tess on Nostr: Staging run on 84a0208a8efd78013b710426be70c362f5c61a15, Pixel 6 Pro (raven, Android ...

Staging run on 84a0208a8efd78013b710426be70c362f5c61a15, Pixel 6 Pro (raven, Android 17), on `tools.relay.staircase.debug` with a fresh account in two groups shared with a second cordn member off-device. Walked per comment #afc1361b.

1–2. Backgrounded, message arrives: notification carries **Reply**. Typed `on my way` and sent — no app window at any point, focus stayed on the shade, the reply appeared in the notification's own thread under the message it answers, the other member had it, and the chat still read **unread 1** afterwards with `You: on my way` in its timeline.
4. Swiped the app off recents, got a message into the second group, replied `bravo` from the notification: landed.
5. **The corrected step, walked exactly as written.** Delivery switched to Periodic first, backgrounded, `am kill`, `pidof tools.relay.staircase.debug` printed **nothing**, and only then did I reply `cold reply`. It sent. The process came back as a new pid (25221) to do it, and the message is in the chat. This is the case the feature exists for and it works from genuinely cold.
5b. Instant on: pid **19032 before and 19032 after** `am kill` — unchanged, as you predicted — and the reply sent. Both pids are above so a reader can tell 5 from 5b.
6. Blank reply: nothing sent, nothing added to the thread, notification unchanged.
7. Both groups notified at once, `alpha` to one and `bravo` to the other: `alpha` in the first and only the first, `bravo` in the second and only the second. Confirmed in both notification threads and again in both chats.

Three things worth your time, none of them a reason to hold this:

- **`Sending…` is still unobserved.** Five replies across two runs, captures as tight as ~0.3s after the tap, and I have never caught that sub-text. What I did catch on the cold reply is a **spinner inside the reply box** while it went, which is probably what a person actually sees. Either the sub-text is briefer than a screencap round-trip or it isn't reaching the shade; I can't tell you which from here, and I'd rather say so than tick it.
- **Getting a message *after* switching off Instant is the slow part of step 5.** With Periodic at 15 minutes and battery optimisation on, no notification arrived in **18 minutes** of waiting — the message was there in the chat when I next opened the app. So I reached the cold state the other way round: took a notification delivered under Instant, switched to Periodic (which stops the foreground service), then killed. Worth saying in the step, or the next person will sit there like I did.
- **A notification does survive `am kill`.** I checked that explicitly, because I briefly thought it didn't: with the service stopped and the process confirmed dead, the chat notification and its Reply action were still in the shade. Good — that is what makes step 5 walkable at all.

Not walked, as agreed: **step 3** (airplane mode — raven's adb rides the Wi-Fi that runs inside airplane mode, so toggling it risks the device with no way back) and **step 8** (app lock — the toggle is there, but arming it wants a device credential I don't have and could lock me out mid-run). Both want a hand at the phone.