Problem

Currently, mention styling is determined entirely by the indicator character — all mentions with the same indicator share one style. There's no way to style individual mentions differently based on their state or metadata.

Use case: In our app, we use mentions for template variables (%custom_var% and {{mapping_var}}). Some variables are "pending" (not yet configured by the user) and need to be visually distinct — e.g., orange instead of blue — so users can see at a glance which variables need attention. Since both valid and pending variables share the same indicator, we can't differentiate them with the current API.

Proposed API

A new mentionStyleRules property on htmlStyle that allows declarative, attribute-based style overrides:

<EnrichedTextInput
  htmlStyle={{
    mention: {
      "@": { color: "blue", backgroundColor: "lightblue", textDecorationLine: "none" },
    },
    mentionStyleRules: [
      {
        match: { pending: "true" },
        style: { color: "orange", backgroundColor: "lightyellow", textDecorationLine: "none" },
      },
      {
        match: { type: "urgent", priority: "high" },
        style: { color: "red", backgroundColor: "pink", textDecorationLine: "underline" },
      },
    ],
  }}
  mentionIndicators={["@"]}
/>

When committing a mention with matching attributes:

ref.current?.setMention("@", "John", { pending: "true" });
// → renders with orange style instead of the default blue

How it works

• Each rule has match (key-value pairs) and style (MentionStyleProperties)
• match is checked against the mention's attributes (the third arg to setMention, which are already stored on both iOS and Android)
• First matching rule wins; unmatched mentions fall back to indicator-based style
• Fully declarative — no lambdas, serializable over the bridge

Why this design

• No indicator hacking: We tried using separate indicator characters for different states, but indicators are tightly coupled to detection triggers and the native editor displays them as visible prefixes.
• Composable: Multiple rules for different conditions, each with independent match criteria.
• Backwards compatible: No rules = existing behavior. The attributes parameter of setMention is already supported but unused for styling.
• No codegen changes: Rules are embedded in the existing mention dict (which is UnsafeMixed) and extracted on the native side.

Implementation

I have a working iOS implementation in PR #493. Happy to adjust the approach based on feedback. The Android and web implementations would follow the same pattern.

Summary of changes

JS: mentionStyleRules on HtmlStyle, processed in normalizeHtmlStyle (color conversion), embedded as __rules__ in the mention dict for native transport.

iOS native: InputConfig stores rules and exposes mentionStylePropsForIndicator:attributes: which deserializes the mention's JSON attributes and matches against rules. MentionStyle.mm uses the attribute-aware lookup.