HellionChat/docs/CHANGELOG.md

Changelog — Hellion Chat

All user-facing changes to Hellion Chat. Format follows Keep a Changelog, version numbers follow Semantic Versioning.

Detailed release notes per version are available directly on the Gitea Release page and in the plugin changelog block (HellionChat/HellionChat.yaml → changelog:). This file summarises releases as an overview and links to the release pages for details.

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Hellion Chat 1.5.2 — First-Run Wizard Rework (2026-05-18)

UX patch. The single-page first-run wizard becomes a four-step staged-commit flow, the privacy profile catalogue gains a fourth entry "Roleplay", and a new power-settings stage surfaces six previously-hidden Configuration defaults. Existing v1.5.1 users see the new wizard once on first v1.5.2 boot via a new WizardLastShownVersion config marker.

User-visible:

• Wizard layout: Welcome → Privacy profile → Power settings → Done. Forge-Bronze pagination dots, per-step Back / Decide later / Next footer. Decide-later and X-close both leave the existing config untouched; only the Finish ✓ click commits pending choices.
• Fourth privacy profile "Roleplay": Privacy-First whitelist plus Say and both emote types, with a 30-day retention window for Say and 90 days for the two emote channels. Shout, Yell and NoviceNetwork stay out — public-distance noise from strangers is not story content.
• Privacy picker becomes a 2×2 grid. Casual stays the recommended option with a ★ marker.
• Power-settings stage surfaces six existing Configuration fields in one place: Load Previous Session, Filter Include Previous Sessions, Auto-Tell-Tabs History Preload, Compact Density, Prettier Timestamps, plus a built-in theme picker. No new settings are introduced — the stage just collects what was previously buried in Settings → Privacy / Chat / Data Management / Appearance.
• Inline test hint on the done stage: type /tell <Player Name> into chat surfaces the auto-tell-tab spawn mechanism for new users.
• Wizard window starts at 720×480 (was 900×560) and can shrink to 600×400. Step 1 wraps the fox banner in a collapsible TreeNode, folded by default — onboarding copy stays primary.
• Existing v1.5.1 users get the new wizard surfaced once on first v1.5.2 boot. A new WizardLastShownVersion config field tracks the most recent version whose wizard was shown; Plugin.LoadAsync resets FirstRunCompleted once when the constant 1.5.2 doesn't match.

Under the hood:

• WizardStateSmokeStep registered with /xlperf. Variant 1 walks the four steps with empty pending state to pin the no-op CommitPending path. Variant 2 picks Roleplay on Step 2, skips Step 3, commits, and asserts LoadPreviousSession / FilterIncludePreviousSessions stayed on their pre-test value — pinning the null-semantics contract. The step snapshots six privacy / retention fields before Variant 2 and CleanUp() restores them, so back-to-back runs don't drift the active profile.
• Twelve pure-helper xUnit Facts in the Build Suite (Privacy/PrivacyDefaultsTests.cs) cover all four profile whitelists plus the new Roleplay retention overrides.
• Configuration grows one optional string field WizardLastShownVersion (default empty). No schema bump — migration v17 still applies.

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

Full release notes on the Gitea release page.

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Hellion Chat 1.5.1 — FontAtlas Refactor and Hellion Forge Signature (2026-05-17)

Hybrid FontManager refactor plus an embedded Hellion Forge provenance mark.

• FontManager handle creation moves into the ctor inside a single atlas.SuppressAutoRebuild() block — the font atlas now builds once per plugin load instead of four to five times.
• Hybrid property model: Axis, AxisItalic and FontAwesome become init-only handles; RegularFont and ItalicFont stay mutable because the eight font settings still need to replace them at runtime via the renamed RebuildDelegateFonts() path, without a plugin reload.
• FontAwesome reuses Dalamud's UiBuilder.IconFontFixedWidthHandle instead of building its own atlas slot.
• BuildFontsAsync and BuildFonts are removed; the live mutation path is RebuildDelegateFonts() now.
• Two new self-test steps register with /xlperf: FontManager ctor smoke (every handle non-null, no atlas load-exception) and push smoke (Push() returns without throwing).
• Hellion Forge signature embedded in the plugin DLL: a fox-head ASCII silhouette is prepended to the /xllog bootstrap banner on every plugin load, and a full fox banner with "Hellion Forge" set inside the body is available as a folded TreeNode in the First-Run Wizard and Settings → Information tab. Drawn by Julia Moon.
• Honorific full-gradient port (originally scheduled for this cycle) was dropped: Honorific 3.2 exposes no IPC for the rendered gradient frame, and an in-plugin port of the colour palette was declined. The integration stays at the v1.4.7 glow-only shape.

The 10× HITCH cut targeted from the v1.5.0 cross-plugin baseline did not land — HITCH stays around 80 ms because the cost lives in the UiBuilder first-frame render path, not in the atlas build (which this cycle did reduce from 4-5 builds per load to 1). A first-frame render investigation is reserved for a later cycle. No settings changes, no migration. v17 stays.

Full release notes on the Gitea release page.

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Hellion Chat 1.5.0 — DI Foundation and Service Refactor (2026-05-17)

Major architecture cycle. The plugin bootstrap moves to a generic-host DI container (Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting + IServiceCollection) modelled on Lightless Sync. Service logging migrates from a static Plugin.LogProxy locator to typed Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.ILogger<T> via constructor injection, bridged over Dalamud's IPluginLog by a custom DalamudLogger trio.

Under the hood

• 18 instance-class services migrate to ILogger<T> via constructor injection across four slices: data layer (MessageStore, MessageManager, AutoTellTabsService), IPC and integrations (HonorificService, IpcManager, TypingIpc, ExtraChat, three GameFunctions classes), UI window layer (ChatLogWindow, DbViewer, Popout, three settings tabs), and root (Commands, ThemeRegistry, PayloadHandler).
• Plugin.LogProxy stays in place for the eight buckets ctor injection cannot reach: static helpers (EmoteCache, AutoTranslate, MemoryUtil, WrapperUtil), Dalamud-reflected types (Configuration), the Message data class, and instance classes that only log from static methods (FontManager, one GameFunctions site).
• Plugin.cs finishes at 1012 lines — virtually identical to the pre-cycle 1013. The new Phase-1 host build and Plugin.X bridge wiring trade out exactly the service and window allocations that previously lived in LoadAsync.
• Cross-plugin baseline confirms no performance penalty against Chat 2: HellionChat first-frame HITCH 77 ms median, Chat 2 74 ms median. Lightless and XIVInstantMessenger sit around 7 ms by deferring their font-atlas build past Finished loading — that pattern is the v1.5.1 follow-up item.

User-visible

• Slash-command insert fix: pasting a slash command into the chat input (Friend List "/tell" action, plugin-driven inserts from Artisan, AllaganTools etc.) now replaces the existing input instead of concatenating onto whatever the user was typing. Cherry-picked from ChatTwo upstream ee7768ac with namespace adaptation.

Migration v17 stays (no schema bump).

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

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Hellion Chat 1.4.10 — Symbol-Picker and Tell-History Fix (2026-05-16)

Eleventh and final sub-patch of the v1.4.x Polish-Sweep series. Symbol picker for the chat input, a tell-history reload fix for users with many active partners, and a closing cleanup sweep before v1.5.0 picks up the DI-container adoption.

• Symbol picker for the chat input: smile-icon button left of the channel indicator opens a popup with two tabs — 161 FFXIV PUA glyphs (Dalamud's SeIconChar enum) and 97 server-verified BMP symbols round-tripped through /echo and /say in a four-round probe. Cursor-aware splice, multi-insert keeps the popup open, recent-used strip floats the last sixteen picks across both tabs. Toggle in Settings → Chat → Message behaviour, default on.
• Pinned auto-tell tabs reload their full history again. PreloadHistory had a hidden 500-row scan cap that overrode the user-configurable AutoTellTabsHistoryPreload setting whenever you chatted with many partners; less-frequent pinned partners lost their backlog. The cap is removed.
• Slash-command teardown cleanup: /hellion, /hellionView, /hellionDebugger (and #if DEBUG /hellionSeString) wrappers are now cached as private fields so plugin teardown detaches the live registration instead of re-Register'ing with identical args (latent maintenance hazard from v1.4.9).
• v1.4.x Polish-Sweep wraps up here. The ImGuiListClipper render refactor that was on the v1.4.10 reserve list got dropped after cross-platform smoke showed the scroll rubber-band is a Wine/Linux render-pipeline quirk, not universal — Windows users never saw it. It will get its own platform-targeted spike in a later patch. Next major cycle is v1.5.0 with the DI-container adoption (Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting + ILogger) modelled on Lightless.
• Migration v17 stays (no schema bump).

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

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Hellion Chat 1.4.9 — Plugin-Load Render Polish (2026-05-15)

Tenth sub-patch of the v1.4.x polish-sweep series. First-frame render cost drops from ~127 ms median down to ~76 ms median — comfortably under Dalamud's 100 ms HITCH warning threshold. The remaining ~13 ms gap to ChatTwo upstream (~63 ms median) is the cost of HellionChat-only features (sidebar tab view, custom status bar, Honorific integration).

• First-frame defer: six non-essential rendering sections inside ChatLogWindow skip their first Draw and run one frame later. Covered sections are the bottom status bar, channel-name SeString chunks, window bounds check, v0.6.1 hint banner, autocomplete and input-preview calculation. At 60 fps the user sees those sections ~17 ms after plugin reload — invisible inside the ~2.5 s font-atlas build window every reload runs through anyway. Frame 1 stays well under 100 ms too (~40 ms), so no secondary HITCH warning appears.
• Slash-command centralisation: /hellion, /hellionView, /hellionSeString and /hellionDebugger are now registered during LoadAsync instead of inside the corresponding window constructors. The commands work before their target window is opened the first time, and Dalamud's plugin-manager configuration / open buttons (UiBuilder.OpenConfigUi / OpenMainUi) hang on the same path.
• Plugin-load profiling logs stay on: MessageStore.Connect, MessageStore.Migrate, FilterAllTabs and the auto-translate warm-up timing log are now Information level rather than Debug. They serve as a tripwire so a future regression past 100 ms shows up directly in /xllog without re-enabling Debug.
• ChatTwo IPC compatibility layer: HellionChat now mirrors ChatTwo's full IPC surface (GetChatInputState, ChatInputStateChanged, Register, Unregister, Available, Invoke) under the ChatTwo.* namespace in addition to our existing HellionChat.* provider gates. Third-party integrations that historically only subscribe to ChatTwo's IPC — for example Artisan's and AllaganTools' context-menu hooks — keep working without requiring a code change on their side. Conflict detection prevents ChatTwo from loading in parallel with HellionChat, so there is no slot-collision risk at runtime.
• Migration v17 stays (no schema bump).
• Internal: hypothesis-triage during the R2 cycle falsified three of the four candidate root causes (font-atlas sync, theme-apply ABGR-cache init, multiple-window render). Actual cause is DrawList setup cost distributed across ~10 ImGui sections inside ChatLogWindow (5-20 ms each). The six selective defers above are the pragmatic fix — a clean structural rewrite would belong in the v1.5.x DI-container cycle.

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

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Hellion Chat 1.4.8 — Hook-Layer and Polish Quick-Wins (2026-05-14)

Ninth sub-patch of the v1.4.x polish-sweep series. Hook-layer cluster (FTS5 full-text search, ad-block foundation investigation) plus three polish quick-wins.

• DbViewer full-text search: optional FTS5 index across the full chat history. Built asynchronously on first run after the update with a progress toast (UI stays responsive, the toggle is disabled until the build completes). The local page-filter remains the default mode. Multi-word queries match as exact phrases; power users can opt into raw FTS5 MATCH syntax by wrapping their own double-quotes around the term.
• Custom theme files now auto-reload when edited while the theme is active. Save the JSON in your editor and the live render picks up the change within a second — no need to re-click the theme in the picker. Disk-stat is throttled to 1 Hz so per-frame cost stays free.
• Retention sweep no longer blocks the framework thread. Framework.Run(...).Wait() is replaced by Framework.RunOnTick(...), which removes the ~194 ms hitch the sweep used to add per run.
• Status bar height is derived from GetTextLineHeightWithSpacing() plus a DPI-aware spacer so the bar renders correctly at Windows display scaling above 100 %. Linux/Wayland default of 100 % is unaffected.
• Receive-suppressed-tells routing was investigated this cycle and postponed to v1.5.x. When other plugins suppress tells via CheckMessageHandled, FFXIV's chat pipeline skips the RaptureLogModule.AddMsgSourceEntry path, which means HellionChat's ContentIdResolverHook does not fire and tell-partner identification breaks for AutoTellTab routing. The proper fix sits next to the planned ad-block hook layer (RaptureLogModule.ShowMiniTalkPlayer and friends) where the same patch surface comes up anyway.
• Internal: storage form of messages.Id clarified (declared BLOB but Microsoft.Data.Sqlite stores Guid parameters as TEXT). FTS bulk insert and LoadByGuids join now match the TEXT storage form on both sides. Migration v17 stays (no schema bump).

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

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Hellion Chat 1.4.7 — Backlog Cleanup and Mid-Features (2026-05-13)

Eighth sub-patch of the v1.4.x polish-sweep series. First user-visible feature bundle since v1.4.5 — pinned tell tabs that survive relog, opt-in Honorific glow rendering, a configurable sidebar, plus a Settings-Save channel-preservation fix surfaced during smoke testing.

• TempTell Pin: right-click a TempTell tab in the sidebar and choose "Pin Tab" / "Tab anpinnen". Pinned tabs survive plugin reload and character logout, keep their conversation history (loaded on demand from the message store on rehydrate), and stay bound to the same /tell partner. Hard cap of 5 pinned tabs in a pool separate from the 15-tab auto-tell pool — total ceiling is 20 tabs. The sidebar groups pinned tabs into their own section with a divider header
• Honorific glow outlines now render via an 8-direction DrawList pre-pass when the title carries a Glow colour. Opt-in via Settings → Integrations → Render glow outlines (Honorific) (default off). Honorific's gradient surface (Color3, GradientColourSet, GradientAnimationStyle) is parsed and stashed for a later cycle but renders as the primary colour until then — the v1.4.7 DTO already mirrors all four extra fields so the JSON roundtrip doesn't silent-drop them
• Sidebar width configurable in Theme & Layout (44–160 px, default 44 stays icon-only). The icon button stretches with the configured width so a widened sidebar looks intentional, not a 36 px icon floating in empty space
• Configuration.UpdateFrom now preserves the runtime CurrentChannel across the persistent-tab merge alongside Messages and LastSendUnread. TabSwitched deep-clones the seeded channel from the previous tab instead of sharing the same UsedChannel instance. Together these fix a regression where Settings-Save on a Party or Linkshell tab popped the chat input back to /tell <pinned-partner> on the next interaction
• Util/ImGuiUtil.cs DrawArrows IconButton id uses (id + 1).ToString() with explicit parentheses instead of the operator-precedence quirk id + 1.ToString() (which resolved to id.ToString() + "1"). Single live caller is Ui/DbViewer.cs:227 page-navigation
• Internal: IPluginLogProxy indirection over Dalamud's IPluginLog routes all ~91 Plugin.Log call sites through a testable proxy. MessageStore.Migrate0 can now run in xUnit without loading Dalamud.dll, closing the gap F12.1 left in v1.4.6. Production wrapper DalamudPluginLogProxy and Build-Suite FakePluginLogProxy mirror the full IPluginLog surface (Verbose/Debug/Information/Info/Warning/Error/Fatal) with single-string, Exception+string, and params object[] overloads
• Internal: TempTab counter switched from an Interlocked cached field to a derived Tabs.Count(predicate). Pin-state transitions (TryPin / Unpin / Promote) are cold-path and don't need lock-free reads; counter mutation surface dropped from 5 to 0 sites. Build-Suite floor 688 → 710 (+22)
• Schema bump v16 → v17 is additive: new Tab.IsPinned bool, default false. Existing v16 configs load cleanly and get their Version stamp bumped after the gate check

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

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Hellion Chat 1.4.6 — Code Hygiene and Refactor (2026-05-12)

Maintenance patch. No user-visible behaviour changes; tightens the development feedback loop, fixes two upstream-inherited bugs from ChatTwo f35b7d3, and prepares the code for the v1.4.7 backlog cleanup.

• scripts/preflight.sh gains Block E (dotnet csharpier check) and Block F (markdownlint-cli2) so reflow drift and markdown violations are caught at the pre-push gate. .markdownlint.json adds MD024 siblings_only and disables MD036 so the bilingual forge-post bold-emphasis headings pass linting; the .claude/ directory is excluded from the scan
• FontManager.AddFontWithFallback catch-filter now covers InvalidOperationException and ArgumentException on top of the existing IO triad. The warning log carries the exception type name, so the diagnostic path knows which class of atlas-toolkit throw triggered the NotoSansCjkRegular fallback
• BrandingLinks (5 URLs) and Integrations/IntegrationLinks (2 URLs) validate themselves on first module load via [ModuleInitializer] + a shared UrlValidation.ValidateAll helper. A malformed URL now throws InvalidOperationException at plugin load with the source class and the broken URL in the message
• Cherry-picked from ChatTwo upstream f35b7d3: Chat.SetChannel no longer leaks the native Utf8String when the linkshell check rejects the channel. The validity check is now wrapped around the ChangeChatChannel call instead of short-circuiting before Dtor. ValidAnyLinkshell is renamed to IsChannelOrExistingLinkshell and the ChatLogWindow call-site follows the rename
• Cherry-picked from ChatTwo upstream f35b7d3: Tab.Clone now deep-clones UsedChannel and TellTarget. The old CurrentChannel = CurrentChannel was a reference copy, so PopOut and Temp tabs mutated each other's channel state (incl. tell target). TellTarget.From(t) static factory is replaced with an instance Clone(); UsedChannel.Clone() is new and runs deep-clone on both TellTarget references
• ChatLogWindow active-tab underline pill now scales with ImGuiHelpers.GlobalScale and rounds its DrawList coordinates to physical pixels via MathF.Round, so the 2 px line stays crisp on 125 % and 150 % DPI setups instead of bleeding into a sub-pixel blur
• ImGuiUtil.IconButton width parameter no longer subtracts HUD-scaled CellPadding.X * 2 from the raw int width. ImGui.Button handles its own frame padding internally, so the measured buttonWidth now passes through verbatim (inspired-by upstream f35b7d3, but our two call-sites need the parameter, so the param itself stays)
• Internal: HellionStyle ChildBgAlpha threshold logic extracted to HellionStyleHelpers.ResolveChildBgAlpha with a build-suite mirror test that pins the 0.999f cutoff. Plugin.SaveConfig clones only the temp-tab subset in the pre-serialization snapshot instead of the full tab list. SettingsOverview caches ImGui.GetWindowDrawList() once per frame and passes the pointer down to DrawCard
• Internal: Dalamud.Utility.Util static surface (IsWine, OpenLink) routed through a new IPlatformUtil indirection. MessageStore's IsWine probe is now reachable from the xUnit AppDomain via a FakePlatformUtil fixture (full isolated MessageStore construction still pending — Plugin.Log.Information in Migrate0 is a separate Dalamud-static surface, slated for v1.4.7)
• Built-in themes: Crystal Nocturne (royal sapphire and electric magenta over obsidian, by CRYSTALLITE) replaces Moonlit Bloom in the built-in roster. Users who had Moonlit Bloom selected fall back to the default Hellion Arctic on the first plugin load; an existing custom JSON copy of Moonlit Bloom under pluginConfigs/HellionChat/themes/ keeps working unchanged

Modding & support: join Hellion Forge — https://discord.gg/X9V7Kcv5gR

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

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Hellion Chat 1.4.5 — UX and Robustness (2026-05-12)

Sixth sub-patch of the v1.4.x polish-sweep series. User-visible robustness fixes plus two doc/test polish items from the audit backlog. No schema bump, no migration.

• ChatLogWindow.Draw now surfaces a one-shot warning notification when the draw path throws. The stack trace still goes to /xllog via Plugin.Log.Error; the notification is suppressed for the rest of the plugin session so a recurring failure can't spam the notification stack frame-by-frame. Pattern-match to the existing Plugin.cs:505-516 migration-blocker notification
• FirstRunWizard splits accept from close. OnClose no longer silently sets FirstRunCompleted, so closing the X leaves the wizard pending and it reopens on the next plugin load. A new footer "Later — keep defaults" button is the explicit path to dismiss without picking a profile. Bilingual strings (EN + DE) plus a tooltip
• InputHistoryService.Reset is wired into Plugin.DisposeAsync alongside the existing pure-memory cleanups. Static state used to survive a plugin reload — the next load now starts with an empty history
• FontManager.GetHellionFontBytes becomes TryGetHellionFontBytes with a nullable return. On miss (broken csproj, hand-rolled dev build) the caller falls back to the system-font path that UseHellionFont=false already uses, plus a Plugin.Log.Warning. The whole UiBuilder no longer throws if the embedded font resource is absent
• Plugin.cs:167-168 gets a 4-line reasoning comment around the session-only RemoveAll(IsTempTab): tells are usually privacy-filtered, resurrecting an empty crashed-session tab would trigger DB reconstruction on the next load. TempTabCounter.InitFromList mirrors the post-strip semantic in the Build-Suite with a pinning test
• StatusBar.cs drops the version slot when the chat window's content width minus the version text is below 200 px. The right-aligned version used to clip into the four left-side slots in narrow windows

Modding & support: join Hellion Forge — https://discord.gg/X9V7Kcv5gR

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

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Hellion Chat 1.4.4 — Threading and IPC Safety Polish (2026-05-12)

Fifth sub-patch of the v1.4.x polish-sweep series. Threading assumptions are documented per-method, a hot-path lock falls away in AutoTellTabsService, IPC-cleanup failures become visible, and the privacy filter now speaks up when an unknown ChatType shows up.

• AutoTellTabsService.ActiveTempTabCount switches from a lock-protected LINQ Count to an Interlocked counter kept in sync with Config.Tabs from inside the existing mutation paths. Initialize() seeds the counter from the persisted Tabs list, and SaveConfig's snapshot-restore path calls a new ResyncTempTabCounter() so the mid-step RemoveAll doesn't leave the counter drifting. Pure-helper test mirror lives in the Build-Suite repo
• HonorificService per-method threading banners replace the block comment at the bottom of the file. Each IPC callback (TryInitialPull, OnTitleChanged, OnReady, OnDisposing, TryUnsubscribe) and the CurrentTitle field carry a one-line // Thread: annotation so the framework-thread invariant is visible at the call site
• TryUnsubscribe log-level upgraded from Debug to Warning. A silent unsubscribe failure leaks a live subscription across plugin reloads, which is exactly the kind of issue that should not be at Debug
• AutoTranslate.PreloadCache thread now has IsBackground = true and a thread name. Without IsBackground the warmup blocks plugin unload (typically 100-300 ms). Pattern-match to MessageManager (F6.1) and Plugin.RetentionSweep (F9.3), both since v1.4.0
• Configuration.IsAllowedForStorage adds a one-line Plugin.Log.Warning for the first occurrence of any ChatType that isn't in PrivacyPersistChannels. Dedup via a NonSerialized HashSet<ChatType>, so the warning fires once per runtime — not once per frame, not once per install. Failsafe routing through PrivacyPersistUnknownChannels is unchanged
• PrivacyPersistUnknownChannels field default flipped from false to true for new installs via a constant in PrivacyDefaults. Existing configs keep their explicit choice — the deserializer overrides the initializer. No schema bump, no migration, no first-run banner

Modding & support: join Hellion Forge — https://discord.gg/X9V7Kcv5gR

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

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Hellion Chat 1.4.3 — Plugin-Load Async-Init + Repo-Cutover (2026-05-08)

Plugin lifecycle migrated to Dalamud's IAsyncDalamudPlugin API. The constructor now does only the bootstrap-essentials (config load, language init, conflict detection); migrations, service allocations, window construction and hook subscription move to LoadAsync. Dalamud can keep its UI responsive while the heavy work runs.

• IAsyncDalamudPlugin two-phase load with per-line CaptureFailure in DisposeAsync (mirrors LightlessSync's pattern); idempotency guard protects against reload races
• Schema-gate replaces the v9 → v16 migration chain. Configs on schema v16+ load directly; older configs trigger an "install v1.4.2 first" error so the historic migration path stays intact
• AutoTranslate.PreloadCache moved off the load path. First use may have a sub-second hitch instead of every-load; the upstream chose differently, we accept first-use latency
• FontManager.BuildFonts is called sync at the start of LoadAsync; Dalamud rebuilds the font atlas on its own pipeline so the custom Hellion-Exo2 font appears with a brief font-pop after load (matches ChatTwo's behaviour)
• Custom-repo URL moved to gitea.hellion-forge.cloud/JonKazama-Hellion/HellionChat. GitHub repo stays as a frozen v1.4.2 snapshot; new releases ship from Gitea. Existing testers need to update the custom-repo URL once
• Plugin-load time in this release sits at ~3.7 s median (5 reloads), comparable to v1.4.2. Async migration is foundational for v1.4.4 Lazy-Init optimisations rather than an immediate user-perceived win

Modding & support: join Hellion Forge — https://discord.gg/X9V7Kcv5gR

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

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Hellion Chat 1.4.2 — ChatLog Frame-Hot-Path

Third sub-patch of the v1.4.x Polish Sweep series. Per-frame allocations from the chat-log render path eliminated.

• DrawMessages card-mode hoists theme/drawList/winLeft/winRight/borderColorAbgr out of the per-message loop. About 500 redundant calls per frame at 100 visible messages, multiplied by every pop-out window
• Auto-tell tab tint and icon use a per-tab cache. Hash computation and string allocation only happen when the tell target name or world drifts. AutoTellTabTint stays a pure hash helper; cache lives in a thin TabTintCache wrapper
• Status bar gates its tab aggregation behind the same one-second cache it already used for the format strings. LINQ Sum and Count replaced with a single foreach pass that runs on roughly 1 % of frames

Realistic frame-time recovery: 2-5 % in typical scenes, more on pop-out-heavy setups because the card-border hoist scales per window.

Modding & support: join Hellion Forge — https://discord.gg/X9V7Kcv5gR

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

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Hellion Chat 1.4.1 — Theme Engine Performance

Second sub-patch of the v1.4.x Polish Sweep series. Heap pressure from the theme engine's per-frame render path removed, plus a tenth built-in theme and hardening for the custom-theme hot-reload.

• Theme records carry a pre-computed ABGR-packed cache for every color slot; cache is filled when the theme is registered and refreshed defensively on every Switch()
• HellionStyle.PushGlobal reads ABGR values from the cache instead of calling ColourUtil.RgbaToAbgr per slot per frame; ~13 % render-time recovery measured in typical scenes (plan estimate was 2–6 %, real ~10–15 %)
• ThemeRegistry custom-theme reload distinguishes a recoverable file lock (editor mid-save) from a permanent IO failure; locked themes keep their last-known-good snapshot and retry on the next lookup instead of dropping out of the picker
• New built-in: Synthwave Sunset — Hot Magenta + Cyan on midnight violet, 80s neon-grid vibes; tenth theme in the picker
• Author credits refreshed: brand themes are credited as "Hellion Forge"; Mint Grove and Forge Merchantman now credited to Carla Beleandis as a community thanks

No schema bump, no user-visible behaviour change other than smoother frames on GC-sensitive setups and one additional colour option.

Modding & support: join Hellion Forge — https://discord.gg/X9V7Kcv5gR

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

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Hellion Chat 1.4.0 — Critical Lifecycle Fixes

First sub-patch of the v1.4.x Polish Sweep series. Seven known lifecycle and race bugs eliminated before any performance refactor sits on top.

• MessageStore disposal no longer triggers GC.Collect globally; Pooling=false on the SQLite connection means there's nothing left to clean up by hand
• PendingMessage and RetentionSweep worker threads are explicitly marked IsBackground=true so the plugin domain can unload during XIVLauncher reload without waiting for them
• EmoteCache image and gif loaders moved from async-void to async Task with a shared task tracker, draining on Dispose so an in-flight load can no longer write to a disposed EmoteImages entry
• DisposeAsync 10s timeout now warns loudly instead of silently leaving the worker behind
• Plugin.Dispose flushes any pending DeferredSaveFrames before tearing services down, so settings changes made in the last few frames before disable are no longer lost
• The v13→v14 config migration now reads the pre-v13 backup and carries HellionThemeWindowOpacity into the new WindowOpacity field instead of falling back to the default 0.85

Modding & support: join Hellion Forge — https://discord.gg/X9V7Kcv5gR

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

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Hellion Chat 1.3.0 — Plugin Integrations: Honorific

First step on the plugin-integration roadmap. HellionChat now listens to Honorific and shows your custom title in the chat header. The slot auto-hides when Honorific is not installed, when no custom title is active, or when you are using the original FFXIV title.

• New "Integrations" settings tab
• Honorific integration with auto-detection and live updates
• "Coming soon" preview of the next five planned integrations: context menu actions, smart notifications, RP status block, ExtraChat channels, and quick DM compose
• Maintainer attribution buttons for Honorific repo and Caraxi
• New service-class pattern under HellionChat/Integrations/

Modding & support: join Hellion Forge — https://discord.gg/X9V7Kcv5gR

Based on Chat 2 1.35.3 (upstream Infiziert90/ChatTwo, EUPL-1.2).

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v1.2.3 — Theme Expansion (2026-05-06)

Added

• Four new built-in themes:
  • Night Blue — Royal Blue on deep marine, cool tech-dashboard mood
  • Indigo Violet — Royal Violet on deep indigo with a turquoise-mint counter (aurora glitter feel)
  • Forge Merchantman — Patina bronze on workshop slate with warm amber counter (Hellion Forge identity)
  • Hellion Spectrum — Deuteran/Protan-safe channel colours using Wong/Okabe-Ito palette tones; channel identity (Tell pink, Yell yellow, Shout orange, Party blue, FC green) preserved while keeping every channel separable under red-green colour vision deficiency
• Built-in theme catalogue grown from five to nine

Notes

• No engine changes, no settings touched, no migration
• Default theme unchanged (Hellion Arctic). Existing custom themes keep working.
• Hellion Spectrum covers the ~99 % of CVD cases that are red-green; a Tritan-safe variant could follow in a later cycle if there is demand.

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v1.2.1 — Settings Cleanup (2026-05-06)

Changed

• Settings cards re-sorted thematically: 9 cards remain, each card has one clear job and a one-line subtitle.
• Theme & Layout (new) collects the theme picker, window frame style (title bar, sidebar, hide button, pop-out title bar) and the timestamp style options.
• Fonts & Colours (new) houses font choice, font size and per-channel chat colours.
• Data Management (new) collects retention windows, cleanup, export, the database viewer and the shift-click advanced tools.
• Privacy is now focused on the privacy filter alone.
• Chat absorbs the Auto-Tell-Tabs history-preload slider that used to live under Privacy.
• General groups the keybind mode under Input.

Removed

• Legacy "Style override" option and the unused style-name field — both obsolete since the v1.1.0 themes engine.
• Legacy WindowAlpha slider — if you had it set, the value is auto-migrated to Theme & Layout → Window Style → Window Transparency.
• Unused ShowThemeQuickPicker schema field.

Migration

• v15 → v16 with backup at pluginConfigs/HellionChat.json.pre-v16-backup.
• All other settings preserved unchanged.
• One-time toast on first start if Style override was previously active.

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v1.2.0 — Layout Refresh (2026-05-05)

Added

• Sidebar tab modernization: icon-only at fixed 44 px, tooltip on hover, vertical accent pill for active tab
• Top tabs: accent underline pill replaces background fill on active tab
• Per-tab custom icons in Settings → Tabs (15-glyph FontAwesome picker)
• Bottom status bar (22 px): channel indicator, privacy badge, counters, tells, version — updates 1×/sec
• Card rows as default message render: sender header in channel color, subtle border between cards
• Compact-Density toggle in Appearance: switches back to single-line [HH:mm] Sender: Text layout
• Auto-Tell tabs: per-partner hashed icon (7-glyph pool: envelope/star/heart/bell/bookmark/flag/fire) plus hashed color (12-color palette) — 84 distinct icon+color combinations
• Unread indicator: pulsing red dot in the top-right corner of any sidebar tab icon with unread messages, 2-second sine-wave pulse, respects Configuration.ReduceMotion

Changed

• Migration v14 → v15: deprecated Configuration fields HellionThemeEnabled and HellionThemeWindowOpacity removed
• Appearance settings cleaned: legacy theme-engine bindings replaced by Themes tab (introduced in v1.1.0)

Fixed

• Settings save no longer wipes chat history by default — the heavy ClearAllTabs + FilterAllTabsAsync cycle now only runs when a filter-relevant setting actually changed (Privacy filter, persisted channels, per-tab channel selection). Cosmetic changes keep the in-session chat intact
• Identifier-based MessageList restore in Configuration.UpdateFrom plus TempTab skip in ClearAllTabs/FilterAllTabs ensure persistent tabs and Auto-Tell tabs both survive the save
• Sidebar buttons now align vertically with the first message row (top padding mirrors the chat header toolbar height)
• Sidebar child window no longer paints the top padding area with its frame background
• Status bar version slot (vX.Y.Z · Hellion) no longer clips its rightmost character

Notes

• Polish phase (animations, theme crossfade, header quick-picker) follows in v1.3.0
• Top-Tab icon prefixes were considered but dropped: Dalamud's default font atlas does not include FontAwesome codepoints, so mixed-font in a single TabItem label renders as tofu. Underline pill alone is the v1.2.0 visual treatment for top tabs. Resolution would require Font-Atlas merge at FontManager level — out of scope.

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[1.1.0] — 2026-05-05 — Theme Foundation

First major UI cycle after v1.0.0. Theme engine, five built-in themes, custom themes via JSON, settings card grid.

Added

• Theme engine with five built-in themes: Hellion Arctic (default), Chat 2 Classic, Event Horizon, Moonlit Bloom, Mint Grove.
• Settings → Themes with mini mockup preview per theme. Clicking a card instantly switches the entire plugin (chat, settings, pop-outs).
• Custom themes via JSON in pluginConfigs/HellionChat/themes/. On first start, example-theme.json is placed there as a template.
• Optional theme chat channel colours: themes can ship their own channel colours. On switch, a banner appears with Apply / Keep current — never applied automatically.
• Settings card grid: new overview on open, clicking a card navigates into the section's detail view. Breadcrumb + ESC navigate back.
• docs/THEME-AUTHORING.md as a guide for writing custom themes, with Hellion Forge branding.

Changed

• Plugin icon updated to Hellion Forge hammer (previously a ChatTwo derivative).
• Settings detail view uses the full width — the second tab list on the left is gone because the card overview handles navigation.
• HellionStyle.PushGlobal is now theme-driven (PushGlobal(theme, opacity)) instead of const-palette-driven.
• Configuration v13 → v14: all users land on hellion-arctic. Those who prefer the upstream look can select chat2-classic in Settings → Themes.

Deprecated

• Configuration.HellionThemeEnabled and HellionThemeWindowOpacity remain readable for one release as a safety net but are no longer evaluated. Removal planned for v1.2.0.

Security

• Custom theme JSON loader validates schemaVersion, required fields and hex format. Invalid themes are skipped with a warning; the plugin continues loading with built-ins.

Internal

• 51 local unit tests (theme records, registry, JSON round-trip, sanity per built-in theme). Tests are gitignored.

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[1.0.3] — 2026-05-04 — Polish Patch

Four small polish items from the backlog bundled together:

• Hide on New Game+ menu: optional global toggle that hides Hellion Chat (and all other plugin windows such as Settings, DB Viewer, pop-outs) while the NG+ menu is open. Settings → Window → Frame, default off. Skips the entire WindowSystem.Draw() path analogous to the existing LoadingScreens pattern.
• Channel selector colouring: optional tinting of the channel-select button (comment icon) next to the input field in the current channel colour. Settings → Appearance → Chat Colours, default on. Consistent with the existing input text colouring; ExtraChat override is carried over.
• (De)buff icon aspect-ratio fix: PayloadHandler.InlineIcon was squashing all hover icons to 32×32. Status icons with non-square dimensions (debuffs with an arrow indicator) are now shrunk aspect-preserving. Standalone float-math implementation with zero-size guard instead of a cherry-pick from the open ChatTwo PR #157 (which had an int-division trap).
• HideState logging sweep: all HideState transitions (Battle/Cutscene/User/Override plus pop-out mirroring) log at verbose level. Off by default; enable via /xllog set HellionChat verbose for bug-report diagnostics.

Release Notes 1.0.3

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[1.0.1] — 2026-05-04 — Window Position Recovery

Fixes an off-screen-window scenario the user could end up in after a monitor disconnect or display layout change between sessions. An automatic one-shot bounds check on the first draw after plugin load snaps the window back into the visible viewport, and a new "Reset Window Position" button in Settings → Window → Frame serves as the manual escape hatch for edge cases.

Bundled housekeeping since v1.0.0: documentation restructured into docs/, stale ChatTwo/* paths in repo configs cleaned up, Pidgin parser library bumped from 3.3.0 to 3.5.1, GitHub Actions bumps for actions/setup-dotnet (4 → 5) and github/codeql-action (3 → 4).

Release Notes 1.0.1

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[1.0.0] — 2026-05-03 — Standalone Major Release

First fully independent release. Code namespace, IPC channels and source tree structure consolidated under HellionChat.*. Plugin refuses to start alongside an active upstream Chat 2 (bilingual conflict message). SQLite native pinned to 3.50.3 (CVE-2025-6965, CVE-2025-7709). Tab layout default for new installs and users on config version 12 or older restructured (5 thematic tabs instead of 6+ kitchen-sink). Sweep of critical and major findings from the codebase audit incorporated.

Release Notes 1.0.0

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[0.6.1] — 2026-05-03 — Pop-Out Discoverability & /tell Auto-Pop-Out

Pop-out button visible in the chat header, one-time hint banner for the pop-out feature. New setting "Open new /tell tabs directly as pop-out". Pop-out input is now active by default. Bug fixes: ghost windows on LRU-drop / logout, dead zone below the input bar when the hint banner is active.

Release Notes 0.6.1

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[0.6.0] — 2026-05-03 — UX Polish: Pop-Out Input + Colour Presets

Two opt-in UX features. Pop-out windows optionally get a compact input bar with a channel-coloured icon button and an independent text buffer per pop-out. Seven built-in colour presets (Classic, High Contrast, Pastel, Dark Mode Tuned, Hellion, Night Blue, Indigo Violet) for one-click apply. Configuration migration v10 → v11.

Release Notes 0.6.0

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[0.5.4] — 2026-05-02 — WrapText Hardening

ImGuiUtil.WrapText rewritten from pointer arithmetic to Span- and index-based control flow. Permanently closes the recurring CodeQL critical alert "unvalidated local pointer arithmetic". No user-visible behaviour change — word-wrap output is byte-identical to 0.5.3.

Release Notes 0.5.4

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[0.5.3] — 2026-05-02 — Pointer Arithmetic Hardening

First attempt at closing the CodeQL critical alert in ImGuiUtil.WrapText. Encoded byte buffer length is validated via GetByteCount before pointer arithmetic.

Release Notes 0.5.3

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Earlier Versions

Releases before 0.5.3 (bootstrap phase 0.1.0 to 0.5.2) are available directly on the Gitea release stream:

All Releases

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Maintenance Note

The source of truth for the user-facing changelog is the changelog: block in HellionChat/HellionChat.yaml. repo.json and the GitHub release body are fed from there. This file (docs/CHANGELOG.md) is a curated summary with links to the release pages and is updated manually on each version bump.