ng-eventually/packages/client/docs/sdk-reference.md

SDK reference — reading data with @ng-eventually/client

Audience: anyone using @ng-eventually/client (the app that consumes it, and the lib itself when honoring the contract). This is the reference on the SDK's read/reactivity surface — how you read data and how a read stays live.

@ng-eventually/client is written and consumed as if NextGraph were a finished, mature SDK: documents per entity placed by scope, capabilities, inboxes, and a reactive ORM. This file documents that finished-SDK contract. Where today's emulation does not yet deliver it, that is called out in one clearly-separated section at the end (§ Current emulation status) and in nextgraph-current-state.md — that is an emulation gap to close, not the SDK's design. Read the reference itself as the target contract.

The ground truth for the finished contract is the real NextGraph platform (nextgraph-rs, sibling clone at ../nextgraph-rs); the reactive primitives are cited by file:symbol throughout so a future agent can re-verify cheaply.

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TL;DR — the canonical read is reactive

Read data with the reactive ORM hook useShape — subscribe to a shape over a scope, get the current value, and re-render on every change (yours or a remote peer's, synced through the broker). Subscription/push, never polling. One-shot reads are the exception, not the rule.

import { useShape } from "@ng-eventually/client";
import { EventShapeType } from "…/shapes/orm/…";

function EventList() {
  // A live, reactive set. Re-renders whenever any Event doc in scope changes —
  // locally or from a remote peer synced by the broker. No polling, no refetch.
  const events = useShape(EventShapeType, { graphs: [scopeNuri] });
  return <>{[...events].map((e) => <Row key={e["@id"]} event={e} />)}</>;
}

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The reactivity model — subscription/push, never polling

NextGraph's philosophy is subscription-based push. You do not poll for changes; you subscribe once and the platform pushes an update to every subscriber the moment a document changes. A change is a new commit on a document's branch, and it reaches subscribers whether it was applied locally (your own write) or delivered from a remote peer and synced through the broker.

The load-bearing fact — verified in nextgraph-rs — is that both origins converge on a single push point in the verifier:

• Local commit (your own SPARQL update / ORM write): the write path builds BranchUpdateInfos and calls Verifier::update_graph (engine/verifier/src/commits/transaction.rs:646).
• Remote commit (another session/peer, synced via the broker): the broker hands the event to Verifier::deliver (engine/verifier/src/verifier.rs:1718) → verify_commit → verify_async_transaction (engine/verifier/src/commits/transaction.rs:295), which calls the same update_graph (transaction.rs:327).
• The single choke point: update_graph pushes an AppResponseV0::Patch to the branch's subscribers via Verifier::push_app_response (engine/verifier/src/verifier.rs:252) — it looks up the branch in branch_subscriptions and sender.send(response).await — and fans out to the reactive ORM via orm_backend_update (engine/verifier/src/orm/graph/handle_backend_update.rs:48), which sends an AppResponseV0::GraphOrmUpdate to each ORM subscription whose scope was touched.

So: one document, one commit, every subscriber pushed — the same code path for a local edit and for a remote peer's edit arriving over the network. That is what makes a useShape read reactive across peers with no polling.

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The recommended read path — the reactive ORM hook useShape

useShape is the way to read. It subscribes to a shape (a typed view — the SHEX/ORM shape) over a scope (one or more document NURIs / a subject set), returns the current materialized set immediately, and re-renders the component on every change to any document in scope.

Signature

useShape<T extends BaseType>(
  shape: ShapeType<T>,
  scope: Scope | string | undefined,
): DeepSignalSet<T>

• shape — the ORM shape type (generated from a SHEX shape). Names the entity type and the properties to materialize.
• scope — where to read: a { graphs, subjects } scope object or a NURI string. Not to be confused with this library's Scope (types.ts), which is the literal union public | protected | private naming a store. Same word, two meanings: the ORM's is a read target, ours is a placement. undefined yields an empty read.
• Returns a DeepSignalSet<T> — a live reactive set. Iterate it like a set; the component re-renders whenever the set changes.

Verified surface in nextgraph-rs: sdk/js/orm/src/frontendAdapters/react/useShape.ts (useShape, line 86) → OrmSubscription (sdk/js/orm/src/connector/GraphOrmSubscription.ts), which calls ng.orm_start_graph(...) with a callback, applies the initial materialized objects and every subsequent patch to a DeepSignalSet (applyPatchesToDeepSignal), and drives React re-render via useDeepSignal (@ng-org/alien-deepsignals/react). Vue and Svelte adapters exist alongside the React one (sdk/js/orm/src/frontendAdapters/{vue,svelte}/).

@ng-eventually/client re-exports useShape from ../src/use-shape.ts; import it from the SDK (@ng-eventually/client), never from @ng-org/orm directly.

What you get, in order

1. An initial value. On subscribe, the ORM materializes the current objects in scope and delivers them first (AppResponseV0::GraphOrmInitial, engine/verifier/src/orm/graph/initialize.rs:113). The hook returns them as the initial DeepSignalSet.
2. A stream of updates. On every subsequent commit affecting the scope — local or remote — the ORM pushes a patch (AppResponseV0::GraphOrmUpdate), the connector applies it to the DeepSignalSet, and the component re-renders. No refetch, no interval.

Under the hood — the streamed primitives

useShape is built on NextGraph's streamed request primitives. A consumer never calls these directly, but they define the contract:

• orm_start_graph(shape, scope, …, callback) — the reactive graph ORM subscription (sdk/js/lib-wasm/src/lib.rs:1951). Returns GraphOrmInitial then a stream of GraphOrmUpdate. This is what useShape uses.
• orm_start_discrete(nuri, …, callback) — the reactive discrete (Yjs/Automerge document) ORM (lib-wasm/src/lib.rs:1929); DiscreteOrmInitial then DiscreteOrmUpdate.
• doc_subscribe(nuri, …, callback) — a lower-level document subscription (lib-wasm/src/lib.rs:1908; verifier Verifier::create_branch_subscription, verifier.rs:352). Delivers an initial TabInfo + State (heads, full graph, discrete state, files — verifier.rs:470/:476) then a stream of Patch on each commit. This is the raw reactive read; useShape is the typed, ergonomic layer on top.
• All of these are streamed (marked by AppRequestCommandV0::is_stream(), engine/net/src/app_protocol.rs:762) and delivered through the one generic streamed binding app_request_stream_ (lib-wasm/src/lib.rs:1385), which invokes a JS callback per AppResponse and returns a cancel function. The reactive surface is callback-based at the wasm boundary; useShape hides that behind a reactive signal.

Rule of thumb: to read, useShape. It subscribes, gives you the value now, and keeps it live. Reach for a one-shot read only when you explicitly do not want to stay subscribed.

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The one-shot read — the exception

Sometimes you want the current value once, with no live subscription (a batch, a guard, a migration). NextGraph's one-shot read is a plain SPARQL query — non-streamed, computes a result and returns once (sparql_query, sdk/js/lib-wasm/src/lib.rs:352/553; no "subscribe to a query" exists — sparql_query is not reactive).

In @ng-eventually/client the one-shot read is exposed as:

• docs.sparqlQuery(sid, query, base?, anchor?) — a raw anchored SPARQL query (../src/docs.ts). anchor = the document NURI to read; the anchor restricts the query to that one repo's graph.
• readModel.readUnion(docs) — read a bounded, by-need set of document NURIs, each with its own anchored query, grouped per subject (../src/read-model.ts). This is the polyfill's listing primitive (see § Current emulation status and read-model.md).

One-shot reads do not re-render on change. To stay live over a one-shot read you must re-run it on a change signal (e.g. re-call readUnion when a doc_subscribe fires) — a manual assembly that exists only because of the emulation gap below; the finished contract is useShape.

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The write surface (at a glance)

You do not need the write internals to read, but reads and writes share the same document model, so briefly:

• Create a document: docs.docCreate(sid, crdt, cls, dest, store?) (../src/docs.ts) — mirrors ng.doc_create. One document = one repo (did:ng:o:<RepoID>); there is no separate Document type.
• Write into it: docs.sparqlUpdate(sid, query, anchor) — a SPARQL INSERT/DELETE scoped to the anchor document's graph. Or, at the ORM layer, the ORM update primitives (graph_orm_update). A write is a commit on the document's branch — which is exactly what every useShape subscriber over that document is pushed.
• Writes target one document, never "the union": a SPARQL update must name one document's graph (resolve_target_for_sparql(update=true) returns InvalidTarget for the union, engine/verifier/src/request_processor.rs:275).

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Identity & scope (what a consumer needs)

Data is isolated per document (repo), and each document lives in a scope:

Scope	Read	Write
Private	Owner only	Owner only
Protected	Owner + whoever the owner delivered the cap to	Owner + permissioned collaborators
Public	Whoever has the URL (the repo link)	Owner only

Consequences a consumer must internalize:

• Reading is key possession, never an authorization list. You hold a document's ReadCap (…:r:{cap}) or you do not read it — there is no "may X read Y?" to ask, here or upstream. A cap-less did:ng:o:… names a document without granting anything, which is what lets public content point at private content without disclosing it. Caps reach you two ways: creating a document files its own, and someone delivering one to your inbox (shareCap). Nothing derives a cap from a bare reference.

• Isolation is per-document, not per-store. Holding a store's cap does not grant read on the documents it contains — each document has its own ReadCap. Fine- grained isolation therefore means one document per entity (engine/repo/src/types.rs, ReadCap granularity; see nextgraph-current-state.md § Capability / ReadCap granularity).

• Read isolation is cryptographic. A reactive/union read over a repo you hold no cap for simply returns nothing (the repo is never decrypted); a targeted read of an unheld repo raises RepoNotFound.

• Public means everyone reads, only the owner writes. There is no primitive by which a non-owner appends to a document (public or otherwise): a write commit requires repo membership plus a matching write permission, gated by Repo::verify_permission (engine/repo/src/repo.rs:584 — a non-member author is PermissionDenied) and cryptographically bound to the repo's write-cap secret. The permission enum (engine/repo/src/types.rs:1729, PermissionV0) has WriteAsync/ WriteSync but no add-only/append permission and no public-writable grant. To surface data to others without a shared write, use the inbox (any identity — even anonymous — can deposit; only the owner reads back) or make the document public-readable and let each identity own its own document. Per-document inboxes are this library's, not the engine's: upstream only the public and protected store repos carry one (engine/verifier/src/site.rs:128,149).

  Depositing into a document you do not own is two calls, and the first is the one that makes it possible at all:

  const where = await storeRegistry.documentInboxAddress(doc); // Nuri | undefined
  if (where) await inbox.post(where, { payload: { signingUp: true } });
  

  You need the document (its cap), nothing else — the address rides on it and is published from creation. undefined means you cannot read the document, not that the owner is unreachable. Reading that inbox is a different right, and it stays the owner's (inbox.read refuses otherwise).

The consumer asks the SDK for what it needs and trusts the result; it does not construct NURIs, pick union-vs-anchor, or reason about caps. The domain-shaped list helpers live in the consumer app; the SDK exposes the generic reactive/by-need read.

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Current emulation status

This section is about where today's polyfill does NOT yet deliver the reactive contract above. It is an emulation gap to close, not the SDK's design. The reference above is the target; the finished SDK reads reactively via useShape everywhere. Full detail: nextgraph-current-state.md, read-model.md, simulation.md.

Today, on a single shared wallet emulating the mature platform, four gaps diverge from the reactive contract:

1. Entity-list reads are one-shot, not reactive. The reactive ORM cannot be used as the listing primitive because the ORM fan-out over a set of per-entity / not-yet-synced document graphs hangs: a freshly-created or unsynced graph makes RepoNotFound abort the whole orm_start_graph, so the subscription never emits its initial and never resolves (root cause verified — engine/verifier/src/request_processor.rs resolve_target → self.repos.get(...).ok_or(RepoNotFound); see nextgraph-current-state.md § The ORM fan-out hang). So the lib reads entity lists with readModel.readUnion — a bounded set of one-shot anchored sparql_querys (read-model.md) — and reassembles reactivity by re-querying on a change signal (a lightweight doc_subscribe / single-store ORM used only as a signal source, then re-run readUnion). useShape remains valid for a single already-opened document; it is the per-entity fan-out that is unfit today.

2. The inbox uses a polling watcher. The inbox is emulated (AppRequestCommandV0::InboxPost has no verifier arm today; no wasm helper seals a deposit), so inbox.watch (../src/inbox.ts) polls via setInterval (default 1s) instead of subscribing. The finished contract is push (the broker already routes the inbox natively); these become subscriptions when the sealed-inbox path (inbox_post_link) lands.

3. No cross-wallet / on-demand repo open. There is no JS primitive to sync an unknown repo by NURI+ReadCap today (load_repo_from_read_cap is pub(crate), unexposed; the OpenRepo broker path is a TODO at engine/verifier/src/verifier.rs:1423). The mono-wallet polyfill sidesteps this: every account's docs are doc_created in the same session, so they are already queryable. At the multi-store migration, opening a repo by cap becomes a native broker sync and the anchored read is unchanged.

4. The subscription may not echo the writer's OWN local commit — HYPOTHESIS (high-confidence), confirmation in progress (2026-07-18); NOT confirmed, NOT fixed. Unlike gaps 1–3 (designed emulation stopgaps), this is a suspected defect in the polyfill's own reactive assembly. When a client does a local sparqlUpdate on a doc it is itself subscribed to (subscribeDoc / ng.doc_subscribe), the subscription callback appears NOT to fire for its OWN local commit in the same session — so the reactive re-read chain (../src/watch-shape.ts watchShape → reread → ../src/read-model.ts readUnion) never runs, and consumers keep the STALE value until the next connection delivers a fresh initial State. Remote commits DO push correctly (verified: cross-browser reactive update works). A code review verified the consumer wiring is correct, the doc IS in the subscribed set, and a triggered re-read WOULD return the new value — leaving the self-commit echo as the only suspect link. That link is INFERRED, not observed: the real ng.doc_subscribe runtime is not readable from source, and ../src/subscribe.ts's own doc-comment CLAIMS local writes push a Patch — contradicted by the observation. (This also sits in tension with § The reactivity model above, which documents the target contract — one commit, every subscriber pushed, local or remote.) The requirement at stake is multi-user: a value change (e.g. a participant count) must propagate reactively to ALL viewers — other viewers (remote push, which works) AND the writer's own view (this suspect link). Treatment (PLANNED, not done): confirm first via the temporary instrumentation just added (../src/subscribe.ts ≈:119 logs doc_subscribe FIRE <nuri> (State|Patch); ../src/watch-shape.ts ≈:341 logs reread TRIGGER by <nuri> — line numbers volatile, grep the log strings); then, IF confirmed, fix polyfill-side — a local commit should notify the doc's active subscribeDoc callbacks. Consumers must not compensate. Short entry: nextgraph-current-state.md § Known open issues.

When these gaps close, the read path collapses to the reference above: useShape everywhere, push everywhere, no polling and no re-query-on-signal assembly.