🤼 Bridge maturity: gap analysis vs mautrix-whatsapp/signal

[clins1994]

🤖 Claude Code on Opus 4.6

i want to compare this bridge's setup with a more mature bridge like the whatsapp bridge or the signal bridge. can you check for gaps ?

Context

I compared our bridge's feature set against mature mautrix bridges (whatsapp, signal) to identify gaps and improvement opportunities. This is meant to guide future development priorities.

What we already do well

• Full E2EE (Letter Sealing) with automatic key management for 1:1 and groups
• Token recovery with proactive refresh, serialized recovery, reconnect banner
• SSE real-time event polling
• Text, images, video, audio, files, stickers, GIFs (E2EE + plain paths)
• Read receipts, replies, message deletion (with 24h limit handling)
• Reactions (receive only, image-based emoji)
• Group chats with member/avatar/name sync
• Contact resolution and avatar fetching
• Link previews
• Call notifications (voice/video with duration)

Gap analysis

Low-hanging fruit

Gap	Effort	Notes
No ContactListingNetworkAPI	Small	Implement GetContactList so Beeper can show LINE contacts in "New Chat" UI
No custom DB metadata for Portal/Ghost/Message	Small	Mature bridges store extra fields (disappearing timer, ghost profile version). We return nil for all
main.go is bare-bones	Small	No version info, no analytics/metrics hooks. Mature bridges pass build version and set up Segment analytics
No EditHandlingNetworkAPI	Small	LINE may not support edits, but the interface should be explicitly rejected so clients know

Medium effort

Gap	Effort	Notes
Reactions are receive-only	Medium	Sending reactions requires LINE's sticker/emoji API — different from simple emoji reactions
No typing indicators	Medium	Would need TypingHandlingNetworkAPI + LINE's typing status API (if it exists via Chrome Extension protocol)
No disappearing messages	Medium	LINE has this feature; bridge doesn't propagate the timer
Backfill is limited (50 msgs on startup)	Medium	Mature bridges have configurable history sync with proper backfill queues

Larger effort / may not apply

Gap	Effort	Notes
No group creation from Matrix	Large	GroupCreatingNetworkAPI — would need LINE's group creation API
No location/contact sharing	Medium	LINE supports contentType 15 (location) and 13 (contact); bridge skips them
No message mentions	Medium	LINE has @mentions; bridge doesn't parse or generate them
No multi-login support	Large	One session per bridge instance

Interfaces comparison

Interface	WhatsApp/Signal	LINE bridge
NetworkAPI	Yes	Yes
ReadReceiptHandlingNetworkAPI	Yes	Yes
IdentifierResolvingNetworkAPI	Yes	Yes
ContactListingNetworkAPI	Yes	No
EditHandlingNetworkAPI	Yes	No
ReactionHandlingNetworkAPI	Yes (send+receive)	Partial (receive only)
TypingHandlingNetworkAPI	Yes	No
GroupCreatingNetworkAPI	Yes	No

Suggested priorities

1. ContactListingNetworkAPI — easy win, significantly improves Beeper UX for starting new chats
2. Version info in main.go — trivial, helps debugging and support
3. Backfill improvements — configurable depth, proper queue instead of flat 50-message prefetch
4. Disappearing messages — if LINE exposes the timer via the Chrome Extension protocol
5. Location/contact sharing — medium effort, broadens message type coverage

Thoughts? Would love input on what LINE's Chrome Extension protocol actually supports for typing indicators and disappearing messages before investing time in those.

[clins1994]

More stuff uncovered while I worked on this. Regarding reactions

• Reactions are partially supported but if a peer reacts on LINE side to my message it will appear on Beeper
• React buttons are still available on beeper desktop/mobile even though reacting won't do anything
• Disabling room feature Reaction: event.CapLevelRejected didn't work. Still see the react UI components on Beeper
• We could add basic reaction support mapping to the LINE default reactions
  • 👍✅🆗🙆‍♂️👌
  • 😭😢😿🥲
  • 😂😅🤣😆😹
  • 😍❤️
  • ❗❕😮

Are custom reactions allowed? I saw LINE Chrome Extension does call a sticker endpoint. Hmm