pages`` (see
 :mod:`meshterm.ui.about`); nothing here knows what any of them say.
@@ -26,7 +27,7 @@ if TYPE_CHECKING:
 
 
 class _AboutTool(Tool):
-    """Shared behaviour for the three About pages: open the screen, or print the page.
+    """Shared behaviour for the four About pages: open the screen, or print the page.
 
     The pages differ only in their title, icon, and content, so everything else — the
     menu-only screen open, the printing CLI face, the run row — lives here once. A
@@ -113,6 +114,24 @@ class AboutAuthorTool(_AboutTool):
         return about_author()
 
 
+@register
+class JoinDiscordTool(_AboutTool):
+    """The community server: one invite link, and a QR of it for a phone to read."""
+
+    name = "discord"
+    title = "Join Discord"
+    icon = "🔗"
+    help = "The invite link to the MeshTerm community server"
+    order = 25  # where everyone else is, once you know what this is and who made it
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def page() -> "MarkdownDoc":
+        """The *Join Discord* page."""
+        from ..ui.about import join_discord
+
+        return join_discord()
+
+
 @register
 class SupportProjectTool(_AboutTool):
     """What keeps MeshTerm going, and the ways — paid and unpaid — to help it along."""
@@ -121,7 +140,7 @@ class SupportProjectTool(_AboutTool):
     title = "Support MeshTerm"
     icon = "💰"
     help = "What keeps MeshTerm going, and how to help"
-    order = 30  # the ask, and only once the first two have earned it
+    order = 30  # the ask, and only once the pages before it have earned it
 
     @staticmethod
     def page() -> "MarkdownDoc":

meshterm/ui/about.py

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 """The About MeshTerm pages: the app, the person who wrote it, and how to help it along.
 
-Three read-only pages hung under the main menu's *About MeshTerm* section — the one
+Four read-only pages hung under the main menu's *About MeshTerm* section — the one
 section that names a subject rather than a doing, because "what is this thing, and who
 made it" is a question the other five can't answer. Each opens as a full screen, scrolls
 if the terminal is short, and is left with Esc; nothing here touches the radio or the
@@ -72,6 +72,15 @@ def about_author() -> MarkdownDoc:
     return _page("author")
 
 
+def join_discord() -> MarkdownDoc:
+    """The *Join Discord* page: the invite link, and a QR of it to point a phone at.
+
+    A page rather than a popup because there is nothing to decide — it is a link, and on
+    a headless console the QR *is* how the link gets off the screen.
+    """
+    return _page("discord")
+
+
 def support_project() -> MarkdownDoc:
     """The *Support MeshTerm* page: what keeps it going, and how to chip in.
 
@@ -166,6 +175,7 @@ __all__ = [
     "AboutPage",
     "about_author",
     "about_meshterm",
+    "join_discord",
     "open_about_page",
     "support_project",
 ]

tests/test_about.py

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-"""About MeshTerm tests: the three pages, their placeholders, and their menu section.
+"""About MeshTerm tests: the four pages, their placeholders, and their menu section.
 
 The pages carry no state and no controls, so what is worth pinning is what they *say*
 and how they are framed: the live package facts they must never drift from, the
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ from meshterm.ui.about import (
     AboutPage,
     about_author,
     about_meshterm,
+    join_discord,
     support_project,
 )
 
@@ -126,18 +127,27 @@ def test_the_licence_section_states_the_terms_and_the_credit_it_owes() -> None:
         assert owed in prose, owed
 
 
+def test_the_discord_page_carries_the_invite_link_and_a_code_to_scan_it_with() -> None:
+    """The link is the whole page, and on a console with no clipboard the QR is how it
+    leaves the screen — so both have to survive the render."""
+    text = _page(join_discord)
+
+    assert "https://discord.gg/AZwe5Uvb3S" in text
+    assert "█" in text, "the scannable code didn't render"
+
+
 def test_pages_are_written_markdown_that_ships_with_the_package() -> None:
     """Filling a page in is editing its ``.md`` file — no Python has to follow."""
     from meshterm.ui.about import _PAGES
 
-    for name in ("about", "author", "support"):
+    for name in ("about", "author", "discord", "support"):
         source = (_PAGES / f"{name}.md").read_text(encoding="utf-8")
         assert source.lstrip().startswith("#"), f"{name}.md doesn't open with a heading"
 
 
 def test_no_package_placeholder_survives_into_the_rendered_page() -> None:
     """The live facts are filled in as the page opens, so none of the braces reach a reader."""
-    for builder in (about_meshterm, about_author, support_project):
+    for builder in (about_meshterm, about_author, join_discord, support_project):
         text = _page(builder)
         assert "{" not in text and "}" not in text, text
 
@@ -194,7 +204,7 @@ def test_menu_rows_carry_the_icon_and_the_titles_do_not() -> None:
     """Each page has a menu icon; none of it leaks into the title the screen draws."""
     from meshterm.tools import get_tool
 
-    for name in ("about", "about-author", "support"):
+    for name in ("about", "about-author", "discord", "support"):
         tool = get_tool(name)
         assert tool is not None
         assert tool.icon, f"{name} has no menu icon"
@@ -211,7 +221,7 @@ def test_every_page_icon_has_a_picocalc_glyph() -> None:
 
     set_platform(PICOCALC)
     try:
-        for name in ("about", "about-author", "support"):
+        for name in ("about", "about-author", "discord", "support"):
             tool = get_tool(name)
             assert tool is not None
             compact = glyph(tool.icon)

tests/test_gallery.py

@@ -54,7 +54,13 @@ from meshterm.services.message_paths import Arrival
 from meshterm.services.monitor_service import ACTIVITY_BUCKETS
 from meshterm.services.records import CATEGORY_BY_ID
 from meshterm.services.topology import MeshTopology, build_topology
-from meshterm.ui.about import AboutPage, about_author, about_meshterm, support_project
+from meshterm.ui.about import (
+    AboutPage,
+    about_author,
+    about_meshterm,
+    join_discord,
+    support_project,
+)
 from meshterm.ui.chat import ChatScreen
 from meshterm.ui.contactlist import SORT_COLUMNS, SORT_OPENS_ASCENDING
 from meshterm.ui.contacts_screen import ContactsScreen
@@ -493,6 +499,10 @@ def _support_project(cols: int, rows: int) -> Screen:
     return AboutPage("Support MeshTerm", support_project())
 
 
+def _join_discord(cols: int, rows: int) -> Screen:
+    return AboutPage("Join Discord", join_discord())
+
+
 _ENTRIES: list[_Entry] = [
     _Entry("dashboard", _dashboard),
     _Entry("contacts", _contacts),
@@ -515,6 +525,7 @@ _ENTRIES: list[_Entry] = [
     _Entry("tx_sweep", _tx_sweep),
     _Entry("about_meshterm", _about_meshterm),
     _Entry("about_author", _about_author),
+    _Entry("join_discord", _join_discord),
     _Entry("support_project", _support_project),
 ]
 

tests/test_menus.py

@@ -167,7 +167,7 @@ def test_main_menu_sections_answer_the_menus_own_question() -> None:
         "Explore": ["map", "walk", "trace", "trace-path", "records"],
         "This node": ["info", "config", "device-actions", "advert"],
         "Other nodes": ["repeater-admin", "tx-optimize"],
-        "About MeshTerm": ["about", "about-author", "support"],
+        "About MeshTerm": ["about", "about-author", "discord", "support"],
     }
     # No section is so big it stops being a grouping (the old Mesh bucket held seven of
     # nineteen rows), and none is a bucket of one.