Nitro-V3/docs/ARCHITECTURE.md

Architecture & Refactor Plan

Status: living document, last updated 2026-05-10. This file describes the structural direction the codebase is moving in. Read it before starting a non-trivial refactor — half the value comes from staying consistent, not from each individual change.

Table of contents

1. Where the project stands today
2. Five structural improvements
   1. Event subscriptions as derived state
   2. Server requests as queries
   3. Feature folders
   4. Splitting god-hooks
   5. Unified UI store
3. Bonus: error boundaries
4. What's already in place
5. How to pick the next refactor PR

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Where the project stands today

The codebase is a React 19.2 client for the Nitro renderer (Habbo-style hotel client). Most of the architectural pressure comes from the renderer's event-bus + composer/parser model: the UI talks to the server by sending composers and listening to incoming message events. Almost every piece of state in this app is "the latest value seen on a given event".

That model creates two kinds of friction with modern React:

1. useEffect everywhere — react-hooks/set-state-in-effect reports ~328 violations across ~280 files. Most are legitimate event-driven updates, but the pattern hides the intent (it reads as "imperative setState on mount/effect" rather than "subscribe to a stream").
2. God-hooks — useCatalog (~1100 lines), useChat, useWiredTools, useInventoryFurni all bundle data fetching, UI state, side effects, and computed values into a single export. Components import the whole thing for one field; the React Compiler skips memoization.

Two big files (WiredCreatorToolsView.tsx 4493→3901 lines, LoginView.tsx 1700) further compound the problem: the Compiler logs "Compilation Skipped: Existing memoization could not be preserved", which means manual useMemo/useCallback are not even helping.

The improvements below are ordered so that each one makes the next one easier.

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Five structural improvements

1. Event subscriptions as derived state

Problem. Pattern repeated hundreds of times:

const [foo, setFoo] = useState(initial);
useNitroEvent(SomeEvent, e => setFoo(e.payload));

or with the message channel:

const [data, setData] = useState(null);
useMessageEvent(SomeParser, e => {
    const parser = e.getParser();
    if (!parser) return;
    setData(parser.field);
});

The shape of the code obscures the intent ("foo IS the latest event payload") and makes the lint think we're doing imperative setState in an effect.

Solution. Two thin hooks (src/hooks/events/useNitroEventState.ts and useMessageEventState.ts):

const foo = useNitroEventState(SomeEvent, e => e.payload, initial);
const data = useMessageEventState(SomeParser, e => e.getParser()?.field ?? null, null);

Internally the selector closure is held in a ref refreshed in commit phase (useLayoutEffect), so a new selector identity per render does not force re-subscription. The listener is registered once.

Status. Implemented + 1 pilot adoption (OfferView.tsx).

Adoption. Organic: when a contributor sees a clean "derive-from-single-event" case, they convert it. Do not sweep-replace. The majority of existing subscriptions have side effects, multi-state updates, conditional filters, or state-machine semantics that lose information when forced into a single selector.

Companion to add later. A useNitroEventReducer<S, T>(events, reducer, initial) for the cases where multiple events affect one state slice (see useDoorbellWidget — three events, one users array).

---

2. Server requests as queries

Problem. A request/response pair against the server today looks like:

useEffect(() => {
    SendMessageComposer(new GetXComposer());
}, []);

useMessageEvent(YParser, e => {
    setData(e.getParser().data);
});

There is no caching, no deduplication, no retry, no loading or error state, no devtools. Every consumer rolls its own. The same request fires multiple times if multiple components mount it.

Solution. Wrap composer/parser pairs in a TanStack Query adapter (@tanstack/react-query is in the same family as @tanstack/react-virtual which is already a dependency):

const { data, isLoading } = useNitroQuery({
    request: () => new GetXComposer(),
    parser: YParser,
    select: e => e.getParser().data,
});

Status. Adapter prototype written (src/api/nitro-query/createNitroQuery.ts). Not wired up because @tanstack/react-query is not yet installed — deliberately left as a yarn add step the team can approve.

To enable.

yarn add @tanstack/react-query @tanstack/react-query-devtools

Then mount the provider in src/index.tsx:

<QueryClientProvider client={queryClient}>
    <App />
    <ReactQueryDevtools initialIsOpen={false} />
</QueryClientProvider>

Migration order suggested.

1. Read-only catalog data (useCatalog page fetches) — biggest win, lowest risk because it's mostly read.
2. Inventory tabs.
3. Navigator search results.
4. Marketplace listings.

Push messages (events the server emits without the client asking) keep using useMessageEventState — they're not requests.

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3. Feature folders

Problem. The current layout splits ownership across three trees:

src/components/wired-tools/    (views)
src/hooks/wired-tools/         (hooks)
src/api/wired/                 (utility functions, mixed with the wired runtime)

A change to "the wired-tools panel" touches all three. Discoverability is poor: a new contributor reading WiredCreatorToolsView.tsx cannot guess useWiredTools lives 4 directory levels away.

Solution. Feature folders. Each feature owns its complete vertical slice:

src/features/wired-tools/
├── index.ts              (public API: only what other features can import)
├── views/                (React components)
├── hooks/                (feature-local hooks)
├── state/                (zustand slices, when they exist)
├── types.ts
├── constants.ts
└── helpers.ts

Rule. A feature folder may import:

• React, third-party libs, the renderer SDK
• src/common/ (UI primitives)
• src/api/ (cross-cutting helpers — LocalizeText, SendMessageComposer)
• Other features only via their public index.ts

A feature folder must not reach into another feature's internals.

Status. Pilot done on src/features/doorbell/ (the doorbell widget, small enough to migrate cleanly in one PR). The legacy src/components/room/widgets/doorbell/DoorbellWidgetView.tsx and src/hooks/rooms/widgets/useDoorbellWidget.ts are kept as compat-shim re-exports (one line each) so existing import paths still work — they can be deleted in a follow-up PR.

Migration order suggested. Smallest features first to validate the pattern, then bigger:

1. doorbell (done)
2. campaign, ads, mod-tools (each <500 lines)
3. notification-center, help, hc-center
4. catalog, inventory, navigator, wired-tools (multi-thousand lines each)

A jscodeshift codemod could rewrite import paths in bulk, but each feature's relative-path imports (../../api, etc.) need to be re-targeted to the new depth — codemod-able but verify by running tsc per feature.

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4. Splitting god-hooks

Problem. useCatalog.ts is ~1100 lines. It owns:

• Server fetch lifecycle (request/parser pairs)
• UI state (selected page, current product, filters)
• Side effects (purchases, gift composer dispatch)
• Computed values (pricing display, page tree)
• Cross-cutting helpers (currency lookup, club level checks)

Every component that imports useCatalog() for one field re-runs the whole thing. The Compiler can't memoize it (too large). Tests can't be written against a single concern.

Solution. Split by responsibility, not by entity:

useCatalogData()      // server data, returns { pages, currentPage, isLoading }
useCatalogUiState()   // ui state, returns { selectedNode, setSelectedNode, filters, ... }
useCatalogActions()   // imperative actions, returns { purchase, gift, openOffer }

Inside, useCatalogData uses useNitroQuery (#2). useCatalogUiState uses a Zustand slice (#5). useCatalogActions is a stateless export — just functions that compose composers.

Status. Pilot done on useDoorbellWidget:

• src/features/doorbell/hooks/useDoorbellState.ts — the users list, derived from three events using useNitroEventReducer-like pattern.
• src/features/doorbell/hooks/useDoorbellActions.ts — answer(name, flag).

It's a small hook so the split looks almost theatrical, but the shape is the same one we want to apply to useCatalog.

Migration order suggested. Largest pain first, moving down:

1. useCatalog (~1100 LOC) — but only after #2 is enabled (server fetches collapse to a few useNitroQuery calls, removing 60% of the file).
2. useChatInputWidget (~500 LOC)
3. useWiredTools (~600 LOC)
4. useInventoryFurni (~300 LOC)

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5. Unified UI store

Problem. Cross-feature UI state lives in:

• React Context (e.g. UiSettingsContext)
• Custom hooks with module-level singletons (useNavigator's implicit cache)
• let foo = ... module-level mutable variables — flagged by the React Compiler as "Writing to a variable defined outside a component or hook is not allowed" (currently 5+ violations)
• localStorage reads in effects

There is no single source of truth, no devtools, no time-travel.

Solution. Adopt Zustand for cross-feature UI state. Each feature owns one slice:

// src/features/wired-tools/state/wiredToolsSlice.ts
export const useWiredToolsStore = create<WiredToolsState>()((set) => ({
    activeTab: 'monitor',
    setActiveTab: (tab) => set({ activeTab: tab }),
    // ...
}));

Components subscribe to specific keys (Zustand re-renders only the subscribers whose selected slice changed):

const activeTab = useWiredToolsStore(s => s.activeTab);

This eliminates the let isCreatingRoom = false module-level pattern and makes the state ispezionable in dev tools.

Status. Skeleton written (src/state/createNitroStore.ts), not yet adopted — zustand is not yet installed. Same reason as #2: deliberately a follow-up yarn add step.

To enable.

yarn add zustand

Then convert the smallest singleton first (suggestion: the isCreatingRoom/createRoomTimeout pair in NavigatorRoomCreatorView.tsx — it's a clean 5-line conversion).

Do not wholesale-replace Context. Some Contexts (theming, i18n) are fine as-is. Zustand is for application state, not configuration state.

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Bonus: error boundaries

react-error-boundary is already a dependency. A widget crashing in a room (e.g. malformed pet data in InfoStandWidgetFurniView) currently takes down the whole UI.

Solution. Wrap each widget root in <ErrorBoundary fallback={null} onError={NitroLogger.error}>. Implementation lives at src/common/error-boundary/WidgetErrorBoundary.tsx.

Status. Implemented + applied to RoomWidgetsView as the umbrella for all in-room widgets. A widget crash now degrades gracefully (the offending widget disappears) instead of unmounting the room.

A more granular pass could wrap each individual widget for finer-grained fallbacks, but the umbrella alone already prevents the worst class of failures.

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What's already in place

The current branch (claude/update-react-typescript-He2rs) has applied:

• React 19.2 / TypeScript 7 (Native preview) / ESLint 10 / React Hooks v7 / React Compiler 1.0 — toolchain bump, all warnings audited.
• Form Actions — <form action={...}> + useActionState adopted in LoginView.tsx (login, register, forgot dialogs).
• useEffectEvent — adopted in App.tsx, FurniEditorSearchView, NotificationBadgeReceivedBubbleView, NavigatorRoomSettingsRightsTabView, UiSettingsContext to clear all react-hooks/exhaustive-deps warnings.
• Targeted set-state-in-effect cleanup — CatalogHeaderView (pure derive), NavigatorRoomCreatorView (lazy state init), LoginView (track-previous-prop reset), ChooserWidgetView (callback in useEffectEvent).
• WiredCreatorToolsView split — types/constants/helpers extracted to sibling files; main view 4493 → 3901 lines.
• Pattern #1 (useNitroEventState) — implemented + 1 pilot.
• Pattern #3 (feature folder) — pilot on src/features/doorbell/.
• Pattern #4 (split god-hook) — pilot on the doorbell hook.
• Pattern #2 (useNitroQuery) — adapter prototype written, not yet enabled (needs yarn add @tanstack/react-query).
• Pattern #5 (Zustand store) — skeleton written, not yet enabled (needs yarn add zustand).
• Bonus (error boundaries) — WidgetErrorBoundary applied at RoomWidgetsView.

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How to pick the next refactor PR

Order of value/risk for the next contributor:

1. Enable React Query (yarn add @tanstack/react-query) and migrate one read-only useCatalog fetch as a second pilot. Highest impact, low risk.
2. Migrate one mid-sized feature to feature folders (e.g. mod-tools or campaign). Mostly mechanical, validates the pattern at a real scale.
3. Enable Zustand and migrate the let isCreatingRoom / createRoomTimeout singleton in NavigatorRoomCreatorView. Trivial, makes the Compiler stop complaining about cross-component variable writes.
4. Add tests (still the #1 thing missing — see "What I'd fix" notes). Vitest + jsdom + a tiny mock layer for the renderer would unblock every refactor below.
5. Split useCatalog — the biggest god-hook. Only do this after #1 and #5 in this list (React Query removes 60% of the file's responsibility, Zustand handles its UI state).

Anything else (the per-tab WiredCreatorTools split, the react-compiler/react-compiler warnings, the set-state-in-effect sweep, the LoginView dialog split) is a downstream consequence of these five — easier and safer once the foundations are in place.