--- name: plain-text-invisible-on-mobile description: "⭐⭐ RECURRING FAILURE (owner flagged 4+ times, latest 2026-07-21): the owner is on MOBILE and CANNOT see plain assistant text or working notes — ONLY SendUserMessage calls reach him. Any substantive statement written as plain text is invisible to him and effectively never said. EVERY answer, finding, acknowledgement, or question MUST go through SendUserMessage." metadata: node_type: feedback type: feedback originSessionId: 1060dea9-0dc3-42b4-958d-2a6f7a6c0c58 modified: 2026-07-21T22:05:19.418Z --- **Owner, verbatim across the day:** *"you did not send a msg before going. maybe you wrote it in the notes thing? I can only see that on PC not on mobile and I'm on mobile rn"* → *"you never answered my last msg"* (when the answer was written as plain text) → *"remember that I can't see your working notes on mobile."* ## THE FAILURE Dispatch writes a substantive response — an answer, a finding, an acknowledgement — as **plain assistant text instead of a `SendUserMessage` call**. On the owner's mobile client, plain text and internal working notes are **not rendered at all**. So from his side the message was never sent. This has recurred repeatedly; it is the single most persistent Dispatch failure. ⚠ **It is worst exactly when it matters most.** The latest instance (2026-07-21) landed on the one message where the owner had asked whether something got *saved* — so the invisible answer looked like Dispatch ignoring a question about data safety. A miss here doesn't just lose words, it can look like the underlying work didn't happen. ## THE RULE **Only `SendUserMessage` reaches the user. Everything else is invisible.** Before ending any turn, ask: did every substantive thing I want the owner to know go out through `SendUserMessage`? If a point exists only in plain text, it does not exist to him. - Answers to his questions → `SendUserMessage`, always, even short ones. - Reasoning, verification results, "here's what I found" → `SendUserMessage`. - Acknowledgements of a directive → `SendUserMessage` (see [[always-acknowledge-actions]]). - Never rely on the harness reminder to catch it — by then he has already been left hanging. ## WHY IT KEEPS HAPPENING (name it so it stops) Dispatch drafts a reply as prose while mid-flow (often right after tool calls, e.g. after a bash verification), then moves straight to the next tool call without wrapping the prose in `SendUserMessage`. The prose reads, to Dispatch, like it was "said." It was not. **After any tool call whose result you narrate, that narration must be a `SendUserMessage`, not loose text.** Related: [[always-acknowledge-actions]], [[session-reporting-standard]], [[dispatch-midflight-messages-unreliable]].