Make Photon iMessage a first-class persistent-connection channel like
Discord/Slack, using the spectrum-ts gRPC stream for both directions.
- Inbound: the sidecar forwards the SDK's app.messages gRPC stream to the
adapter over a loopback GET /inbound (NDJSON) instead of webhooks. Drops
the aiohttp webhook server, HMAC signature verification, public URL, and
PHOTON_WEBHOOK_* config; adapter reconnects with backoff.
- Management plane: device login uses client_id=photon-cli against the
single dashboard host (Bearer), matching the official photon-hq/cli;
find-or-create "Hermes Agent" project, enable Spectrum, rotate secret,
register user (with phone dedup), surface the assigned iMessage line.
- SDK projectId is the project's spectrumProjectId, not the dashboard id;
runtime creds persist to ~/.hermes/.env like every other channel.
- CLI: 6-step setup, webhook subcommands removed.
- Tests/docs updated for the gRPC flow; sidecar pins spectrum-ts ^1.17.1.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
First-class iMessage support via Photon's managed Spectrum platform.
Targeted as a successor to the BlueBubbles adapter — Photon allocates
the iMessage line, handles delivery, and abuse-prevention so users
don't have to run their own Mac relay. Free tier uses Photon's shared
line pool.
Architecture:
- Inbound: signed JSON webhooks (X-Spectrum-Signature, HMAC-SHA256)
delivered to a local aiohttp listener. Dedupes on message.id,
rejects deliveries with >5min timestamp drift.
- Outbound: small supervised Node sidecar that runs the spectrum-ts
SDK. Photon does not currently expose a public HTTP send-message
endpoint; the sidecar is the only way to call Space.send() today.
When Photon ships an HTTP send endpoint we collapse the sidecar
into _sidecar_send and drop the Node dep — every other layer of
the plugin stays the same.
- Setup: 'hermes photon login' runs the RFC 8628 device-code flow;
'hermes photon setup' creates a Spectrum-enabled project, creates
a shared user (free tier), installs the sidecar's npm deps.
- Webhook management: 'hermes photon webhook register|list|delete'.
- Credentials persisted under credential_pool.photon /
credential_pool.photon_project in ~/.hermes/auth.json.
Plugin path (not built-in) — per current policy (May 2026), all new
platforms ship under plugins/platforms/. Registers itself via
ctx.register_platform() + ctx.register_cli_command(), zero edits to
core gateway code.
Tests cover:
- HMAC-SHA256 signature verification (happy path, tampered body,
wrong secret, drift, missing v0 prefix, empty inputs, non-integer
timestamp)
- Inbound dispatch for text DMs, group ids (any;+;...), and
attachment metadata markers
- Deduplication window
- check_requirements gating when Node is absent
- Device-code flow: request, header-based token return,
body-fallback token return, access_denied propagation
- Project/user/webhook API clients with mocked httpx
Known limitations (current Photon API):
- Attachments are metadata only — no download URL yet
- Outbound attachment send not wired (sidecar can add easily)
- Reactions / message effects not exposed yet
Docs: website/docs/user-guide/messaging/photon.md + sidebar entry.
