migration activity channels

Migration: built-in activity channels move to the os/ namespace

Status: shipped in 1.0.0. Affects plugins that subscribe to, or filter, one of the framework's own activity channels.

What changed

The eleven channels the shell publishes on the activity bus were named desktop-mode/<event>. That prefix predates the OpenStation rebranding; the hook prefix (os.activity.), the broadcast topics (os.data-changed, os.post.changed, …) and the global (wp.os) had already moved. The channels now match:

Before	After
desktop-mode/toast-requested	os/toast-requested
desktop-mode/toast-shown	os/toast-shown
desktop-mode/notification-requested	os/notification-requested
desktop-mode/notification-shown	os/notification-shown
desktop-mode/window-attention-requested	os/window-attention-requested
desktop-mode/badge-changed	os/badge-changed
desktop-mode/open-requested	os/open-requested
desktop-mode/presence-changed	os/presence-changed
desktop-mode/presence-snapshot-applied	os/presence-snapshot-applied
desktop-mode/game-score-recorded	os/game-score-recorded
desktop-mode/upload-hud-complete	os/upload-hud-complete

There is no alias. The old names are not published and not filtered. A subscriber still registered against desktop-mode/badge-changed stops firing silently, because an activity subscription for a channel nobody publishes is not an error.

Payload shapes are unchanged. Only the channel slug moved.

Two adjacent renames ride along, both internal and neither part of the channel contract: the createSharedStore key backing the presence store (desktop-mode/presence → os/presence) and the five planned, not-yet-published folder-sharing channels in folder-sharing.md.

What to change

Rename the slug at every subscribe / publish / filter call site:

-wp.os.activity.subscribe( 'desktop-mode/badge-changed', repaint );
+wp.os.activity.subscribe( 'os/badge-changed', repaint );

If you register through raw wp.hooks instead of the activity API, the hook name changes with it — the channel's separator is a period on the hook bus, so the shell's own segment is now os rather than desktop-mode:

 wp.hooks.addFilter(
-    'os.activity.desktop-mode.notification-requested',
+    'os.activity.os.notification-requested',
     'my-plugin/dnd',
     ( intent ) => ( isDndActive() ? { ...intent, cancel: true } : intent ),
 );

Search your whole project, not just the channels in the table above. A plugin-owned channel of your own that happens to start with desktop-mode/ is yours and must NOT be renamed; a blanket find-and-replace across a project will move it and break your own subscribers. Rename the eleven slugs by name.

Typed payloads — the augmentation only works in module form

ActivityChannelMap is declared in openstation/activity. Augmenting it requires the .d.ts to be a module, which means at least one top-level import or export. Without one, TypeScript reads the block as an ambient module declaration — it invents a new, empty openstation/activity that shadows the real one, and you silently get no payload checking and no error saying so:

+import type {} from 'openstation/activity';
+
-declare module 'desktop-mode/activity' {
+declare module 'openstation/activity' {
     interface ActivityChannelMap {
         'my-plugin/something-happened': { id: number; reason: string };
     }
 }

The specifier moved with the package name (openstation), and ./activity is now a declared exports subpath so it actually resolves. The bare import type {} line is load-bearing — with it, publish( 'my-plugin/something-happened', { id: 'x' } ) is a compile error; without it, that call typechecks.

What did NOT change

• Your own channels. The convention is still <plugin>/<event>; nothing about plugin-owned slugs moved. os/ is now the shell's namespace — subscribe and filter freely, but publish under your own slug.
• REST namespaces, options, tables, upload directories, cron hooks, post types, query vars and web-storage keys. Everything reading desktop-mode / desktop_mode_ there is frozen data that live installs already depend on, and it stays.
• Broadcast topics. wp.os.broadcast() topics were already os.*.
• wp.hooks handler namespaces and wp.os.fetch source: tags. Strings like desktop-mode/commands-registry (the second argument to addAction) and source: 'desktop-mode/release-art' still carry the old prefix. They are labels, not addresses — nothing subscribes by them — so they are a separate cosmetic pass rather than part of this contract change.

Reference

• The event-driven framework — the full channel table.
• JS reference — activity — payload shapes and the hook-name mapping.