simplex-chat/plans/2026-06-15-fix-cli-outdated-help.md

Remove CLI help entries for long-removed commands

Branch: nd/fix-cli-outdated-help · file src/Simplex/Chat/Help.hs.

1. Problem statement

Typing /get stats in the terminal CLI does nothing useful — it is documented in /help but no parser accepts it, so it fails to parse. Investigation found this is not isolated: four documented commands no longer exist in the parser.

2. Solution summary

Remove the four stale entries (five lines, including one continuation note) from Help.hs:

• /pq @<name> on/off + its "(both have to enable…)" note — contactsHelpInfo
• /pq on/off — settingsInfo
• /get stats — settingsInfo
• /reset stats — settingsInfo

The stats pair were the tail of settingsInfo, so the now-orphaned trailing comma on the preceding /(un)mute #<group> element is also dropped to keep the list literal valid.

No replacement text is added: PQ has no command (it is automatic), and the stats functionality has no argument-compatible successor (see §4).

3. Root cause

Both removals were core changes that deleted parser, handler, and command constructor but left Help.hs untouched:

• /pq (both forms) — commit 756779186 "core: enable PQ encryption for contacts (#4049)", 2024-04-22. It removed the parsers "/pq @" *> (SetContactPQ …) and "/pq " *> (APISetPQEncryption …); post-quantum encryption for contacts became automatic, so the manual toggle was obsolete. SetContactPQ and APISetPQEncryption no longer exist in src/.
• /get stats / /reset stats — commit 5907d8bd0 "core: remove legacy agent stats (#4375)", 2024-07-01. It removed the parsers "/get stats" $> GetAgentStats and "/reset stats" $> ResetAgentStats, their handlers, the GetAgentStats/ResetAgentStats constructors in Controller.hs, and the View.hs rendering — but its diff touched Chat.hs, Controller.hs, View.hs, cabal.project, sha256map.nix, not Help.hs.

In both cases the help text became a promise the binary could no longer keep.

4. Scope verification — no other stale entries, no replacements documented

All 120 commands documented across every section of Help.hs were extracted and matched against the parser string literals in Library/Commands.hs (chatCommandP). Every entry resolves to a live parser except the four above. ~10 entries that a naive prefix match flagged were manually confirmed valid: incognito-suffix forms parsed by incognitoP (/accept incognito, /connect incognito, /simplex incognito), usage examples (/file bob ./photo.jpg, /group team), and inline sub-alternatives (/start remote host new, /stop remote host new, /switch remote host local, /chats all).

Why no replacement text:

• PQ — there is no command; encryption is negotiated automatically. Documenting nothing is correct.
• Stats — the nearest live commands are /get servers summary <userId> and /reset servers stats, but they require a userId argument and return the agent servers summary, not the old argument-less usage statistics. They were never in CLI help; adding them is a separate documentation enhancement, deliberately out of scope for a "remove what no longer exists" fix.

5. Why this shape

Pure deletion of dead documentation — no behavioral change, smallest diff that makes /help truthful. Comma handling is the only subtlety: the /pq @<name> and /pq on/off removals sit before comma-bearing neighbors (a "" separator and /network respectively) and need no adjustment; the /get stats + /reset stats removal makes /(un)mute #<group> the last settingsInfo element, so its trailing comma is removed to avoid a dangling-comma parse error before ].