A firmware-less radio bridge holds its contact table only in RAM, so the Contacts
screen and the chat recipient list come up empty (or only as sparse as this
session's adverts) after the bridge restarts, even though you were messaging those
nodes last time. Record every contact MeshTerm reads, keyed by the device's own
public key, and union any the device is no longer reporting back into the list at
the one read chokepoint both lists share (DeviceState.contacts()).
No device write is needed: a direct message addresses a node by a prefix of its
public key, which the remembered contact carries, so a restored contact is
messageable without being written back onto the device. The union is inert where
it isn't needed — a firmware radio reports its whole table, so nothing is added,
no device-type check required — and recording never removes a contact on an empty
read, so a bridge that just restarted doesn't wipe what it knew.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Jean-Pierre MartineauandClaude Opus 4.8
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