Sockets are delivery, not history
A persistent connection makes connected clients feel immediate. It does not prove that a sleeping phone, suspended browser or interrupted radio can discover every committed change later.
The durable record and its ordering contract have to exist independently of the live event.
The cursor closes the gap
Livara Chat documents a contiguous per-user change sequence. A returning client asks for changes strictly after its committed cursor before accepting live events.
Stable operation identities also let optimistic text sends retry without creating duplicate messages. The client can feel immediate without pretending that local state is already authoritative.
- Commit authoritative state
- Advance a recipient sequence
- Recover the exact missed interval
- Then resume live delivery
Expose uncertainty
Delivery, read state and local queue state are different facts. A trustworthy interface does not compress them into one decorative checkmark.
When recovery cannot complete, the user needs a visible next action rather than an indefinitely spinning connection badge.
