scripts/screenshots.py runs MeshTerm --demo in the emulator's session,
with no window, and types its way to the main menu, the chat on Public,
the paths of a message, and the map. It saves each screen for the
terminal (80x24, drawn in Cascadia Mono with its own box, braille, and
Powerline shapes), the Cardputer Zero, and the PicoCalc (the emulator's
own raster, at 3x), into docs/screenshots/<set>/.
Two runs give the same pixels: the clock is pinned to 11:42 on Thursday
15 October 2026 in Montréal (time-machine and TZ), and the demo device
plays no background traffic during a capture (PLAY_BACKGROUND). Gabriel
in Beloeil joins the demo, so the message shown in Message paths
arrives on five paths through Mont-St-Hilaire, and the map opens at z10.
Pillow, fontTools, and time-machine join the dev extras.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The README, CONTRIBUTING, SECURITY, the docs index, the development
documents, the script READMEs, the comments of config.example.toml and
pyproject.toml, and the issue and pull request forms. The legal sections
of the README (attribution and licence) stay exactly as they were, between
ste: off and ste: on markers. The SignPath attribution line, the one-line
description of MeshTerm, every code block, and every URL do not change.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
docs/ was one flat folder: the user guides, the CLI manual, the device
manuals, the code notes and an old survey side by side. It is now
guide/ (features, configuration, connecting, terminals), cli/ (the
manual as its README, the cookbook), devices/ (which manual is yours
as its README, then one per device) and development/ (architecture,
the survey); screenshots/ stays put. The index follows the folders.
The device manuals are named for the device they are about: the
PicoCalc's is picocalc-lyra.md, since MeshTerm runs on the PicoCalc's
Luckfox Lyra core and on none of the others, and the uConsole's stays
uconsole.md, since its CM4 and CM5 run it alike. A new cardputer-zero.md
opens on a warning that the device is not supported yet, says what has
been built and tested only in the simulator, and how to try it there.
Every relative link was resolved from where it was written and rewritten
from where it now lives, and the repo-root spellings in code, config and
the release skill moved with them; the changelog's GitHub URLs too.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Every list of three or more takes the serial comma: the one-liner in
pyproject.toml, meshterm/__init__.py, and --help ("USB, Bluetooth, or TCP",
"Windows, macOS, and Linux"), the README, the changelog, the manuals, the
issue and PR templates, and six strings the app shows (the region-name
rule, a repeater setting's help, the diagnostics tool's description, and
the archive confirms). The Windows-console notice is rewrapped so its
comma keeps it inside 72 columns.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
A LoRa chip on the host's own SPI bus (the uConsole AIO) is now a
transport like serial, BLE, and TCP: --spi, an SPI profile, or the
picker's row for /dev/spidev1.0. MeshTerm starts a software node as a
child process under whichever Python has openhop-core, talks to it over
a loopback port, and ends it on disconnect; the node also exits with its
parent, so the pins are free whenever MeshTerm is not running.
The node keeps identity, prefs, channels, and contacts under
~/.meshterm/radio/<spidev>/, and on first use copies the bridge's
identity, contacts, and radio settings so it stays the same node.
Board wiring lives in a profile's spi table; radio settings are the
node's own, edited on Device config. Closes#21.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
JP moved to 3.14. Every dependency installs on it -- the Windows Bluetooth packages
included -- and the suite passes: 2705 passed, 1 skipped, on 3.14.7 as on 3.10.
- pyproject gains the 3.14 classifier. requires-python stays >=3.10: the uConsole on
bookworm runs 3.11, and a pip or pipx install on an older system should keep working.
- CI keeps its shape, which is Linux over the whole range and the other two runners at
its ends. Linux gains a 3.14 leg, and 3.14 replaces 3.13 as the top end on Windows and
macOS.
- Three tests reached a loop through asyncio.get_event_loop_policy(), which 3.14
deprecates and 3.16 removes, and never closed the loop they made. The two countdown
tests now make one with new_event_loop() and close it; the sweep test uses
asyncio.run(), which does both. On 3.14 the suite is back to no warnings.
The standalone installers still bundle 3.10; moving their build to 3.14 is for 0.9.1.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Four different one-liners were in circulation: the repository's "interactive, scriptable
CLI toolkit", the README's "full-screen terminal companion", the About page's "client that
lives in your terminal", and the package summary's "TUI-based client ... companion
connection". JP picked one:
A full-featured TUI MeshCore client for your terminal
It now opens the README, the About page, the package summary, meshterm.__doc__ and the
`meshterm --help` header, which cli.py already says must stay the same as the summary.
The summary's second sentence loses its grammar slip on the way: "Connects to a companion
over USB, Bluetooth or TCP." CLAUDE.md opens with the same line.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
preferences.yaml becomes preferences.toml: config.toml and the device-config
backups were already TOML, and tomli/tomli-w already dependencies, so PyYAML
existed for this one file and is dropped. The file keeps its shape - flat
keys, only the overrides, grouped under comment headings with each entry's
help and default - and one name, PREFERENCES_FILENAME, for both call sites.
TOML refuses a whole document over one bad line, so a refused file is read
again a line at a time: a valid line keeps its typed value, a refused one
hands its right-hand side to parse_value as text. One broken hand edit still
costs only its line, and a word left unquoted (log_level = DEBUG) still reads.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Hatchling's default sdist is everything git does not ignore, which packed the
Claude skills, the GitHub configuration, the PyInstaller spec, the device-side
scripts and the developer environment template into an archive whose only job
is to build and test the wheel. An exclude list keeps the package, the tests
and their fixture, the manual and the files a build reads. The build backend
floor is hatchling 1.26, the first to write the PEP 639 licence fields into the
metadata; an older one built a wheel that said nothing about the licence.
Workflow comments that reasoned from a private repo's metered minutes are
reworded for the public one, a skill's usage line stops naming one machine's
venv, and the scheduler's lock file is ignored in the tree rather than only in
one clone's info/exclude.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The first CI run went red on `ruff format --check`, on a tree that was clean on
this machine. Three separate problems, all found by pushing.
`ruff>=0.4` is not a pin. CI installed 0.16.6 where the laptop had 0.15.18, and
0.16 formats Python code blocks inside Markdown while 0.15 leaves them alone — so
the two disagreed about whether the repository was formatted, which is the one
thing a formatter exists to settle. Pinned to the 0.16 line. Dependabot will
offer the next one, and CI will say whether it is safe.
The file it tripped over is `docs/survey-ui-consistency.md`, which quotes four
lines of a dialog call as it looked on 22 August. That excerpt is a fragment —
two arguments, no call around them — so the formatter parsed it as two statements
and rewrote them into a tuple and an assignment that never existed anywhere. The
surveys are dated records of a past state, so `docs/` is now excluded: a
formatter editing a quotation is not tidying, it is falsifying.
And the installer workflow was firing for branches it had no business building.
Dependabot opened three action bumps within a minute of the push; each one edits
`.github/workflows/installers.yml`, each matched its own path filter, and each
started a five-platform build. `branches: [main]` stops it.
Everything else was green on the first try, including the part that was actually
uncertain: all seven test legs passed, macOS among them, and the installers built
on Windows, macOS on Apple silicon, and Linux on both x64 and arm64 — so the
uConsole build works and the ARM runner was available after all.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The distribution is named `mesh-term`, because `meshterm` is on PyPI's prohibited
list and a request to free it is 319 deep in a queue. The name after
`pip install` is the only thing that changes: the import package is still
`meshterm`, the console script is still `meshterm`, and nothing in the code reads
the distribution name, so this is one line rather than a rename. Proven rather
than assumed — the wheel was built, installed into a clean interpreter, and the
command run from outside the source tree.
The rest is what a stranger sees on a package page and what the app never shows
them: project URLs, trove classifiers for the console, the three operating
systems and the four Python versions, and the licence moved to its PEP 639
expression form. No `License ::` classifier, which that form forbids, and no
`Typing :: Typed` either — there is no `py.typed` marker, and a classifier that
claims something untrue is worse than an absent one.
`release.yml` publishes to PyPI and is built to be hard to fire. It has no
`push: tags` trigger, and that absence is the design: a workflow that published
on a `v*` tag would make tagging v0.9.0 on launch day claim a name on a public
index, permanently, as a side effect of an unrelated action — and PyPI has no
rename and no real delete. So a human runs it from the Actions tab and types the
version, the job compares that against the version the tree actually built and
refuses on a mismatch, and a `pypi` environment can hold it for a reviewer.
Trusted Publishing means there is no API token in the repository to leak. It
publishes whatever version is committed; there is no version argument, so it
cannot publish something other than what is there.
CI gains a packaging job that does the same build and clean-install check on every
push, publishing nothing. Packaging breaks quietly, and the alternative is finding
out on the one day that is worst for finding out.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two pieces of release machinery that have to exist before a first bump, plus
the bump: 0.1.0 to 0.2.0.
The version was written twice — `pyproject.toml` and `meshterm/__init__.py` —
and kept in step by hand. That is a drift waiting to happen, and an unusually
visible one here: `__version__` is read by the splash wordmark, the menu mark,
the About page, a trace export and the tile-server user agent, so the number a
user reads on screen is the package attribute, while the number in a built
wheel would have been the `pyproject` literal. `[project] version` is now
`dynamic` and hatchling reads the attribute, so there is one place to edit and
the two cannot disagree. Verified against hatchling rather than assumed: it
resolves `0.2.0`.
`CHANGELOG.md` starts in Keep a Changelog form, with the `[Unreleased]` heading
that makes release notes a rename rather than an excavation of the log. Its
first entry is 0.2.0 and it says plainly that the history before it is not
reconstructed — 596 commits of pre-history would be a worse document, not a
more complete one.
0.2.0 rather than something nearer the announced 0.9.0: the numbers between here
and the release are for real feature sets, and there is no reason to spend them
early. 0.9.0 is a number chosen for the launch, not one to be arrived at by
counting — landing on 0.7.0 on the day and bumping straight to 0.9.0 is fine.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two words the project was saying two ways, now settled to one each.
`macOS` is how Apple has styled it since 2016, and the repo was already split:
`connection.py`, `flash.py` and `test_disconnect.py` had it right, while the
About page and the new Summary said `MacOS`. Three files change, all of them
prose. Same five characters either way, so nothing about a rendered width moves.
`BLE` becomes `Bluetooth` in the Summary and the package docstring. Those two
lines are read by people deciding whether this runs on their machine, and
`Bluetooth` is the word they know and the word the About page already uses. The
identifier stays `BLE` everywhere it is one — the transport name, the connection
code, the config keys, the CLI. That is the boundary: the acronym is what the
thing is called in the code, the plain word is what it is called when introducing
the project to someone who has not met it yet.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Summary is the only description most people will ever read: it is the line
under the name in PyPI search results, the one a package manager echoes, and the
sentence that decides whether anyone opens the README. It said "A modern
command-line toolkit for tuning and exploring a MeshCore mesh", which named a
category rather than the thing, and left out every fact a reader is actually
deciding on.
The new one is JP's own wording and answers those instead: what it is (a
full-featured TUI-based MeshCore client for your terminal), how it reaches a
radio (USB, BLE, TCP), and whether it runs on the reader's machine (Windows,
MacOS, Linux). "USB" and "MacOS" are the spellings the About page already uses,
so the front door and the metadata now say it the same way.
The package docstring carries the same sentence, split at the summary line as
`D205` wants, so `help(meshterm)` and the PyPI page agree.
The README's opening is untouched. It is doing a different job — a paragraph that
gets to breathe, with the links and the longitudinal-record pitch in it — and a
one-line summary is not a replacement for it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
`E402` read as seventeen deliberate late imports and was in fact two accidents.
A module constant had settled into the middle of `packet_viewer`'s import block
(`_BODY_CACHE_MAX`, now below it), and ten test modules put their `_FIXTURE`
path or a small helper above the last import — the `tests.conftest` screen
reader, which now joins the block it belonged to.
`B008` is the opposite case: all six are Typer declaring a CLI parameter by
calling `Argument`/`Option` in the default, which is the framework's API and
cannot be written another way in this style. The objects it returns are inert
sentinels no command mutates — exactly the thing `extend-immutable-calls` is
for, so the rule now knows about them instead of being silenced per line.
`.claude` leaves the lint's reach: those are helper scripts for the skills, not
package code, and CI has no reason to gate on them.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three kinds of "setting" were tangled into two files and one of them had no
screen at all. The radio's settings live on the radio and are edited on Device
config. Machine setup -- where the database is, which companion to talk to --
stays in config.toml, a text editor's job. Everything in between was app
behaviour: six keys sitting in config.toml with nothing to open them, and a
dozen more that were only module constants a reader could never reach.
Those are preferences now, and they have a page. core/preferences.py is a
PrefSpec registry in the shape of the device-config one -- group, type, bounds,
help, and a default -- and the page is built from the same parts as the device
editor, deliberately: one grouped lane-aligned list, current -> new staged in
warn, Apply/Back appearing only once something is staged, the shared discard
confirm on the way out. Two editors that stage values should not be two screens
to learn. What it adds is a Defaults section holding one row that stages every
changed preference back to its built-in value; it is drawn only while a reset
would do something, and it stages rather than writes, so it is as reviewable and
as Esc-discardable as any other change and the file is still only ever written
by the one action at the bottom. Its rows scroll sideways where the device
editor's don't: the explanation is the widest thing on the row and the only part
that runs past the edge, so <-> slide it under a pinned setting and value.
The file is preferences.yaml and holds only the values you disagree with the
code about -- grouped and commented, each entry above its help and its default.
That is what lets a later change to a default reach an install that never asked
to be exempt; delete a line and the code takes over again. A hand edit gone
wrong costs that line, never the session.
Every preference is wired to something that reads it. ctx.preferences is the
explicit path; preferences.current() is for the render layer, which has no
context to reach through, the same reason get_platform() exists.
The About pages come along into a This app section, the third scope after this
node and other nodes, with Preferences leading it -- the one row there that
changes MeshTerm rather than describing it. A section of one would have broken
the menu's own no-bucket-of-one rule, and the app's scope is the honest home for
both halves anyway.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
MeshTerm goes out under the Apache License, Version 2.0 — free to use,
modify, and redistribute, commercially or otherwise. The patent grant
and the built-in trademark clause (§6) are why Apache over MIT.
The "MeshTerm" name and any logo are reserved as trademarks outside
the code license (NOTICE), and the app's donate link is called out
as supporting this project specifically — a fork can take the code,
but not the name or the donations that come with it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The three About pages were scaffolding built out of Text() calls, which
made writing them a Python edit and capped what they could ever say. They
are markdown now — meshterm/assets/pages/*.md, drawn by ui/markdown.py
into the app's own language rather than markdown's: # the page's name in
brand, ## a section in the body accent (with the muted · aside), ###
indented with its prose, paragraphs and lists hanging as blocks, quotes
and fences behind a rail that survives wrapping, tables through Rich, and
links that say where they go — nothing is clickable on a framebuffer
console. Two paragraphs are page frame rather than body and sit flush and
muted: the standfirst under the title, the colophon under the closing
rule, which is where the copyright lands.
The pages stay scaffolded on purpose — the placeholders are unchanged —
but filling one in is now editing its .md, and the live package facts
arrive as {version}/{author}/{copyright} so a page still can't drift from
the build it describes.
Being a document earns the screen two things a block never had: its ##
headings are landmarks, so a heading pins while its own prose scrolls
under it and ^PgUp/^PgDn step by them, and the console lane claims
Sect ↑/Sect ↓ on the free F1/F2 pair once a page has more than one
section — dimmed while the whole page fits, since the lane never
advertises a dead key.
Parsing is markdown-it-py (already under Rich, now declared): a real
CommonMark parser, so an author writes ordinary markdown. The md.* styles
are defined in both themes; the new test renders the whole vocabulary at
53 cells and asserts it stays inside the console font and the 16 slots.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The viz package existed solely to render one interactive HTML chart for
tx-optimize sweeps, pulling in Plotly — a heavyweight dependency serving a
single artifact while every other timeline renders in-terminal via
braillechart. Drop it with no replacement: delete meshterm/viz, the
--viz/--no-viz flag and its render call, the now-unused output_dir setting
(config field, default, loader, example), the Plotly test, and the README
and pyproject references.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Four small UX gaps closed together:
- Dashboard's footer hint was missing Home/End even though the screen
already handled them.
- The packet viewer's paging keys were reversed relative to the list
that opens it: PgUp/PgDn walked packets while the dashboard feed
walks with up/down. Swapped so up/down page through packets (matching
the feed) and PgUp/PgDn scroll a tall body (matching every other
screen's scroll keys).
- A raw "packet" entry (an overheard RX_LOG_DATA frame) now shows its
parsed payload class and route, and — for a channel-text frame naming
a channel we hold the key for — its decrypted text. The AES/HMAC
logic lives in core/channels.py as pure, unit-tested crypto
(decrypt_channel_text), independent of the vendored meshcore
library's own reader internals; the dashboard fetches the device's
channel secrets once at open time and hands them down to each
PacketViewer it opens. Raw-field dumps now skip fields already folded
into a flavoured row instead of repeating them.
- The Time Machine's whole-mesh charts (packets/day, nodes/day, rhythm)
gained the same mirrored numeric y-axis the dashboard's activity
chart already had. That gutter-drawing logic moved into
braillechart.axis_chart, a shared widget, and the dashboard's own
activity chart was refactored to use it too instead of hand-rolling
its own copy.
meshterm/ui/channels.py's _read_slots is now public (read_channel_slots)
since the dashboard opener needs it too.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Five features leave the menu and CLI: the heard-nodes review, the
baseline-regression checker, the offline link-budget calculator, the
route-stability graph, and the run-history browser — along with their
services (link_quality, link_budget, route_stability), the pyvis route
renderer, and the pyvis/networkx dependencies.
The data layer is untouched where it still earns its keep: passive
monitoring keeps recording every overheard packet (the header counters,
Nodes, and Map read it, and `meshterm monitor` still captures a bounded
window from the CLI), run logging keeps writing `runs` rows, and trace
history stays queryable for the trace tools. Only the route-map-only
`all_traces` query goes.
Also fixes a latent tie-break flake in the nodes sort: ages are now
measured from one clock snapshot, so identical last-seen stamps really
tie and keep their A→Z order in both directions.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Companions can now be reached over Bluetooth as well as USB. Rather than
a parallel BLE path, this generalizes the existing serial abstractions so
a device is identified by a transport (serial | ble) plus a target (COM
port or Bluetooth address); every feature rides the same Device interface
and works over either link unchanged.
- discovery: DiscoveredDevice gains transport/address/name and
transport-aware stable_id/label/confidence/target; discover_ble_devices
scans for MeshCore* adverts via bleak, discover_all merges both.
- connection: MeshCoreDevice opens create_ble vs create_serial by
transport; new link_present() liveness (OS port enumeration for serial,
the BLE client's is_connected flag for Bluetooth); is_connection_lost
recognizes Bleak errors and BLE transport callbacks; probe_device is the
transport-aware smoke test.
- disconnect: the session watcher polls transport-neutral link_alive(), so
a dropped BLE link raises the same reconnect dialog and auto-resume as an
unplugged cable; reconnect rebuilds the same endpoint by address.
- selection/context/store/profiles: --ble address, remembered BLE default,
and BLE device profiles all resolve to the right transport.
- UI/CLI: startup picker scans both transports behind a spinner and tags
Bluetooth companions; `devices` lists them (--no-ble to skip); global
--ble/--ble-pin flags; README and example config updated.
Validated on hardware: discovery, connect, reconnect, and channel
messaging (send + receive) over BLE.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Rename the package directory, imports, brand strings, env-var prefixes,
console-script entry point, and the config/data dir (~/.config/meshterm).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Replace the primitive channel editor that lived inside the config menu with
a dedicated `channels` tool: list the device's slots and, per channel, show a
scannable QR share code, reveal the key, open it in chat, rename/re-key, or
clear it. Create channels four ways — new private (random key), public `#`
(key derived from the name), join-by-key, or import a `meshcore://` link — with
every change written to the device immediately.
- core/channels.py: pure, hardware-free logic (secret derivation, tolerant key
parsing, share-URL round-tripping, channel hash). full_channel_hash exposes
the complete digest; the short channel_hash is its leading byte.
- ui/qr.py: half-block QR rendering (segno), drawn black-on-white so it scans
regardless of terminal theme.
- ui/channels.py: the interactive manager. Channels display by their real name;
reorder rows by dragging with the arrow keys; the key view shows the full hash
with the first byte highlighted.
- ui/tui: a ReorderScreen (grab/move/drop) plus a ctx.ui.reorder surface method.
- tools/channels.py: the tool + `channels list/add/join/import/share` CLI.
- Pin Chat + Channels to the top of the main menu via an explicit category order.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Introduce a UI surface abstraction (ctx.ui) that tools use for all input
and output instead of touching questionary or the console directly. Two
backends implement it: PlainUi for scripted CLI runs (prints immediately,
byte-for-byte unchanged) and TuiUi for the interactive menu (bounded,
scrollable result windows over a full-screen TuiSession).
The new meshtools/ui/tui package reimplements the slice of questionary the
app used — validated text input, confirm, autocomplete, and selectable
lists — plus framing, progress, and screen management. Swap the dependency
from questionary to prompt_toolkit.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Trace:
- Auto-path now ends every route at the target's own hash (verified on
hardware: a trace only replies when its destination is the final hop), so
direct neighbors and learned multi-hop routes both resolve correctly.
- Retry the transient "no event received during contacts retrieval" blip and
surface a clean DeviceCommandError instead of a raw traceback.
- Route summary annotates each node with its hash at the command's path-hash
width, wrapping after an arrow when the line is too long.
- Default trace count changed from 5 to 3.
Also includes the in-progress device-config feature (config_io, device_config,
config tool, config editor UI, tests) and related supporting edits.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
MeshTools is a Rich+Questionary interactive / Typer-scriptable toolkit for
tuning a MeshCore mesh over a serial companion device, with SQLite-logged runs
and Plotly visualizations. Includes the skeleton (trace, info, history),
TX-power optimization, and a MockDevice simulator (--mock).
Device discovery & selection:
- core/discovery.py: enumerate serial ports (pyserial), flag/sort likely LoRa
hardware by USB vendor id, stable_id for replug-safe identity.
- core/device_store.py: remember the last successfully connected device in
<config_dir>/devices.json (independent of --db).
- core/selection.py: non-interactive resolver (--port > profile > remembered >
sole device > guidance error) for the CLI.
- ui/device_picker.py + menu startup: interactive picker preselecting the
remembered default; banner reflects the choice.
- tools/devices.py: `meshtools devices` lists/marks attached devices.
- AppContext resolves the port and records last-known-good on connect success.
Fixes:
- theme.py: force UTF-8 on stdout/stderr so glyphs don't crash legacy consoles.
- connection.py: friendly message when meshcore is missing; pin meshcore>=2.3.
- trace/tx-optimize: fall back to free-text target entry when the device
reports no contacts (autocomplete requires non-empty choices).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
