channel-formatting

Channel Formatting

This skill wires channel-aware Markdown conversion into the outbound pipeline so Claude's responses render natively on each platform — no more literal **asterisks** in WhatsApp or Telegram.

Channel	Transformation
WhatsApp	**bold** → *bold*, *italic* → _italic_, headings → bold, links → text (url)
Telegram	same as WhatsApp, but [text](url) links are preserved (Markdown v1 renders them natively)
Slack	same as WhatsApp, but links become <url|text>
Discord	passthrough (Discord already renders Markdown)
Signal	passthrough for parseTextStyles; parseSignalStyles in src/text-styles.ts produces plain text + native textStyle ranges for use by the Signal skill

Code blocks (fenced and inline) are always protected — their content is never transformed.

Phase 1: Pre-flight

Check if already applied

test -f src/text-styles.ts && echo "already applied" || echo "not yet applied"

If already applied, skip to Phase 3 (Verify).

Phase 2: Apply Code Changes

Ensure the upstream remote

git remote -v

If an upstream remote pointing to https://github.com/qwibitai/salem.git is missing, add it:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/qwibitai/salem.git

Merge the skill branch

git fetch upstream skill/channel-formatting
git merge upstream/skill/channel-formatting

If there are merge conflicts on package-lock.json, resolve them by accepting the incoming version and continuing:

git checkout --theirs package-lock.json
git add package-lock.json
git merge --continue

For any other conflict, read the conflicted file and reconcile both sides manually.

This merge adds:

• src/text-styles.ts — parseTextStyles(text, channel) for marker substitution and parseSignalStyles(text) for Signal native rich text
• src/router.ts — formatOutbound gains an optional channel parameter; when provided it calls parseTextStyles after stripping <internal> tags
• src/index.ts — both outbound sendMessage paths pass channel.name to formatOutbound
• src/formatting.test.ts — test coverage for both functions across all channels