Online room rules

Decision

• A room is Talk or Type, picked by the host when making it. Talk is the default.
• No late joiners. Once the first round starts, no one new can join.
• The host lets each player in. Joining sends a request; the host accepts or turns it down.
• History stays on the phone. Past games, online and one-phone, are kept in local storage only, read-only. Nothing about a past game goes to the server.

Why

Set by the owner on 2026-10-13. Players sitting together would rather talk than type. A player who joins mid-game has no word and breaks the round. Host approval keeps strangers out of a room whose code was shared too widely.

Impact

• In code: DEFAULT_ROOM_MODE = "talk" (src/constants/rooms.ts); joinRoom refuses a started room and writes an "asking" request (functions/src/rooms.ts); history-store persists to the device only.
• Built in FEAT-0006.

Status

Active.

Sources

• .context/raw/2026-10-25-chat-decisions.md