himalaya/cairn/changes/wizard-discovery-only/proposal.md

cairn	id	status	created
change	wizard-discovery-only	landed	2026-07-30

Wizard is discovery-only; stop when nothing is discovered

Why

The wizard grew a hand-entry configuration path: when discovery found nothing (manual_fallback), and whenever the user typed a scheme:// server URL (configure_server → imap_smtp::configure_manual / jmap::configure_manual), it walked the user through prompting every field (host, port, encryption, SMTP endpoint) by hand. This is a large, complex surface that duplicates what a hand-written config file already does better, and it makes the wizard responsible for building configs it cannot validate against a provider.

The wizard should do one thing: help find the right config automatically. Interaction stays minimal, and the output is a pre-configured, tested account. When it cannot discover a config from the given email, domain or server URL, it should stop and tell the user to write the config by hand, pointing at the documented sample — not fall into a manual builder.

What

Unify every non-local input onto the discovery flow and delete all hand-entry.

• Input. A local folder path (or a file:// URL) stays a local backend and continues the flow: the wizard auto-detects the store kind — a .m2store/.m2dir marker means m2dir, a cur/new/tmp tree means Maildir — and only prompts Maildir-vs-m2dir when the directory is empty or ambiguous. Everything else — an email, a bare domain, or a scheme:// server URL — runs io-pim-discovery's parallel discovery. A URL discovers from its host and its scheme narrows the results (see mapping below).
• Stop on empty. When discovery yields no supported configuration (including when the deadline passes with nothing completed, and when a URL's scheme filter leaves nothing), the wizard stops with a clear message: it could not automatically discover a configuration for the given input, and the user should write the account by hand using the sample as a starting point (https://github.com/pimalaya/himalaya/blob/master/config.sample.toml). No prompts, no partial account.
• Success is unchanged. A discovered entry is configured exactly as today: pick the service (when several), pick the SASL mechanism / HTTP scheme, enter the credential, and the connection is tested before the fragment is printed. This interaction is already minimal and stays.

URL scheme mapping (for review)

A scheme://host[...] URL discovers from host (as @host), then keeps only the discovered entries matching the scheme:

Scheme	Kept service	Security constraint
imap	IMAP + SMTP	none (any IMAP security discovered)
imaps	IMAP + SMTP	IMAP endpoint must be implicit TLS
jmap / jmaps / http / https	JMAP	none (JMAP is always HTTPS)

Proprietary entries (Gmail, Microsoft Graph) are dropped when a scheme is given, since the user asked for a specific open protocol. If the filter leaves nothing, the wizard stops as above.

• No invented hosts. IMAP is already never guessed (no IMAP discovered ⇒ no entry). SMTP SHALL follow the same rule: default_smtp (guessing smtp.<domain>) is removed. When IMAP is discovered but SMTP is not, the wizard produces an IMAP-only account (no smtp block, no SMTP test) rather than inventing and then testing a host that likely fails — the very failure behind #722. The user adds SMTP by hand, like anything else undiscovered.

Removed

• discover.rs: manual_fallback (both cfg variants), split_email, and configure_server's hand-entry routing (folded into the unified discovery flow with scheme filtering).
• imap_smtp.rs: configure_manual and its helpers not shared with the discovered flow (prompt_smtp_endpoint), and default_smtp.
• jmap.rs: configure_manual.

Non-goals

• The local backend is still asked when detection is inconclusive; auto-detection only removes the prompt when the on-disk markers are unambiguous.