Smarter emoji completion: recents, synonyms, fuzzy matching, popularity

[FuJacob]

Summary

Makes the inline :emoji: picker rank like a modern chat composer instead of a raw substring search, without changing the trigger/commit UX. Five additions, all behind the existing picker:

• Recents + frequency (EmojiUsageStore, EmojiUsageSnapshot): per-user usage persisted to UserDefaults, keyed by primary alias so it is stable across skin-tone/gender variants. A bare : now shows your recents (padded with popular emoji) instead of an empty panel, and personal favorites float to the top within a relevance tier.
• Curated synonym/intent overlay (EmojiSynonymCatalog): 164 hand-mapped words people actually type (lol→😂, ty→🙏, fire/lit→🔥, congrats→🎉, omg, smh, ...) boost the canonical alias they mean.
• Fuzzy fallback (in EmojiMatcher): when lexical results are sparse, a subsequence + optimal-string-alignment edit-distance pass catches typos (hapy→😄, recieve→...). Gated to queries ≥3 chars so it never pollutes good results.
• Popularity prior (EmojiPopularity): a curated, dataset-validated ordering used as a within-tier tiebreak and as the bare-: starter set for new users.
• Clear Emoji History control in General settings.

Relevance order is unchanged (exact alias > prefix > keyword/name > substring > fuzzy); recents/favorites/popularity only break ties, so a more relevant match is never demoted. Ranking stays a pure function of (query, catalog, usage snapshot).

Validation

swiftlint lint --strict --quiet        # exit 0

xcodebuild test -project Cotabby.xcodeproj -scheme Cotabby \
  -destination 'platform=macOS' \
  -skip-testing:CotabbyTests/FoundationModelDriftEvalTests CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO
# ** TEST SUCCEEDED **  Executed 663 tests, 3 skipped, 0 failures

New unit tests cover every pure helper (EmojiPopularityTests, EmojiSynonymCatalogTests, EmojiRecentsTests, ranking/fuzzy additions in EmojiCatalogMatcherTests), the store (EmojiUsageStoreTests, in-memory backed), and commit-time usage recording (EmojiPickerControllerTests). Popularity and synonym tables are validated against the bundled emoji.json so no entry is dead. Local Team ID caveat: app-hosted suites run with CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO.

Linked issues

Refs #393 (emoji & gif auto-completion/search). This advances the emoji half; GIF search is out of scope.

Risk / rollout notes

• Behavior change: suggestion ranking now factors personal recents/frequency, curated synonyms, fuzzy typos, and a popularity prior, and a bare : shows recents. Conservative by construction (tie-break-only personalization; fuzzy gated to ≥3 chars).
• New persisted key: cotabbyEmojiUsage in UserDefaults (recents + frequency). User-clearable via Settings → General → Clear Emoji History.
• macOS 14 crash dodge: EmojiUsageStore declares a nonisolated deinit to avoid the isolated-deinit back-deployment shim (swift_task_deinitOnExecutorMainActorBackDeploy) that over-releases and aborts the app-hosted test runner for a @MainActor class with non-trivial stored properties.
• pbxproj: regenerated with xcodegen generate for the new source/test files; no project.yml edit.
• No engine, model, or prompt changes.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Greptile Summary

Upgrades the inline :emoji: picker from a plain substring search to a multi-tier ranked search: exact alias → alias prefix / synonym exact → keyword/name prefix / synonym prefix → alias substring → keyword/name substring → fuzzy (OSA + subsequence, ≥3 chars), with personal recents/frequency and a curated popularity prior breaking ties within each tier. A bare : now seeds the panel with the user's recent emoji instead of showing nothing.

• EmojiMatcher gains synonym boosting (via EmojiSynonymCatalog), a fuzzy fallback gated to sparse results and ≥3-char queries, and a four-key sort comparator (tier → favorite bucket → token length → popularity rank → catalog order); relevance is never sacrificed to personalization.
• EmojiUsageStore persists per-user recents and frequency in a single JSON blob under cotabbyEmojiUsage in UserDefaults; the nonisolated deinit dodges a macOS 14 isolated-deinit back-deploy crash that was deterministically reproduced in the app-hosted test runner.
• EmojiCatalog gains an aliasIndex dictionary for O(1) alias → entry resolution, used by EmojiRecents to fill the bare-: panel without iterating the full catalog.

Confidence Score: 5/5

Safe to merge — the ranking changes are additive and tie-break-only, so no previously-relevant match is demoted, and all new code is fully unit-tested.

All new logic (OSA distance, subsequence, synonym catalog, popularity prior, usage store) is covered by dedicated unit tests with in-memory backends. The behavior change (bare : shows recents; personalization and popularity only break ties within a tier) is conservative by construction. The macOS 14 nonisolated deinit workaround is well-documented and correctly targeted. No correctness bugs or data-safety issues were found in the changed code paths.

No files require special attention.

Important Files Changed

Filename	Overview
Cotabby/Support/EmojiMatcher.swift	Substantially expanded to support six relevance tiers, synonym boosting, fuzzy fallback (OSA + subsequence), and a multi-key sort comparator; the OSA implementation is correct and the fuzzy gate (≥3 chars, sparse lexical results) is conservative.
Cotabby/Models/EmojiUsageStore.swift	New @mainactor persistence class wrapping a JSON blob in UserDefaults; the nonisolated deinit workaround for the macOS 14 back-deploy crash is correctly explained and the EmojiUsageDefaults protocol enables hermetic unit testing.
Cotabby/Support/EmojiSynonymCatalog.swift	164-entry hand-curated intent map; boostedAliases correctly separates exact vs. prefix boosts and excludes exact aliases from the prefix set. The ≥2-char prefix gate prevents single-letter spray.
Cotabby/Support/EmojiPopularity.swift	Curated popularity prior used as a late tiebreak and bare-: seed; rankByAlias is built once as a lazy static dictionary, first-occurrence-wins rule handles duplicate entries gracefully.
Cotabby/Support/EmojiRecents.swift	Pure recents builder; takes limit×3 popularity aliases for padding so the panel fills even when stored aliases go stale, and resolves each through the aliasIndex for O(1) lookup.
Cotabby/App/Coordinators/EmojiPickerController.swift	Adds emojiUsage/recordEmojiUsage closure dependencies and wires bare-: recents; recordUsage correctly keys on entry.aliases.first (base primary alias) for variant-stable signal.
Cotabby/Support/EmojiCatalog.swift	Adds aliasIndex dictionary and entry(forAlias:) lookup for O(1) resolution of stored aliases; first-occurrence-wins on duplicate aliases is the correct policy.
CotabbyTests/EmojiUsageStoreTests.swift	Comprehensive store tests using in-memory defaults; covers record ordering, normalization, cap eviction, clear, cross-instance persistence, and the isFavorite boundary conditions.
CotabbyTests/EmojiCatalogMatcherTests.swift	New ranking tests verify synonym intent surfacing, fuzzy typo/transposition matching, exact-beats-fuzzy precedence, favorite floating within tier, popularity tiebreak, and bare-: recents ordering.

Flowchart

%%{init: {'theme': 'neutral'}}%%
flowchart TD
    A[User types in picker] --> B{query empty?}
    B -->|yes| C[EmojiRecents.suggestions\nrecents → popularity pad]
    B -->|no| D[EmojiSynonymCatalog\nboostedAliases for query]
    D --> E[Lexical pass over catalog\nalias / keyword / name hits]
    E --> F{scored.count < limit\nAND query.count ≥ 3?}
    F -->|no| G[Sort: tier → favoriteBucket\n→ tokenLength → popularityRank\n→ catalogIndex]
    F -->|yes| H[Fuzzy pass on unmatched entries\nOSA distance + subsequence]
    H --> G
    G --> I[prefix limit results]
    I --> J[EmojiVariantResolver.resolve\napply skin-tone / gender prefs]
    J --> K[Panel shown to user]
    K --> L{User commits emoji}
    L --> M[recordEmojiUsage alias\nEmojiUsageStore.record]
    M --> N[persist to UserDefaults\ncotabbyEmojiUsage JSON blob]

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