houseplan-card/docs/TOUCH-SUPPORT.md

# Touch support policy

Approved by the owner on **2026-08-08**. This document is the source of truth
for product scope, implementation trade-offs, documentation and release
acceptance on touch devices.

## Product contract

House Plan is a **touch-first product in View and kiosk**, but its editors are
**desktop-first administration tools**.

This contract applies equally to the primary `/houseplan` sidebar panel and to
optional dashboard cards. The panel menu button remains available on every
width with a 44 × 44 px target; Home Assistant kiosk state does not silently
enable House Plan's separate card kiosk mode.

| Surface | Desktop browser with mouse/keyboard | Touch/coarse-pointer device |
|---|---|---|
| View | Fully supported | **Fully supported; must be convenient and reliable** |
| Sidebar panel shell and drawer access | Fully supported | **Fully supported** |
| Kiosk | Supported | **Primary supported environment** |
| View dialogs and safe device actions | Fully supported | **Fully supported** |
| Plan editor | **Reference editing environment** | Best effort; partial, awkward or missing operations are allowed |
| Device editor | **Reference editing environment** | Best effort |
| Background editor | **Reference editing environment** | Best effort |

Users must be told to create and maintain plans in a desktop browser. A tablet
or phone may expose the editor tabs, and individual operations may work, but
editor parity with desktop is not promised.

## What “fully supported View” means

On phones, tablets, wall panels and HA Companion apps, the ordinary View must:

- render the plan and current states correctly;
- on a phone (≤ 480 px) keep the header to one row of at most 56 px — space
  tabs, zoom and one gear whose menu holds every other header action, each
  item a 44 px target (#616);
- support convenient pan, pinch zoom and space switching;
- treat a linked stair as a floor-navigation target only after a clean tap;
  pan, pinch, long press, swipe and cancellation tails must stay inert;
- fit the whole plan after two clean taps on free scene background, while one
  tap on a room keeps the immediate room-fit action;
- provide a touch path for essential information that desktop exposes through
  hover;
- open and close View dialogs without clipping their essential content or
  actions;
- perform supported device actions safely and predictably;
- remain usable after backgrounding, resize, orientation changes and warm
  remount;
- preserve kiosk gestures and prevent accidental editor interactions.

During every intermediate pan or pinch frame, walls, floors, room fills,
hatching, lighting and markers must remain continuously painted. The scene SVGs
stay on one promoted compositor path from the first movement until the terminal
frame; a budgeted redraw or an unrelated Home Assistant state update must never
flash white, become transparent or momentarily expose the stage background.
This contract applies equally to browsers and HA Companion WebViews.
`smoke_daycycle_layer_budget` additionally proves that the first camera move on
a 1 cm/grid-point day-cycle plan switches its filtered paper silhouette to the
screen-bounded fallback, leaves no implicit overlap-promoted plan layer, and
samples the compositor-presented pinch frames. A fresh idle frame still matches
the accepted `day-cycle-*` goldens; the real-device beta pass remains the field
acceptance for WebView-specific tile loss (#582).

Once a second touch joins an input sequence, that whole sequence is navigation
only, whichever contact began on a device marker. Marker tap, long press,
confirmation, service calls and touch-generated context menu stay blocked
through every release, cancellation or lost capture and through any delayed
browser compatibility activation. A new pointer down after the old contacts
have ended starts a deliberate input sequence immediately; users never have to
wait before the next single tap or long press. A later real mouse pointerdown or
keyboard context-menu key is likewise fresh intent and preserves the desktop
context-menu contract.

The summary panel, both halves of its control, and its simple settings form are
supported View surfaces: each control has a 44 × 44 px or larger target, panel
scrolling owns its touch gesture instead of zooming the plan, and the settings
dialog retains reachable content and actions on a narrow viewport. The panel
may hide because its measured House Plan stage is too small; this is responsive
safety, not loss of the user's per-card show preference.

A touch-only failure in View is a product defect, not an accepted limitation of
the editor policy.

## Pointer modality and hover ownership

Hover is instance-local and follows the latest real pointer input. It is
enabled only after a mouse event when the browser also reports fine,
hover-capable hardware. Touch and pen input immediately clear transient room
and device hover, including tooltips; browser-generated compatibility mouse
events must not restore it. A later real mouse move on a hybrid device restores
desktop hover without a reload. Space/mode changes, page hiding and remounts
also discard transient hover. Keyboard focus and explicit click/tap surfaces
remain independent of this visual hover gate.

In View, a device reached with visible keyboard focus opens the same anchored
device tooltip as mouse hover. It follows focus from marker to marker and closes
on blur, space/mode changes, page hiding or remount. Touch and pen still never
open it and immediately clear it on hybrid hardware.

When device markers are packed more tightly than their 44 × 44 px minimum
targets, the marker visibly painted under the pointer owns that point. Only an
otherwise empty overlap of invisible target floors is resolved by the nearest
marker core. This same screen-space owner is held for the complete pointer
sequence, so hover, tap, long press, context menu and Devices-editor drag cannot
switch to a neighbour between press and release. Saved marker coordinates and
the visible layout are not moved to manufacture separation.

The default-on **Show the room information window on hover** preference applies
only after this pointer-modality gate has enabled real mouse hover. Turning it
off leaves the room highlight and device tooltips unchanged; it does not add a
touch or pen replacement for the room window.

## What “best-effort editors” means

On a coarse-pointer or no-hover device, an editor operation may:

- have less convenient hit targets or gestures;
- require a workflow that is practical only with a mouse and keyboard;
- omit a desktop-only shortcut or precision interaction;
- be hidden or disabled when no safe touch interaction exists;
- have a documented layout or usability limitation;
- be intentionally deferred when touch parity is disproportionately expensive.

This is an explicit scope decision. New editor features are designed and
accepted against the desktop reference environment first. Touch editor support
is added when it is cheap, robust and does not complicate the desktop model.

## Safety floor that still applies to touch editors

“Best effort” never permits:

- data corruption or silent loss of saved plan data;
- an unsafe Home Assistant service call;
- bypassing permissions or destructive confirmation;
- leaving the card permanently stuck outside View;
- an editor exception that breaks ordinary View or kiosk;
- saving unintended geometry merely because a pinch, pointer cancellation or
  second touch was misread as a click.

If a desktop interaction cannot be translated safely to touch, prefer a clear
disabled/absent action and a desktop recommendation over a deceptively working
control.

The shared editor context tray follows this safety floor: its visible surface
owns its pointer events, narrow action rows scroll internally, and a press used
only to dismiss an explicit group/palette is consumed instead of falling
through to the plan. Pinch/pan outside the tray remains scene-owned. This is a
safety guarantee, not a promise of full touch parity for editor precision work.

The Plan editor's Walls chain follows the same floor. One clean tap may append
one segment; pan, pinch, a second pointer, `pointercancel` and a suppressed
synthetic click never append, finish or convert the chain. An open chain
finishes as ordinary walls only through an explicit finish action: a
tool/editor/floor change, `Esc`, the tray's Reset, route/hash departure or
rejecting every closed face (docs/WALL-THICKNESS.md §11, Finishing a chain).
Junction hover is best effort on coarse pointers; click resolution remains
authoritative.
With no active chain, a clean tap inside an exact bounded wall face may offer a
room without drawing another segment; the tap is resolved again at commit time.
Desktop `Shift` bypasses that offer and constrains drawing to an exact 45° ray;
touch has no separate modifier gesture. A pan, pinch, cancellation or second
pointer never accepts a face, applies a small-gap repair or creates a room.

Stair placement and transforms remain best-effort editor interactions on
touch, but the safety floor is strict: cancellation and navigation gestures do
not create, move, save or follow a stair. A long press in View does not activate
its target floor, and the next deliberate tap is re-armed immediately.

During a View/editor visual transition the moving stage is inert while the
header tabs remain available. A pinch, cancelled pointer or synthetic click
cannot operate stale geometry; leaving the editor is always a single safe
action. The decorative smoothness of the editor chrome remains best effort on
coarse-pointer devices, while the correct final View frame is release-blocking.

## Deliberate degradation rule

When an editor change would be expensive to implement correctly for touch, the
change may ship as desktop-only or with reduced touch behaviour if all of the
following are true:

1. View and kiosk are unaffected.
2. Plan data and device actions remain safe.
3. Desktop editing is complete and tested.
4. The touch limitation is deliberate, described in the user-facing
   limitations and, where useful, next to the affected workflow.
5. Existing automated touch-editor coverage is explicitly updated or
   reclassified in the same change; it is not silently ignored.
6. The release notes mention the limitation when it is material to users.

An accidental regression is not made acceptable merely by calling it
best-effort after discovery.

## Input classification

Do not classify support from screen width alone.

- `pointer: coarse`, no hover, touch pointer events and mobile/Companion
  environments are touch scenarios.
- A narrow desktop window with a fine pointer remains a desktop editing
  scenario.
- Hybrid laptops must keep both View paths usable. Their editors may use the
  desktop path when a fine pointer and keyboard are actually available.
- Stylus editing is best effort unless a specific feature explicitly promises
  it.

## Testing and release gates

Release-blocking guarantees:

1. View on desktop.
2. View and kiosk on representative touch/mobile environments.
3. All editors on desktop with mouse/keyboard.
4. The touch-editor safety floor above.

Touch-editor feature parity is not a general release gate. Targeted tests may
still protect individual touch workflows that the product intentionally keeps;
removing such a guarantee requires an explicit scope/documentation change, not
just deletion of the failing test.

Stable-release manual coverage must include at least one phone/Companion View
and one wall-tablet/kiosk View. Editor smoke coverage on touch is scoped to
safe entry/exit, no accidental mutation during multi-touch, and any separately
promised workflow.

## Documentation rule

Every user-facing description of the editors must recommend desktop for plan
creation and maintenance. Documentation must not imply full touch-editor
support merely because the tabs are visible on a tablet. New editor feature
specifications and code reviews must state one of:

- `Touch editor: supported`;
- `Touch editor: best effort / intentionally degraded`;
- `Touch editor: not exposed`.

If touch work is omitted because of cost, that is an accepted product decision
only after it is written down.