refactor(views): remove the companion (VRM avatar) feature + dead steward wallet-policy UI

[lalalune]

What

Removes two dead UI surfaces — the companion (VRM avatar) feature and the
dead steward wallet-policy UI — re-derived on top of current develop. The
original work lived on chore/review-dirty-worktree-cleanup, but develop moved
~207 commits since it diverged, so the companion commit was applied via
git cherry-pick and every conflict + every new companion reference that
landed on develop in the interim was resolved/removed against develop's current
code (the branch does not cherry-pick cleanly on its own).

1. Remove the dead steward wallet-policy UI surface (b69f5e7)

PolicyControlsView was mounted nowhere (no route, no settings section, no
app-shell page), and the steward/injected slot wrappers always rendered null
because nothing assigns the boot-config steward slots. Only Storybook stories, a
stringly coverage entry, and a feature-surface showcase consumed it.

Removed: PolicyControlsView (+ story), the whole policy-controls/ module,
components/steward/, the AppBootConfig steward slots + Steward*Props /
AppBootSteward* types in boot-config-store, the barrel re-exports, the agent
external-modules.d.ts prop shims, the "settings/PolicyControlsView" coverage
entry, the feature-surfaces showcase, the orphaned template stub exports, and a
stale design-doc listing.

Kept (real wallet/auth plumbing): approveStewardTx +
/api/wallet/steward-approve-tx, client-types-steward
(StewardApprovalInfo), the shared StewardPolicyResult type, the
CloudWalletProvider "steward" value, and all cloud Settings sections.

2. Remove the companion (VRM avatar) feature entirely (6cc0193)

Deletes plugins/plugin-companion/ and every reference across the runtime, app,
UI, registry, build config, tests, and docs. The VRM avatar chat overlay, the
/companion view, the emote system (PLAY_EMOTE / /api/emote), the companion
ShellView state, and all wiring are gone.

• Delete plugins/plugin-companion; drop its workspace dep + bundled-package /
  knip / docker-runtime / registry entries.
• Strip companion from agent core-plugins, plugin-resolver,
  external-modules.d.ts, prompt-compaction, view-action-affinity,
  misc-routes, and every view-coverage / view-parity / tui-view /
  bundle-lifecycle test.
• Remove the companion BuiltinTab + its TAB_PATHS / redirect wiring, the
  ShellView "companion" member, COMPANION_ENABLED, CompanionVrmPowerMode
  / CompanionHalfFramerateMode, and the CompleteFirstRunOptions /
  launchCompanionOverlay first-run plumbing (re-derived against develop's
  current useFirstRunCallbacks / first-run-finish / use-first-run-conductor
  — these were added after the branch diverged).
• Remove the 15 dead lucide-react -> ../plugin-companion/node_modules tsconfig
  path mappings, the companion route from dev-route-catalog, the
  VITE_ENABLE_COMPANION_MODE gate on character-select (now unconditional),
  and the /api/emote PostEmoteRequestSchema contract + test.
• Drop PLAY_EMOTE from the action-coverage ratchet, rewrite the companion-emote
  scenario to GENERATE_MEDIA-only (deterministic-media-actions.scenario.ts),
  and remove it from the prompts action spec + core action-docs.
• Delete mobile-plugin-views.ts (its only registration was the companion
  app-shell page) + its main.tsx import; drop companion from the optional-app
  shim, the storybook glob/order, and the client-agent playEmote method.
• xr-functional-parity / xr-bundle-coverage reconciled (17 → 16 plugins);
  view-interaction-coverage visualCases count reconciled to 56.
• Retarget packages/app-core/scripts/ensure-avatars.mjs off the now-deleted
  plugins/plugin-companion/public / eliza/plugins/app-companion/public path
  to apps/app/public — the exact dir the surviving sibling process-vrms.mjs
  writes and the static server serves /vrms + /animations from. The surviving
  VRM content-pack / BundledVrmAsset avatar subsystem is unaffected.

Why it's safe — no dangling references

Final repo-wide grep over packages/ plugins/ scripts/ skills/ (source + config,
excluding dist/ and node_modules):

• plugin-companion / @elizaos/plugin-companion → no source/config hits.
  Surviving matches are docs + generated artifacts only: historical analysis
  .md files (perf report, VIEW_E2E_FINDINGS, loadperf research,
  minimal-redesign catalog), checked-in e2e HTML snapshots
  (__e2e__/output/*.html), and generated *-report.json — none are live code.
• PLAY_EMOTE / playEmote → no source/config hits except one generated
  retrieval-ranking entry, packages/shared/src/i18n/keywords/action-search.generated.keywords.json: "action.playEmote.request". Kept at develop's state on purpose: a full
  regen of that file produces a 49,508-line unrelated drift (locale
  reformatting + 200+ other actions' keyword drift over 207 commits); it is
  retrieval ranking metadata only (the header says it is not an availability
  check) and is regenerated by the legitimate generate:action-search-keywords
  pipeline. This matches the original removal commit's handling. (The downstream
  validation-keyword-data.{ts,js} files that also list playEmote are
  gitignored — regenerated at build, not in this PR; they regenerate clean.)
• companion BuiltinTab in packages/ui/src/navigation + state → CLEAN.
• PolicyControlsView / policy-controls / steward dead-slot props → no
  source hits (one stale storybook-README changelog line + generated report JSON
  remain — historical/generated, not code).

False positives deliberately KEPT (unrelated uses of "companion"): the
browser-bridge companion (plugin-browser / BrowserWorkspaceView), the
plugin-phone Phone Companion page (id: "phone-companion",
@elizaos/plugin-phone), mobile-companion / desktop-companion
remote-capability providers, the electrobun companion window, the CSRF companion
cookie, and the AOSP-local-inference "companion plugin" Android FFI help string.

Verification

Scoped tsgo typecheck of every affected package (missing type packages
symlinked from the parent monorepo's node_modules — gitignored, not in the
commit; this is the documented light-install worktree):

packages/agent     typecheck → 0 errors
packages/app-core  typecheck → 0 errors
packages/app       typecheck → 0 companion errors (1 pre-existing on develop:
                                steward-wallet-providers.tsx viem Config type)
packages/ui        typecheck → 0 companion errors (2 pre-existing on develop:
                                steward-wallet-providers.tsx; voice-control.test.ts
                                vitest mock — both byte-identical to origin/develop)

Unit tests (vitest):

packages/agent       view-agent-surface-coverage     68/68  ✓
packages/app-core    assert-required-bundled-packages 24/24  ✓
packages/app         view-interaction-coverage        10/10  ✓ (with the 56 reconcile)
packages/shared      contracts/misc-routes            27/27  ✓ (emote-schema removal clean)
plugins/plugin-xr    xr-functional-parity              8/8   ✓ (companion 17→16 reconcile)

scenario-runner/deterministic-action-coverage: the PLAY_EMOTE ratchet and
companion-emote → GENERATE_MEDIA scenario rewrite are correct (the test file has
zero companion refs; the rewritten scenario has 0 PLAY_EMOTE / 10 GENERATE_MEDIA),
but the suite can't run green in this worktree due to an environment install
gap — Cannot find package 'jimp' (transitively imported via plugin-vision;
absent from both worktree and parent node_modules). All 8 failures share that one
import error and are unrelated to companion; CI's full install runs it.

plugin-xr/xr-bundle-coverage: 2 size assertions fail because three unrelated
plugins' view bundle.js entries are 148-byte re-export shims in this worktree's
vite build (real content is in hashed chunks) — an env/build-config artifact, not
a companion regression. The companion-relevant xr-functional-parity passes.

audit:app status (the one remaining gate)

ATTEMPTED (during the paired PR A run on this same worktree). The visual-audit
pipeline builds every plugin view bundle, @elizaos/core + @elizaos/shared,
and transforms the app renderer (4632 modules), but the live-stack cannot boot
in this isolated worktree because its install:light provisioning is missing a
long tail of renderer/build deps (@elizaos/vitest-vite, lucide-react,
webxr-polyfill, @date-fns/tz, …). This is the documented "worktree shares
parent node_modules" constraint. The screenshot + manual-review loop is the one
remaining gate and should run on a full-install checkout (CI) for the affected
surfaces — most relevant here: the launcher view-manager (which loses the
companion tile) and first-run / onboarding (companion-overlay launch removed).
No fabricated screenshots or verdicts are attached.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[greptile-apps]

Too many files changed for review. (436 files found, 100 file limit)

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[lalalune]

Trivial residual to sweep during the audit:app pass (non-blocking, non-functional):

plugins/plugin-facewear/src/actions/view-actions.ts still carries one illustrative few-shot example referencing the now-removed companion view — "switch to companion in XR" → "Switching to companion view." in the XR_SWITCH_VIEW action's examples. The action resolves the target view id dynamically (extractViewId), so this is purely an example string, not a live route — but it should be repointed to a still-existing view (e.g. feed) so the few-shot doesn't teach a removed view id. Worth folding into the same PR when this gets the visual-audit pass.

All functional companion-view routing (plugin-app-control deterministic rules + matcher + evaluator, plugin-training view enums, facewear XR e2e route-server) is removed and verified clean.

[claude]

Claude encountered an error —— View job

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I'll analyze this and get back to you.

[github-actions]

LifeOps Benchmark — eliza

Run ID: lifeops-eliza-28429507661

LifeOps Benchmark

Model: gpt-oss-120b
Judge: claude-opus-4-7
Scenarios: 25
pass@1: 0.000
pass@k: 0.000
Total cost: $0.0000

Full artifacts: see the lifeops-run-eliza-28429507661 upload on this run.

[github-actions]

LifeOps Multi-Tier Benchmark

Suite: — Tiers requested:

large — cancelled

frontier — cancelled

Artifacts: lifeops-multi-tier-large-28428931277, lifeops-multi-tier-frontier-28428931277

[lalalune]

Post-merge review (adversarially verified): the core removal is clean and non-breaking — plugin-companion is fully gone, zero live-source references remain, and tsconfig/knip/registry/core-plugins/xr-parity-counts are all consistent. No over-deletion (the 2D avatar-preview path — getVrmPreviewUrl, content-packs, avatar API — is correctly retained).

There's a non-breaking dead-weight tail worth a follow-up cleanup (none of it breaks build/typecheck/tests, since every ref is inert dead config or tree-shaken dead code):

• Orphaned 3D-renderer dep @pixiv/three-vrm still declared in packages/app/package.json, packages/ui/package.json (twice, at mismatched ^3.4.5/^3.5.3), and the project template — no live importer remains (the deleted VrmViewer was the sole consumer).
• DynamicViewLoader.tsx:450-451 still maps @pixiv/three-vrm + /nodes shims for view bundles that no longer exist.
• state/vrm.ts getVrmUrl() (the 3D .vrm.gz model URL) is exported-but-unused (only re-exported via barrels).
• Dead story-gate refs (play-coverage-gate.mjs SCAN_ROOTS, a11y-baseline.json, ui-story-gate.yml path triggers), ~80 stale .gitignore lines, orphaned avatarselector.*/nav.companion i18n keys, and a stale play_emote keyword.

Filing as a follow-up rather than reopening, since none of it is a regression.

[github-actions]

LifeOps Benchmark — hermes

Run ID: lifeops-hermes-28429507661

LifeOps Benchmark

Model: gpt-oss-120b
Judge: claude-opus-4-7
Scenarios: 25
pass@1: 0.240
pass@k: 0.240
Total cost: $0.8623

Full artifacts: see the lifeops-run-hermes-28429507661 upload on this run.

[github-actions]

LifeOps Multi-Tier Benchmark

Suite: smoke — Tiers requested: large,frontier

large

LifeOps Multi-Tier Benchmark

Tier: large
Suite: smoke

frontier

LifeOps Multi-Tier Benchmark

Tier: frontier
Suite: smoke

Artifacts: lifeops-multi-tier-large-28429507801, lifeops-multi-tier-frontier-28429507801