fix: add invitation link to Freenet room on River welcome page

[kerbo7]

Problem

New users are probably a bit clueless what to do next, after they loaded River.

Welcome to River. Create a new room, or get invited to an existing one.

A new user doesn't know what to do now.
Especially on mobiles it may be a bit frustrating not to see the next steps.

Solution

Below the welcome message add a link to

https://freenet.org/quickstart#invite-form

Text eg: Click here to get an invitation to channel "Freenet Official"

[sanity]

Issue Priority Assessment

Generated: 2026-03-12T22:28:12.389759001+00:00
Issue hash: e7960cbc

Value Assessment

The welcome screen described in the issue is still exactly what the code renders today: when no room is selected, ui/src/components/conversation.rs:1354-1374 renders the centered River logo, heading, and the two-sentence prompt “Create a new room, or get invited to an existing one,” with no additional guidance or links. There’s still no reference to the Freenet invitation page anywhere in the UI, so the missing link described in #159 has not been implemented yet and the UI surface hasn’t drifted far enough to make the request obsolete.

Because the landing state is the first interaction for new users on every device, the lack of a direct action beyond “create a room” leaves newcomers especially on mobile unclear about how to join the community. Placing the invite link (as suggested) would directly address the frustration noted in the issue text and keep the onboarding flow within the welcome panel rather than forcing users to hunt through external docs, so the impact is real: everyone who hits River for the first time and is invited rather than creating a room is affected.

Strategically, adding the invite link advances River’s core goals of lowering the barrier to entry and linking the UI with Freenet’s broader onboarding materials. It keeps the welcome experience in sync with the idea of “decentralized group chat” by surfacing how to join the Freenet Official channel rather than leaving that knowledge implicit. It’s a small UI tweak, so implementation is quick while reinforcing the project promise of being “ready for new users.”

It isn’t blocking any other work, nor is there a hard deadline, but it is an easy win that could be done alongside any other UI tweaks. If anything, implementing the link should be a low-cost improvement to ship soon so the experience for future first-time users doesn’t stay frustrating for longer than necessary.

Cost Assessment

The welcome banner still lives in ui/src/components/conversation.rs around the mobile/fallback view, so the issue is still actionable—the code hasn’t been refactored into a completely different area, and the requested “invitation link” can be implemented by extending the JSX-like markup that’s already rendered when no room is selected. There’s no need to rethink routing or room-loading logic. Because the solution simply adds another paragraph/link under the existing text, the existing approach described in the issue still fits.

Scope is minimal: only the mobile/empty-room chunk of conversation.rs needs to change, and you could probably add a styled anchor or button there. No other modules (contracts, delegates, backend) are implicated. There’s no new shared state or API to touch, so complexity is very low—the only consideration is matching the project’s Tailwind- or Dioxus-style class names if you want the link to stay visually consistent. No tricky edge cases beyond making sure the element is accessible on both desktop and mobile fallbacks.

External dependencies are nil: no third-party signups, approvals, or coordination is required because the link simply points to https://freenet.org/... as specified. The risk is almost nonexistent—adding another piece of static UI in the welcome pane shouldn’t regress existing room functionality, assuming styling is kept scoped to this component. If anything, double-check that the new link doesn’t disrupt the vertical layout or overflow on very small screens, but that is just a visual polish concern.

Testing effort is light: a quick smoke check in dx serve and/or running the Playwright tests that already look at the welcome text (e.g., e2e-test/tests/smoke.spec.ts expects the “Welcome to River” heading) should suffice. No new automated regression tests are strictly necessary unless you want to assert the link’s presence, but even that could be a single selector update in the existing smoke spec.

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Generated by issue-prioritizer