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Add a friends hub with realtime online presence #186

Description

@coder13

Goal

Give authenticated users one dependable place to see friendships, pending requests, and which friends are currently available to race.

User experience

Add a /friends route reachable from the header/profile menu with:

  • online friends first, then offline friends;
  • incoming and outgoing pending requests;
  • actions to open a profile, accept/decline/cancel a request, unfriend, block, or invite an eligible friend to the current room;
  • clear empty, loading, disconnected, and error states;
  • a responsive layout that works with the existing mobile navigation.

Presence contract

  • Presence is ephemeral and friends-only in this surface.
  • "Online" means the user has at least one authenticated Let’s Cube socket connected.
  • Multiple tabs/devices count as one user; offline is emitted only after the last socket disconnects.
  • Do not persist or display last seen in the MVP.
  • Do not create durable "friend came online" notifications in the MVP.
  • REST owns the durable friend list; Socket.IO only delivers presence changes. Reconnect must refetch/reconcile durable state.

Acceptance criteria

  • Add friend-list/request state and selectors without coupling React components directly to sockets.
  • Move friend presence through the global namespace and existing per-user Socket.IO rooms.
  • Compute first-connect/last-disconnect correctly across multiple processes through the Redis adapter.
  • Deliver an initial presence snapshot and incremental updates only for accepted friendships.
  • Handle Redis/socket interruption without deleting friendships or permanently showing stale presence.
  • Add focused server tests for multi-tab, multi-process, blocked/unfriended, and reconnect behavior.
  • Add client tests for sorting, request states, offline/error states, responsive actions, and reconnect reconciliation.
  • Add a Cypress happy path with two authenticated test users.

Dependencies

Non-goals

  • Persistent last-seen timestamps.
  • Browser/OS push notifications.
  • Direct messaging.

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    area: socialFriends, presence, invitations, and notificationsenhancementNew feature or requestpriority: P1High-priority work for the next delivery cycle

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