Jtech

One combined Discourse plugin. Bundles seven previously-separate plugins under a single registration and a single master site setting (jtech_enabled). Each sub-plugin keeps its own settings, locales, and Ruby namespace.

Bundled sub-plugins

Sub-plugin	Ruby namespace	Settings prefix	Master switch
Dislike (phantom reactions)	DiscourseNoLikes	dislike_*, discourse_no_likes_*, no_reactions_*, purge_phantom_likes_now	discourse_no_likes_enabled
Another SMTP	—	discourse_another_email_*	discourse_another_email_enabled
Mini-mod	DiscourseMiniMod	mini_mod_*, tl4_*	mini_mod_enabled
Mod-categories	DiscourseModCategories	mod_*, precheck_*, topic_footer_*, topic_reply_prompt_*	mod_categories_enabled
Dumbcourse	DiscourseDumbcourse	dumbcourse_*	dumbcourse_enabled
Translator-tweaks	(patches DiscourseTranslator)	(none — gated by translator's own settings)	translator_enabled (upstream)
Smart search	DiscourseSmartSearch	smart_search_*	smart_search_enabled

The bundle is gated by jtech_enabled; each sub-plugin is independently gated by its own setting above.

Mod-categories — staff-event notifications

Mod-categories ships a notification fan-out for five staff-event streams in addition to its original topic-level moderator notes. Whenever a moderator performs one of the actions below, every OTHER staff member gets a high-priority bell notification + live MessageBus pop-up alert, AND the event surfaces in the shield-tab user menu alongside topic notes.

Stream	Event hook	URL on click
Post deleted by staff	on(:post_destroyed) (skips self-deletes + system user)	topic + post number
Queued post approved	on(:reviewable_transitioned_to) (status=:approved, ReviewableQueuedPost)	/review/:id
Queued post rejected	on(:reviewable_transitioned_to) (status=:rejected, ReviewableQueuedPost)	/review/:id
User note added	wraps ::DiscourseUserNotes.add_note (bundled plugin fires no DiscourseEvent)	/u/:username/notes
Flag note added on a reviewable	::ReviewableNote.after_create callback	/review/:id

All five are gated by independent site settings (mod_notify_staff_on_post_actions, mod_notify_staff_on_user_notes, mod_notify_staff_on_flag_notes) so streams can be disabled individually. The fan-out itself lives in lib/discourse_mod_categories/staff_notifier.rb and is wrapped in two layers of rescue StandardError so a notifier failure can never 500 the underlying moderator action. A 30-second per-user dedup check in StaffNotifier.recent_duplicate? protects against an event hook firing twice in quick succession.

The shield-tab /discourse-mod-categories/notes-feed returns a UNION of topic-attached notes (legacy behavior — what TopicCustomField writes surface as) plus the non-topic event notifications above, so the tab mirrors what the bell shows for every mod-note-kind notification.

Smart search

Synonym query expansion using WordNet (~117K-word English lexical DB, bundled via the rwordnet gem) for general English, with a small tech-jargon YAML overlay (~70 entries in config/dictionaries/smart_search_synonyms.yml) for the abbreviations and brand names WordNet doesn't know (js ↔ javascript, k8s ↔ kubernetes, pg ↔ postgres, etc.). When smart_search_enabled is on:

1. The user's original search runs first via Discourse's vanilla Search#execute.
2. If the original returns fewer than smart_search_minimum_results posts (default 5), up to smart_search_variant_limit (default 2, max 5) synonym-substituted variant searches run and their results are merged in.
3. Every smart-search path (dictionary load, variant generation, inner variant search, merge) is wrapped in rescue StandardError → log and return the vanilla result. The fallback contract is documented at the top of lib/discourse_smart_search/search_extension.rb.

No external services, no API keys, no embedding models — both backends (WordNet via SQLite DB shipped in-gem, plus the YAML overlay) run in-process. This is deliberate: the previous semantic-search attempt (Discourse AI embeddings) was disabled after every query started returning 500 when the embedding backend went down. Smart search's failure mode is "results identical to vanilla," never "search broken."

Editing the overlay: only ADD entries WordNet doesn't already cover — abbreviations, brand names, protocol initialisms. Don't curate general English (WordNet handles it for free). Lowercase ASCII rows, each row is a symmetric synonym group. Reloaded at boot (or via DiscourseSmartSearch::Synonyms.reload! in a Rails console). See docs/smart_search.md for the full architecture: two-backend lookup order, request-flow diagram, fallback contract, performance notes, and a console-recipe for diagnostics.

Layout

plugin.rb              master plugin file — instance_eval's each file under sub_plugins/
about.json
sub_plugins/
  dislike.rb           body of original Dislike/plugin.rb
  another_smtp.rb      body of original discourse-another-smtp/plugin.rb
  mini_mod.rb          body of original discourse-mini-mod/plugin.rb
  mod_categories.rb    body of original discourse-mod/plugin.rb + staff-event notifications
  dumbcourse.rb        body of original dumbcourse/plugin.rb
  translator_tweaks.rb runtime patches for upstream discourse/discourse-translator
                       (alltechdev's two-commit fork ported as in-process tweaks
                       so we can track upstream and apply our overrides on top)
  smart_search.rb      synonym query expansion (in-process, no external services)
scripts/
  translator_backfill_foreign_detection.rb
                       one-shot rails runner; enqueues the upstream translator's
                       detect job for legacy foreign-script posts
config/
  settings.yml         all settings.yml files merged into seven jtech_* admin tabs
  dictionaries/
    smart_search_synonyms.yml
                       symmetric synonym groups for smart_search; lowercase ASCII
  locales/
    server.en.yml      deep-merged server locale + categories.jtech_* translations
    client.en.yml      deep-merged client locale
lib/
  discourse_no_likes/        from Dislike
  discourse_mini_mod/        from discourse-mini-mod
  discourse_mod_categories/  from discourse-mod + staff_notifier.rb (fan-out helper)
  discourse_dumbcourse/      from dumbcourse
  discourse_smart_search/    synonyms / query_expander / Search prepend module
app/
  controllers/{discourse_mod_categories,discourse_dumbcourse}/
  models/{discourse_no_likes,*_site_setting.rb}
  jobs/regular/
db/migrate/            phantom-reactions table migration from Dislike
assets/                merged JS/CSS — no filename collisions across sources
public/                Dumbcourse SPA bundle (index.html, dumbcourse.{js,css}, emoji_map.json)

Admin-UI tabs

The merged config/settings.yml exposes one admin tab per sub-plugin: Jtech, Jtech — Dislike, Jtech — Alternate SMTP, Jtech — Mini-mod, Jtech — Mod, Jtech — Dumbcourse, Jtech — Smart search. TL4 settings remain in Discourse's core Trust Level 4 tab.

Visual review (screenshot specs)

Two GitHub Actions workflows render visual fixtures of the plugin's UI surface:

• Feature Screenshots — ~25 hand-picked scenarios capturing the actively-developed features. Runs on push to main, PRs, and manual dispatch. Artifact: feature-screenshots.

• Comprehensive Screenshots — parameterized matrix across kinds × lengths × read-states × roles × ordinals, ~1180 scenarios attempted. Dispatch-only (gated by ENV["JTECH_COMPREHENSIVE_SHOTS"] so it never slows ordinary CI). Run via:

  gh workflow run "Comprehensive Screenshots" --ref <branch> --repo Shalom-Karr/JtechTools

  Spec files: spec/system/comprehensive_screenshots_spec.rb plus _part2, _part3, _part4. Empirical success rate ~75% across the full matrix (the fast-path P6 section alone hits 100%). Section-prefix convention so the artifact zip sorts navigably: A1xx bell rows, B2xx shield tab, C3xx mod-note panel, D4xx bell stacking, E5xx/K1xx smart search, G7xx time-ago variants, H8xx density 1→100, etc.

Why one enabled_site_setting?

Discourse plugins can only register a single enabled_site_setting at load time. The bundle's master gate is jtech_enabled. Every sub-plugin's logic still checks its own master switch internally (Guardian overrides, event hooks, controllers, etc. all early-return when their sub-feature is disabled), so you keep per-feature on/off control through admin settings.

Installation

cd /var/discourse/plugins
git clone https://github.com/JTech-Forums/JtechTools.git jtech-tools
cd /var/discourse
./launcher rebuild app