Add SOL Inbound Monologue RSS reader extension

[nickhamze]

Summary

Adds SOL Inbound Monologue, a standalone Desktop Mode extension that presents RSS and Atom subscriptions as an inbound-only, turn-of-the-century buddy list and conversation reader.

• Registers a movable/resizable buddy-list widget and a docked native reader window through the public Desktop Mode APIs.
• Adds per-user subscriptions, groups, ordering, unread state, feed management, optional synthesized chimes, away/offline states, and a small SOL keyboard easter egg.
• Updates the Playground/Studio Blueprint to install SOL, seed three real WordPress project feeds, and stage both surfaces automatically.
• Adds enforceable extension checks to CI and makes the extension packager handle optional fetcher/vendor globs on macOS's bundled Bash.

Why

SOL is a useful extension in its own right and a fairly complete dogfood test for the public window, widget, shared-store, request, confirmation, theme-token, and <wpd-*> component APIs. It also gives the one-click demo an inhabited, immediately understandable extension surface without adding code to the core plugin.

Implementation notes

Feed and state boundary

• Fetches feeds server-side with wp_safe_remote_get().
• Restricts requests to public HTTP(S) URLs and relies on WordPress's unsafe-URL validation for the initial request and redirects.
• Caps responses at 1 MiB, requests at 8 seconds and three redirects, normalized items at 50 per feed, subscriptions at 200 per user, and read-history IDs at 250 per feed.
• Caches normalized feeds for ten minutes and rate-limits manual refreshes to once per feed every 30 seconds.
• Parses already-fetched bytes with SimplePie network fetching disabled, supports RSS/Atom plus HTML autodiscovery, and renders only normalized text—no feed HTML or remote images.
• Keeps subscriptions, preferences, refresh state, and unread state isolated in user meta.

Desktop integration and lifecycle

• Uses stable IDs: feed-buddy-reader, feed-buddy/buddy-list, and feed-buddy/state.
• Uses wp.desktop.fetch(), wp.desktop.confirm(), createSharedStore(), applyWindowTheme(), and native window channels instead of raw browser substitutes.
• Uses Desktop Mode components for controls and status surfaces.
• Aborts requests and clears polling intervals, timers, audio contexts, channel subscriptions, resize listeners, store listeners, dialogs, and themed-window overrides on teardown.

Accessibility and visual direction

• Includes visible focus treatment, explicit online/offline text for assistive technology, non-color unread cues, polite status regions, reduced-motion behavior, forced-colors behavior, and a compact reader layout below 560 px.
• Sound is original, synthesized at runtime, and off by default. No AOL/AIM marks, icons, recordings, or copied assets ship.
• The Imagegen work is retained only as auditable direction evidence; production UI is live TypeScript/CSS with Dashicons and Desktop Mode components.

Testing

Repository gates:

• npm run build
• npm run lint
• npm run typecheck
• npm run test:js — 256 files, 2,499 tests
• npm run test:php — 1,678 tests, 4,295 assertions, 3 skipped

SOL-specific gates:

• extension ESLint, TypeScript, and production/development builds
• Vitest — 2 files, 9 tests
• PHPUnit — 13 tests, 64 assertions on PHP 8.3
• PHPCS against the extension ruleset
• PHP syntax checks
• Blueprint JSON validated against the official Playground schema
• all nine seeded WordPress.org article links verified live

Packaging/install verification:

• ./bin/package-extensions.sh
• archive integrity checked with unzip -t
• confirmed no node_modules or nested dist tree is present
• installed the generated ZIP into the isolated wp-env site and verified that it activates, registers its REST routes, and loads its Desktop Mode integration
• final ZIP: 1,414,033 bytes; SHA-256 c564d7bf9503efe17116f73a23a345c30d847dcde68aeb207ab418c542281312

Reviewer QA

The normal PR preview exercises the core plugin but does not package standalone extensions. For SOL itself:

1. Check out this branch and run npm ci.
2. Run ./bin/package-extensions.sh.
3. Start the normal local environment and activate Desktop Mode.
4. Install and activate dist/desktop-mode-feed-buddy.zip as a separate plugin.
5. Add the buddy-list widget, open SOL Inbound Monologue, add an RSS/Atom or website URL, switch feeds, mark entries read/unread, reorder and remove a feed, refresh, and toggle sound.
6. Verify the compact reader layout, keyboard focus states, reduced motion, and forced-colors presentation.

The in-app browser's network policy blocked agent access to the localhost visual QA site. Package activation, registrations, feed behavior, and UI lifecycle are covered by the checks above; the selected visual evidence and its taste review are included under extensions/desktop-mode-feed-buddy/design/.

The committed Blueprint intentionally references trunk, so the one-click SOL demo becomes available after merge without leaving a feature-branch reference in the release configuration.

[AllTerrainDeveloper]

I tested it and this button was not working (add buddy)

After fixing it it works beatifully

I have one objection but of course that's very subjective. I'm not pretty sure if the transparent title bar works ok with light backgrounds in the wallpaper