v0.2.0 - Initial Release

Release Notes - Version 0.2.0

Version 0.2.0 of the Scryfall Matrix Bot introduces significant enhancements to card rendering, search capabilities, and bot administration. This update focuses on providing a richer, more interactive experience within Matrix rooms while improving the bot's resilience and management features.

🚀 New Features

Advanced Card Search and Parsing

• Command Parsing: Added a robust command parser supporting advanced Scryfall syntax within the [[ ]] brackets.
• Filters and Selectors: Users can now filter searches by set code, collector number, and language using the | pipe syntax (e.g., [[Card Name|SET|CN|LANG]]) or keyword selectors (e.g., set:lea, cn:1, lang:ja).
• Advanced Scryfall Queries: Support for complex filters such as oracle:, type:, rarity:, coloridentity:, cmc:, power:, and toughness:.

Enhanced Card Rendering (Formatter)

• Symbology Integration: Full support for Scryfall mana symbols. Symbols are now automatically downloaded, cached, and rendered as inline images (emoticons) in Matrix messages.
• Double-Faced Card Support: Improved handling for double-faced and transforming cards. The bot now renders information and images for both the front and back faces.
• Comprehensive Card Info: Added rendering for Power/Toughness, Type Lines, and Flavor Text.
• Accessibility: Added title and alt attributes to all images (cards and symbols) for better tooltips and screen reader support.

Improved Image Handling and Caching

• Persistent Image Storage: Card images and symbols are now cached locally and their Matrix Content URIs (MXC) are stored in persistent JSON files (data/card-images.json and data/symbols.json) to minimize redundant uploads.
• Optimized HTML Layout: Refined the HTML structure for card responses, ensuring images and text are ordered correctly for the best viewing experience across various Matrix clients.
• Automatic Resizing: Images are now handled with appropriate metadata to ensure they display at a reasonable size in room timelines.

Bot Management and Resilience

• User Ignoring: Added the ability to ignore specific users or patterns (using wildcards) via the IGNORED_USERS environment variable.
• Automatic Join: Replaced the standard mixin with a custom, more robust implementation for joining rooms from historic invitations upon startup.
• Homeserver Validation: The bot now validates homeserver connectivity and supported Matrix versions during the initialization sequence.
• Improved Error Handling: Enhanced resilience for Scryfall API lookups and Matrix synchronization, including better logging and fallback mechanisms for homeserver errors.

DevOps and Documentation

• Docker Integration: Streamlined the Docker workflow with a new dev-deploy.js script for building and pushing development images.
• Automated Workflows: Added GitHub Actions for both development and release Docker builds.
• Comprehensive Documentation: Added AGENTS.md and updated the README.md with detailed setup instructions, bot modes (Simple vs. AppService), and API documentation.

🛠 Technical Improvements

• Custom Caching Layer: Replaced NodeCache with a more tailored caching solution in scryfall.js that supports manual Garbage Collection (GC) and memory management.
• Throttling: Implemented mandatory request throttling (100ms) to ensure compliance with Scryfall's API usage guidelines.
• Standardized User-Agent: The bot now identifies itself to Scryfall with a version-specific User-Agent string.

📝 Configuration Changes

• New Env Variables:
  • IGNORED_USERS: Comma-separated list of user IDs or wildcard patterns to ignore.
  • CACHE_TTL / CACHE_MAX_MEMORY / CACHE_GC_INTERVAL: Fine-grained control over the internal API cache.
  • DEBUG_MODE: Toggle detailed logging for troubleshooting.