WASTE's design philosophy is still sound: small trusted groups, no central server, encrypted everything, equal nodes. That's essentially what Signal's sealed sender and private groups do today, just without a self-hosted option. This gap is worth filling.
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## Architecture
Two clean layers, connected by the IPC port.
### Daemon
The real application. A long-running background process that handles everything:
Exposes a local JSON API over TCP (`127.0.0.1:17337`). Can run headlessly — SSH into a box and the mesh stays alive even with no UI attached.
### UI Layer
Talks to the daemon over the IPC port. The separation means the UI is replaceable without touching the core.
Target: a web frontend (React or similar) wrapped in a native binary using a Tauri-style approach — native packaging, OS webview, no Electron weight. Avoids the wxWidgets ugliness of the old wxWASTE fork and the Qt licensing headaches of the VIA fork.
A terminal UI (`cmd/tui`) using [Bubble Tea](https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea). Three-pane layout: rooms, messages, peers. Supports group chat, DMs, room switching, invite generation. Works over SSH.
Solved by using WebRTC DataChannels via pion. ICE gathers host + server-reflexive (STUN) candidates and performs UDP hole punching automatically. The anchor (`cmd/anchor`) doubles as a STUN server on UDP/3478.
**Browser mode:** `iceServers()` in `browser.ts` reads `WASTE_CONFIG.turnURL` and fetches a time-limited credential from the anchor's `GET /turn-credentials` endpoint (HMAC-SHA1, compatible with coturn `use-auth-secret`) rather than holding the shared secret client-side. The peer dot turns yellow for relayed connections (`candidate_type: relay`).
> **Security fix:** earlier this previously embedded `turnSecret` directly in `WASTE_CONFIG`, which let anyone reading the PWA's JS mint unlimited long-lived TURN credentials. The secret now lives only on the anchor (`-turn-secret` flag); the anchor mints short-lived credentials per-request instead.
**Daemon mode:** `-turn-url` and `-turn-secret` flags on `cmd/daemon`. `turnICEServers()` in `internal/netmgr/manager.go` generates HMAC-SHA1 credentials and injects them into the ICE server list for every new peer connection.
Dedicated binary DataChannel per transfer (`f:<xid>`). SHA-256 integrity verification. 64 KiB chunks with backpressure. Auto-accept. In browser mode: both pull (browse peer's shared folder) and push (📎 send directly to a peer).
### Peer Gossip ✅ (shipped)
When a new peer connects, the mesh immediately gossips the full peer list to them (`peer_gossip` wire message). New arrivals discover existing peers without needing the anchor to re-introduce them. The anchor becomes optional once the first handshake has happened — the mesh self-heals around anchor downtime.
Browser mode now auto-rejoins on reload. The last-used network name, alias, and anchor URL are saved to `localStorage` on join and restored on load. A ⏻ logout button in the sidebar clears session state (optionally including the identity keypair) and reloads the page.
Multiple share roots per network, with global (all networks) or scoped visibility.
- **Daemon:** `shares.json` next to `identity.json` in the data dir. `add_share`/`remove_share`/`list_shares` IPC commands. File listing recursively walks all share roots, returning relative paths. Backward compatible with the existing `set_share_dir` single-dir mechanism.
- **Browser:** `waste_shares` in `localStorage` stores named share records (folder name, global flag). The `ShareManager` sidebar component shows the list with re-pick (↺) and remove (✕) buttons. Actual `File` objects live in memory — the record persists across reloads so the user can restore with one click.
**Web UI:** The `+` button in the Rooms sidebar creates custom rooms, stored in `customRooms` keyed by `network_id`. Room names are slugified strings — any peer that sends to a room name causes it to appear on the recipient automatically.
**TUI:** Type `/room <name>` in the input to create a room. The daemon persists it in the `rooms` SQLite table and echoes a `room_created` IPC event back. On reconnect, rooms are restored via `state_snapshot`. Rooms that receive messages while not active show a `*` prefix in the sidebar; the marker clears when you switch to that room.
DM rooms (`dm:<peerId>`) appear automatically in both interfaces when messages arrive.
On daemon start, the download directory is scanned for `.tmp.meta` sidecars and a `resumable_transfers` IPC event is emitted so the UI can show pending transfers with a progress bar.
Web frontend (React, already built) + [Wails v2](https://wails.io) shell for native packaging. Wails is Go-native — no Rust toolchain required. The daemon runs embedded in the same process; the webview connects to the existing WebSocket IPC at `ws://127.0.0.1:17338`. Built in `cmd/app/` via `./build-app.sh`. System tray (Linux/Windows) and OS notifications are implemented. macOS menu-bar tray requires Cocoa main-thread integration — currently a stub.
Full-stack emoji reactions. The web UI shows a `+` button on hover that opens a six-emoji picker (👍 ❤️ 😂 😮 😢 🙏). Reactions render as chips below each message; clicking an existing chip toggles your own reaction. Reactions are stored in SQLite (`reactions` table), gossiped over the mesh as `reaction` wire messages (EXT-008), and replayed via IPC on reconnect.
Browser mode: `browser.ts` independently mirrors the daemon — reactions flow over the DataChannel and are broadcast to all connected peers.
TUI: messages show `[n]` line numbers. Use `/react <emoji>` (reacts to last message) or `/react <n> <emoji>` (reacts to message `n`). Reactions render inline below the target message.
### Link Rendering + Image Preview ✅ (shipped)
URLs in messages are auto-linked. URLs ending in a recognized image extension (`.jpg`, `.png`, `.gif`, `.webp`, `.svg`) render an inline `<img>` preview (max 320×200px). `blob:` and `data:image` URLs are also treated as images.
### Responsive Mobile Layout ✅ (shipped)
At viewport width ≤ 600px the sidebar becomes a fixed-position slide-over drawer, hidden off-screen by default (`transform: translateX(-100%)`). A `☰` hamburger button in the message pane header toggles it open. Clicking any room or network in the sidebar closes it automatically. The layout is dimmed while the sidebar is open via a `::before` overlay.
The web UI is already a PWA (installable, has manifest). The missing half is a service worker + Web Push subscription:
1.**Service worker** — intercepts `push` events and shows OS notifications via `showNotification()`.
2.**VAPID key pair** — generated once by the daemon (`-vapid-key` flag); the public key is served to the browser so it can subscribe.
3.**Subscription persistence** — the browser's `PushSubscription` JSON is sent to the daemon over IPC (`register_push` command). The daemon stores it per-network-per-peer.
4.**Daemon relay** — when a `message_received` event fires with no active IPC WebSocket connection, the daemon POSTs a Web Push notification to the stored subscription endpoint.
This keeps the architecture clean: the daemon already runs in the background; it becomes the notification relay. No third-party push server is required for self-hosted setups (coturn already in use for TURN; a lightweight Web Push POST is similar).
