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MSC4197: Copy-Paste Hints

In Matrix today, it can be used for communication. One thing that is communicated is two-factor auth codes. In other platforms, one convenience is being able to quickly copy-paste two factor auth codes. This is not possible in Matrix today.

When sending a message, my message could contain a hint to the user's client that they should copy some particular part of the message. I propose to add a new field to m.room.message events that will hint to clients what text they could facilitating the user to copy.

Proposal

technical details
describe the solution (This is the solution. Be assertive.)

m.room.message contains a new field, copy_hint, under the existing content dictionary. This new field will contain a string representing text that the client could present to the user to copy.

An example is below:

{
  "content": {
    "body": "DO NOT SHARE THIS WITH ANYONE!!! Your 2FA code is: 100000",
    "m.mentions": {},
    "msgtype": "m.text",
    "copy_hint": "100000"
  },
  "origin_server_ts": 1726936182830,
  "sender": "@andrewm:element.io",
  "type": "m.room.message",
  "unsigned": {
    "membership": "join",
    "age": 54359693,
    "transaction_id": "m1726936182657.27"
  },
  "event_id": "$4WvO6_skvEIibdffnDKdTkFHtOKUZaPFLm8HJuXcz7E",
  "room_id": "!jWkHTegEyVsdPJkjHA:element.io"
}

Clients MAY automatically copy the contents of copy_hint to the clipboard without asking the user. This is an implementation detail.

Potential Issues

None considered!

Alternatives

hints dictionary.
Leave things as is (please don't!)
boolean copy_hint field (hint to client to copy the whole message)
give up (similar to 2.)
Use indexes in the message
- Harder to implement
- Use bandwidth
If the event is encrypted, leave the 2FA code out of the encryption

Security Considerations

TODO.

Unstable prefix

While this MSC is unstable, all instances of the field name copy_hint must be replaced with org.matrix.msc4197.copy_hint.

Dependencies

I do not build on any giant's shoulders.

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