What it does

mam-main is the kernel of the MAM Suite — Tiny Screen Labs’ mobile-app-management platform. Every enrolled customer site runs WordPress with mam-main plus a portfolio of sibling plugins (mam-contact-form, mam-geodirectory, mam-chat-manager, mam-special-offers, etc.). The iOS and Android apps talk to the WordPress site via a single AJAX endpoint that returns a JSON payload describing every screen, button, and content element.

mam-main owns:

• The mobile API surface. A single AJAX action (local_app_get_phone_data) dispatches a 4-phase MAM_Phone_Data_Pipeline that builds the JSON payload returned to the app. ~70 sibling-plugin subscribers extend it via mam_get_phone_data_before_send.
• The app-settings registry. Themes, layouts, buttons, tabs, content sections, and image assets — all persisted, all admin-editable, all accessed through the mam_app_settings_get_setting filter cascade with 100+ call sites.
• The notification dispatcher. A single MAM_Notification_Dispatcher routes mam_notification_send_message actions across email, SMS, and push channels, queueing or sending immediately based on volume.
• Push credentials and device-token storage. APNs (HTTP/2 + VoIP) and FCM v1 senders, plus a token registry per user.
• User roles, login, and registration. Email + password, magic link, social, phone-code; profile fields rendered as Gravity Forms.
• Gravity Forms integration. Caches form definitions, transforms them into a mobile-app-renderable shape, processes app-side submissions, fires per-form-id hooks for sibling plugins.
• Cron infrastructure. A FastCron-driven AJAX endpoint plus the mam_cron_manager filter that sibling plugins subscribe to register their own scheduled tasks.
• The publish pipeline. Submits iOS and Android builds to the WPMAM publishing service via Fastlane.
• Setup wizard and enrollment. First-launch onboarding, account-code allocation, plugin entitlement checks.
• 21 content classes — the building blocks (Login, Map, Web URL, Favorites, etc.) that customer admins compose into screens via the no-code builder.

Sibling plugins extend mam-main exclusively through filters and actions. mam-main never imports their classes; they hook into its pipelines.

Where it sits in the platform

                    ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┐
                    │  Mobile app (iOS + Android)                  │
                    └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                      │
                                AJAX  │  local_app_get_phone_data
                                      ▼
                    ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┐
                    │  mam-main                                     │
                    │                                               │
                    │  • MAM_Phone_Data_Pipeline (4 phases)         │
                    │  • mam_get_phone_data_before_send (~70 subs)  │
                    │  • MAM_Notification_Dispatcher                │
                    │  • App settings registry                      │
                    │  • Forms manager (Gravity Forms)              │
                    │  • Push manager (APNs + FCM)                  │
                    │  • Cron (FastCron)                            │
                    │  • 21 content classes                         │
                    └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                      │
                       ┌──────────────┼──────────────┬──────────────┐
                       ▼              ▼              ▼              ▼
             ┌────────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ ┌────────────┐
             │ mam-geo-       │ │ mam-chat-  │ │ mam-       │ │ mam-       │
             │ directory      │ │ manager    │ │ special-   │ │ contact-   │
             │                │ │            │ │ offers     │ │ form       │
             └────────────────┘ └────────────┘ └────────────┘ └────────────┘
                       │              │              │              │
                       └──────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────┘
                          (and 30+ more — geofilters, IAP, reviews,
                           gravity-forms-manager, mam-suite-hold, mam-use-case)

mam-main is roughly 5x the size of the largest sibling plugin (~145 PHP files across 22 subsystems vs. mam-geodirectory’s ~23 files).

Subsystems

See Architecture overview for the dependency graph and load order.

Frozen public contracts

These are public APIs that ~2K enrolled customer sites and the deployed mobile apps depend on. Their public-facing names and shapes do not change. Internal abstractions wrap them.

AJAX actions

• local_app_get_phone_data — primary mobile API
• mam_get_phone_data — modern alias (same handler)

Option keys

• local-app-account_code — customer enrollment ID
• local-app-button-array* — customer-defined button arrays
• local-app-onboarding-status — wizard progress tracker

Hooks

• mam_get_phone_data_before_send — ~70 subscribers
• mam_local_app_data — short-circuit hook
• mam_notification_send_message — primary notification action (legacy add_filter registration retained)
• mam_tab_manager — per-button enrichment, ~43 subscribers
• mam_final_button_settings — final per-button override
• mam_app_settings_get_setting / mam_app_settings_set_setting

DB tables

All 6 wp_mam_* tables (renamed from wp_tsl_* in PR #31 with backward-compat aliases):

• wp_mam_debug_items, wp_mam_notification_history, wp_mam_mail_queue, wp_mam_mail_attachments, wp_mam_phone_tokens, wp_mam_sms_queue

Frozen contract — do not rename. Renaming any of the above requires a coordinated mobile-app + customer-fleet migration. Always wrap, never rename.

See Frozen public contracts reference for the full table.

Where to start

Verification

This article was last verified against:

• Plugin: mam-main v2.1.11
• mam-main/ARCHITECTURE.md
• mam-main/REFACTOR_PLAN.md
• 9 per-subsystem README.md files under mam-main/includes/

Re-verify whenever a new subsystem appears under mam-main/includes/, the bootstrap order in MAM_Main_Manager::__construct() changes, or any frozen contract is added or removed.

Related articles

• Architecture overview
• Recipe: Build an app end-to-end
• Recipe: Add a button
• Recipe: Configure the tab bar
• Recipe: Configure push notifications
• Recipe: Customer enrollment and account code
• Recipe: Publish your app to iOS and Android
• Recipe: Customize onboarding
• Phone data pipeline overview
• Phone data pipeline phases
• Cursor cache mechanism
• Mobile JSON shape
• Notifications overview
• Notification types registry
• Settings cascade overview
• Frozen public contracts reference
• Forms manager overview
• Content classes overview
• Extending mam-main: developer guide
• Hook: mam_get_phone_data_before_send
• Hook: mam_notification_send_message
• Hook: mam_app_settings_get_setting
• Hook: mam_tab_manager
• Hook: mam_main_add_tab_baritem{slug}
• Hook: mam_cron_manager

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