README.md

@@ -30,6 +30,7 @@ sidecar as a service, and hands you the values the website needs.
 | [THEMING_AND_NAV.md](website/THEMING_AND_NAV.md) | Admin-configurable theme, brand assets and navigation — build contract |
 | [MODULE_SYSTEM.md](website/MODULE_SYSTEM.md) | Making the site game-agnostic: game logic becomes an installable module — design of record |
 | [MODULE_API.md](website/MODULE_API.md) | The module ↔ core contract: `ctx`, the `register*` calls, the client registry and the loader's obligations |
+| [UPGRADE_NOTES.md](website/UPGRADE_NOTES.md) | **Operator-facing, newest first** — the upgrades that need an operator to do something, or that change behaviour quietly enough to be discovered by accident |
 | [WIKI_UPGRADE.md](website/WIKI_UPGRADE.md) | Wiki subsystem upgrade notes |
 | [SHARD_VISIBILITY.md](website/SHARD_VISIBILITY.md) | Who sees which shard data — the admin-configurable audience framework |
 | [TRUSTED_DEVICES_MFA.md](website/TRUSTED_DEVICES_MFA.md) | TOTP two-factor, trusted devices and recovery codes |

website/BACKEND_DESIGN.md

@@ -40,7 +40,8 @@ Skeleton from the spec, with a small number of justified additions marked **(+)*
 >
 > `users`, `account`, `invites`, `auth/providers` (PR 1, 28 routes), `moderation`, `bot-activity`,
 > `activity` (PR 2, 18 routes), `posts`, `uploads`, `wiki`, `pages` (PR 3, 31 routes) and `shard`,
-> `uo-link`, `email`, `discord-bot`, `settings`, `dashboard`/`site-mode` (PR 4, 33 routes) each live
+> `uo-link`, `email`, `discord-bot`, `settings`, `dashboard`/`site-mode` (PR 4, 33 routes at the time;
+> `email` has since lost its two Gmail connect routes, §7) each live
 > in their own router under `admin/`, behind `admin/index.js`. PR 5 did the same for `public/` (24),
 > `player/` (20) and the residual `auth/` (10). **`admin.routes.js`, `public.routes.js`,
 > `player.routes.js` and `auth.routes.js` are all deleted**; each group is now a directory whose
@@ -170,8 +171,11 @@ server/
                                               from a manifest URL, enable,
                                               disable, uninstall, purge, restart
                                               and the source allowlist
-                 email.router.js         (6)  /admin/email    — Gmail OAuth2
-                                              delivery — adminOnly
+                 email.router.js         (4)  /admin/email    — outbound mail:
+                                              transport + credentials + send
+                                              test — adminOnly. The two
+                                              /connect/* routes went with Gmail
+                                              OAuth2 (§7)
                  discordBot.router.js    (2)  /admin/discord-bot — adminOnly
                  settings.router.js      (4)  /admin/settings — adminOnly. The
                                               DELETE /:key is "reset to default"
@@ -207,7 +211,8 @@ server/
     utils/
       auth.js                   JWT sign/verify, isLoggedIn middleware
       db.js                     MariaDB pool + ensureSchema()
-      mailer.js                 (+) nodemailer; mailto fallback if SMTP unset
+      mailer.js                 (+) nodemailer over a registered transport;
+                                    mailto fallback when unconfigured (§7)
 client/                         built in Phase 2/3 (React + Vite)
 Dockerfile
 docker-compose.yml
@@ -923,7 +928,7 @@ from the per-route **siteMode** middleware (§5), never from an auth gate.
 | GET | `/posts/:category/:idOrSlug` | single published post |
 | GET | `/wiki` | list of pages (slug + title) |
 | GET | `/wiki/:slug` | single page |
-| POST | `/contact` | (rate-limited) send mail via SMTP; if unconfigured, respond `{fallback:"mailto", email}` |
+| POST | `/contact` | (rate-limited) send mail via the configured transport (§7); if unconfigured, respond `{fallback:"mailto", email}` |
 | GET | `/teams/by-external/:moduleId/:externalId` | one Team named the way the OWNING MODULE names it. Exists so a module's page can find core's Team without holding core's identifiers, which are core-internal. The module id is matched rather than trusted: an external id is unique only within a module |
 | GET | `/teams` | active, publicly visible Teams, paged. Every payload carries `{ configured, stale, lastSyncAt }` so a page can say how recently the projection was confirmed rather than presenting a stale roster as current, plus `enabled` — whether this deployment has Teams at all |
 | GET | `/teams/:slug` | one Team. An **archived** Team still resolves, read-only, and names its successor when it was renamed — an old bookmark or Discord link lands somewhere that explains itself. A **hidden** Team returns 404, indistinguishable from one that does not exist: "absent from every public surface" includes not confirming it is there. Carries `id`/`externalId`/`moduleId` — this route only, since the index has no use for them |
@@ -973,7 +978,7 @@ never shown a control that would 403. The URLs below are unaffected by which
 file a route sits in — that is the property the route manifest freezes.
 | Method | Path | Purpose |
 |---|---|---|
-| GET | `/dashboard` | current mode, last change time + who, content counts, recent activity |
+| GET | `/dashboard` | current mode, last change time + who, content counts, recent activity, and `warnings[]` — operator conditions that are quietly not working and would otherwise be discovered by somebody not receiving an email. Normally empty. Each entry is `{code, message, href}` and each one is computed defensively: a warning that can 500 the admin landing page is a worse bug than the one it reports. Today there is one, `EMAIL_TRANSPORT_MIGRATION` (§7) |
 | PUT | `/site-mode` | `{mode}` → update settings, stamp who/when, log `site_mode.change` |
 | GET | `/posts?category=` | all posts incl. unpublished |
 | POST | `/posts` | create |
@@ -1144,13 +1149,62 @@ still at [`SHARD_VISIBILITY.md`](SHARD_VISIBILITY.md).
 
 ## 7. Email
 
-`utils/mailer.js` (nodemailer) sends through **Gmail over OAuth2 (SMTP XOAUTH2)**, configured in
-Admin → Settings → Email — not env. The mailbox is authorized by an in-app "Connect Gmail" consent
-flow (`/admin/email/*`) that captures a refresh token, stored AES-GCM-encrypted in the `email_config`
-singleton (never returned over the API). The OAuth client id/secret are reused from the `google`
-auth-providers row. Recipient is the `contact_email` site setting. If email is unconfigured/disabled,
-`POST /public/contact` returns `{fallback:"mailto", email}` so the client renders a `mailto:` link
-instead. Errors never leak credentials.
+`utils/mailer.js` (nodemailer) sends through a **registered mail transport**, configured in
+Admin → Settings → Email — never env, and never a compiled-in provider. Gmail OAuth2 and its consent
+flow were **removed** in engagement Phase 1 ([`ENGAGEMENT.md`](ENGAGEMENT.md) §1.2a); SMTP is the
+baseline and the only transport core ships.
+
+**Transport, not provider.** `server/src/engagement/transports/` holds the registry and its one
+registration. A transport declares an id, a label and its own **`credentialFields`**, and that
+declaration is the single thing the admin form renders, the request sanitizer filters against, and
+the "is this value secret" answer comes from — so adding a relay is a registration, not four edits
+across a form, a validator, a column set and a model. `registerDeliveryChannel`, the other half of
+§3.1, arrives with the engine that consumes it.
+
+**Configuration** lives in the `email_config` singleton: `transport` (default `smtp`),
+`sender_email`, `sender_name`, `reply_to`, and `credential_enc` — the transport's whole credential
+set as ONE AES-256-GCM JSON blob (`utils/secretBox.js`), because the field list belongs to the
+transport and a column per union member would make each new transport a schema change. The blob is
+**write-only over the API**: secret fields are never returned, only a per-field `secretsSet` flag,
+and a blob that will not decrypt reads as *absent* rather than raising — a rotated `SECRET_ENC_KEY`
+must land an admin on a screen that says "unconfigured", not a 500 that takes the contact form with
+it. `provider` and `refresh_token_enc` remain as **deprecated, unread columns** under the
+additive-only discipline.
+
+**No phone-home.** No transport may ship a default host, port, endpoint or sender
+([`ENGAGEMENT.md`](ENGAGEMENT.md) §3.2). A transport with no operator configuration is
+`unconfigured` and its channel is off — it never falls back to a destination we chose.
+`npm run check:hosts` is the CI guardrail; it reads code, not prose, so documentation naming a host
+is fine and a literal in a transport is not.
+
+**Three supported SMTP postures**, in the order an operator should consider them:
+
+| Posture | Shape | When |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| **A relay** (recommended) | Mailgun / SES / Postmark, host + port 587 + API-key-as-password | Anything with real volume. Reputation, bounce handling and DKIM are the relay's problem, not the operator's |
+| **A mailbox provider over SMTP** | e.g. `smtp.gmail.com` port 587 with an **app password** (not the account password) | A small deployment, and the migration path off the removed OAuth2 flow. Subject to the provider's own daily send caps |
+| **A self-hosted MTA** | An unauthenticated relay on port 25 on the same host | An operator who already runs mail. `user` and `password` are left blank; the transport treats a username with no password as incomplete, since that authenticates as nobody |
+
+`secure` is the field operators get wrong: on for implicit TLS on 465, **off** for 587, which
+nodemailer upgrades with STARTTLS. 587-with-secure-on hangs rather than erroring cleanly.
+
+**"Send test" is the verification, and it has to be.** Under the removed consent flow the sending
+address came back from Google's userinfo and was guaranteed to be a mailbox the credential owned.
+Operator-typed, it can be refused by the relay — a silent SPF/DMARC deliverability failure, not an
+error — so `POST /admin/email/test` is the only thing that proves the whole configuration, and its
+failures name the sender and the likely cause rather than passing a bare `550` through.
+
+**Failure contracts.** Recipient for the contact form is the `contact_email` site setting. If email
+is unconfigured or disabled, `POST /public/contact` returns `{fallback:"mailto", email}` so the
+client renders a `mailto:` link, invites return the accept link for an admin to share by hand,
+password resets still answer a generic 200, and Team notifications are logged and swallowed. Only
+the admin test send throws — it is the only one with someone waiting to be told. Errors never leak
+credentials.
+
+**The upgrade is silent by design and therefore announced.** An existing deployment backfills to
+`transport='smtp'` with no credentials, so every sink above politely does nothing and **mail simply
+stops**. The admin dashboard warns whenever the deprecated Gmail token is present and no replacement
+credential is; see [`UPGRADE_NOTES.md`](UPGRADE_NOTES.md).
 
 ---
 

website/ENGAGEMENT.md

@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 # The Engagement System — findings and plan
 
-**Status:** design of record for the next workstream. No code written yet. The scope decisions below are
+**Status:** design of record. **Phase 1 is built** (website#165 + docs#178, with website#164 as its
+prerequisite); everything from Phase 1b on is still design. The scope decisions below are
 settled; **four of the eight questions in §7.1 were answered by the org lead on 2026-08-28** — Q1, Q3, Q5
 and Q7, and Q1's answer added a whole phase (**Phase 1b**, unique email addresses). Q2, Q4, Q6 and
 Q8 remain open and block Phases 4, 5b, 2 and 8 respectively. Per CLAUDE.md § Conventions, no implementation
@@ -1236,7 +1237,7 @@ Phase 4**, **Q4 before Phase 5b**, **Q8 before Phase 8**.
 
 ---
 
-### Phase 1 — Remove Gmail OAuth2; `DeliveryChannel` + SMTP
+### Phase 1 — Remove Gmail OAuth2; the transport registry + SMTP ✅
 
 **This phase is a subtraction and a replacement in one PR**, because leaving the OAuth2 flow half-wired
 across a release is worse than either end state.
@@ -1261,6 +1262,41 @@ deployment does today — contact form falls back to `mailto`, invites surface t
 **Guardrails:** swagger regen + `routes:manifest --check` (two routes removed); no-hardcoded-host check
 (§3.2 rule 4) — which the deleted `smtp.gmail.com` literal is the first real test of.
 
+#### As built (website#165, docs#178)
+
+Delivered as specified, with four things worth recording because they are not what the plan above says.
+
+1. **Only half of §3.1 was built, deliberately.** `registerMailTransport` ships;
+   `registerDeliveryChannel` does not. Phase 1 has no consumer for `addressFor`/`render`/`deliver` —
+   the engine that calls them is Phase 4 — and a registered channel nothing calls is a shape frozen
+   before anything tried to use it. It arrives with the phase that consumes it. `credentialFields` is
+   the piece that mattered here, since it is what makes the admin form generic.
+2. **`enabled` now gates every sender, which it did not before.** `buildTransport()` used to test only
+   "is there a refresh token and a sender", so the contact form kept sending after an admin unticked
+   *Enable email sending* — `isConfigured()` honoured the toggle but the five direct senders bypassed
+   it. The connect flow used to set `enabled` as a side effect of a consent redirect; with a credential
+   form it has to mean what it says, so the gate moved onto the one path every sender shares. **A
+   deliberate behaviour change, not a refactor**, and the only one in the phase.
+3. **The G22 warning reads the deprecated column.** `refresh_token_enc` stays unread *as
+   configuration*, but its presence is exactly "this deployment had working mail before the upgrade",
+   which is the warning's whole condition. `hadLegacyConnection && !hasCredential` fires for the one
+   deployment this happens to and stays silent on a fresh install, which has never had mail and would
+   only learn to ignore the banner. The warning clears itself once a credential is saved — nothing has
+   to remember to dismiss it.
+4. **`npm run swagger` was already broken and had to be fixed first** (website#164, its own PR). It
+   died with swagger-autogen's "invalid array length" runaway on a pristine `edge`, under Node 20 and
+   24, and at the commit whose own PR last regenerated the spec — so no phase that touches a route
+   could have met the standing obligation. Bisected to one statement in `teams.router.js`:
+   `param('teamId').custom((v) => v === 'default' || TEAM_ID.test(v))`. **The rule is that nothing
+   reaching `.test(` may sit inside a route statement**, and the "per-file route limit" that phases 8
+   and 9 recorded does not exist — a three-route file carrying only that one route dies too. Worth
+   knowing for every later phase in this workstream, all of which add routes.
+
+Two smaller decisions: the credential is one encrypted JSON blob rather than a column per field, so
+adding a transport is never a schema change; and a blob that will not decrypt reads as **absent**
+rather than raising, so a rotated `SECRET_ENC_KEY` lands an admin on an "unconfigured" screen instead
+of a 500 that takes the contact form with it.
+
 ---
 
 ### Phase 1b — Unique, changeable, verifiable email addresses *(decision 6)*

website/UPGRADE_NOTES.md

@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
+# Upgrade notes — website
+
+**Operator-facing. Newest first.** One entry per change that requires an operator to *do* something,
+or that changes behaviour they would otherwise discover by accident.
+
+Most upgrades need nothing: the schema is replayed on every boot with `IF NOT EXISTS` migrations, and
+a deployment that pulls a new image and restarts is done. This file exists for the exceptions — and
+the exceptions worth writing down are almost always the ones that **fail quietly**, because a loud
+failure announces itself and a quiet one does not.
+
+**Read the entries between the version you are on and the version you are moving to.** Each names the
+action, whether it is required, and what happens if you do nothing.
+
+---
+
+## Outbound email: the Gmail connect flow is gone; configure SMTP
+
+**Required, if this deployment currently sends email.** Engagement Phase 1.
+
+### What changed
+
+The "Connect Gmail" consent flow has been **removed**. Email now sends through an ordinary mail
+transport whose credentials an admin types in — SMTP is the baseline and the only transport shipped.
+
+Removed with it: `GET /api/v1/admin/email/connect/start`, `GET /api/v1/admin/email/connect/callback`,
+and email's reuse of the `google` authentication provider's client id and secret. That reuse is worth
+a sentence of its own, because it was a coupling nobody could see: rotating the Google **SSO** secret
+silently broke outbound **mail**, with nothing on either screen relating the two. Single sign-on is
+otherwise unaffected — the `google` provider row exists for SSO in its own right and is untouched.
+
+### What you must do
+
+On the first boot after the upgrade, `email_config.transport` backfills to `smtp` with **no
+credentials**. Until you supply some, **no mail is sent** — and nothing errors, because every sender
+is written to degrade politely:
+
+- the contact form falls back to a `mailto:` link,
+- an invite returns the accept link for you to send by hand,
+- a password reset still answers its usual generic success,
+- Team notifications are logged and dropped.
+
+That is the risk this note exists for: **email stops and nothing complains.** The admin dashboard
+shows a warning while it is true, and the warning goes away by itself once a credential is saved.
+
+Go to **Admin → Settings → Email**, choose the posture that fits, then use **Send test** — which is
+now the real verification of the whole configuration, not a formality.
+
+| Posture | Settings | Notes |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| **A relay** — recommended | The relay's host, port `587`, *Implicit TLS* **off**, your API key as the password | Mailgun, SES, Postmark and equivalents. Reputation, DKIM and bounce handling are the relay's problem. The right answer for anything with volume |
+| **Gmail over SMTP** — the shortest migration | `smtp.gmail.com`, port `587`, *Implicit TLS* **off**, your Google address as the username, and an **app password** | This is the direct replacement for the removed connect flow. It needs an [app password](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833) — 2-Step Verification must be on, and your ordinary account password will not work. Google's per-day send caps apply |
+| **Your own MTA** | Its host, port `25`, *Implicit TLS* **off**, username and password left blank | For an operator already running mail on the same host |
+
+Two fields cause most failures:
+
+- **Implicit TLS** is *on* only for port **465**. On port 587 leave it **off** — the connection still
+  upgrades to TLS, via STARTTLS. Port 587 with it on does not error; it hangs.
+- **Send from** is now typed by you rather than read back from Google, so nothing guarantees the
+  server will accept it. It must be an address the account is allowed to send as, or the mail is
+  refused for SPF/DMARC reasons that look like nothing at all. Send test names this specifically when
+  it happens.
+
+### If you do nothing
+
+Mail stays off. Nothing breaks and no data is lost — the site, the admin panel, logins, SSO and the
+shard integration all behave exactly as before. The dashboard warning stays up until you either
+configure a transport or press **Clear credentials**, which is how you say "this deployment
+deliberately sends no mail".
+
+### Data
+
+Nothing is dropped. `email_config` gains `transport`, `credential_enc` and `reply_to`; the old
+`provider` and `refresh_token_enc` columns are kept but no longer read. Your stored Gmail refresh
+token is not used again and is cleared the first time you press **Clear credentials**.