v3.5.1

[svdC1]

This release fixes several issues with the Modal-hosted deploy. It moves media serving and the
database off the volume's slow network layer so hosted video plays smoothly,
makes shutdown and spot preemption exit cleanly, completes the PWA install
behind the host login on iOS, and stops the installed app from re-prompting for
the password. It also fixes a previously uncaught clip-recording hang on iOS.
It has no breaking changes

Fixed

• Launcher → Besides an overall poor application performance when hosting on Modal,
  video playback stalled and clip recording failed. The Modal host served media and ran
  the database directly off the persistent volume's FUSE layer, whose per-request random
  reads take seconds, so every seek re-buffered and the browser recorder
  (which captures live playback) had no continuous stream to record.
  The host now reads and writes user data on the container's local disk and mirrors changes
  to the volume in the background, keeping media and database I/O off the slow layer while
  Modal still persists the data

• Launcher → The Modal host could overrun Modal's shutdown grace and be
  force-killed (logging Runner has been shutting down for too long) when a stop
  or a spot preemption stranded an in-flight volume read on a background thread. A
  watchdog (a daemon thread started at shutdown that terminates the process if it doesn't
  exit in less than 10 seconds) now exits the container cleanly within the grace window,
  so a stop or preemption releases promptly

• Launcher → The Modal host wrote its request log to the persistent volume
  on every request, growing it unbounded and adding a volume write to the hot
  path. It now logs to standard output, which Modal captures, so nothing is
  written to the volume. Modal persists logs natively through the Stopped Apps
  interface, so writing to a log file would be redundant and decrease performance

• Frontend → The installed PWA icon did not render on iOS and the app was
  not installable behind the host login. iOS fetches the manifest, its icons, and
  the apple-touch-icon as install subresources without the login, so behind
  HTTP Basic Auth they returned 401. The host now serves exactly those public
  install files without auth, while the shell, the hashed assets, and the API stay
  gated

• Frontend → An installed iOS PWA re-prompted for the host password on
  every reopen, since iOS drops the Basic Auth credential cache when the app is
  suspended. A passed login now sets a persistent, HttpOnly cookie that the host
  accepts in place of the credentials, so a reopened app authenticates silently
  (rotating the password invalidates it)

• Frontend → Saving a clip on iOS could hang on Recording from a fresh
  player. The recorder's audio pipeline needs its AudioContext resumed inside a
  user gesture, but fetching the word explanation first spent it, leaving the audio
  track dead. The save now resumes the context on the tap, and the recorder can no
  longer hang indefinitely

• Server → GET /api/jobs returned 400 for a poll that arrived without an
  X-Profile-ID header (a service-worker replay the app cannot attach the header
  to). It now returns an empty list, so the errors stop

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This discussion was created from the release v3.5.1.