waste-go/FUTURE.md

Future Vision

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:

• Peer mesh and connection management (WebRTC DataChannels, DTLS, ICE)
• Cryptography and handshake (Ed25519 identity, nacl/box signaling, YAW/2.1 FS)
• NAT traversal (ICE/STUN via pion/webrtc — no custom relay needed)
• File transfer (dedicated binary DataChannels per transfer)

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.

TUI ✅ (shipped)

A terminal UI (cmd/tui) using Bubble Tea. Three-pane layout: rooms, messages, peers. Supports group chat, DMs, room switching, invite generation. Works over SSH.

Web UI ✅ (shipped)

React + Vite frontend. Two modes:

• Browser mode — runs entirely in-browser, connects directly to the anchor via WebSocket. No daemon required. Identity persists in localStorage. File sharing, file push, per-peer ICE/NAT status.
• Daemon mode — web UI connects to a local daemon over WebSocket IPC. Same UI, different adapter.

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Protocol

NAT Traversal ✅ (WebRTC ICE/STUN)

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.

TURN relay ✅ (shipped)

Both browser and daemon modes support TURN relay.

Browser mode: iceServers() in browser.ts reads WASTE_CONFIG.turnURL and WASTE_CONFIG.turnSecret, generates time-limited HMAC-SHA1 credentials (compatible with coturn use-auth-secret), and adds the TURN server to the ICE candidate list. The peer dot turns yellow for relayed connections (candidate_type: relay).

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.

Signaling ✅ YAW/2.1 (shipped)

Forward-secret signaling via per-session ephemeral X25519 keys. Falls back transparently to 2.0 static-key sealing for peers that don't speak 2.1.

Multi-Network Support ✅ (shipped)

One daemon, multiple simultaneously-joined networks. Per-network HKDF-derived identities prevent cross-network correlation. Network-scoped SQLite stores.

Invite System ✅ (shipped)

waste:<base64> URIs encoding anchor URL + network name. --join flag on daemon and TUI. Ctrl+I in TUI or generate_invite via IPC.

File Transfer ✅ (shipped)

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.

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Remaining Work

Session Persistence ✅ (shipped)

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.

Per-Network Share Directories ✅ (shipped)

Share state is tracked per network_id in the store (sharedFilesByNetwork). Switching networks switches the active share.

Persistent Multi-Share Configuration ✅ (shipped)

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.

Additional Channels / Rooms ✅ (shipped)

Custom rooms are supported in both the web UI and the TUI.

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.

File Transfer UX ✅ (shipped)

• Manual accept/reject via the Transfers panel in the sidebar
• Transfer cancellation (file-cancel message, closes DataChannel)
• Live progress bar per active transfer
• Push (📎) sends directly to a peer without them needing to share a folder

Not yet done: daemon-side resume UX (IPC event to surface resumable transfers to the UI on reconnect).

Native UI

Web frontend (React, already built) + Wails v2 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. Scaffolded in cmd/app/; build with ./build-app.sh. Remaining work: system tray, OS notifications.

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Roadmap

Status	Item
✅ shipped	Daemon + anchor server
✅ shipped	WebRTC DataChannels (ICE/STUN hole punching)
✅ shipped	Ed25519 identity, nacl/box signaling (YAW/2.0 + 2.1)
✅ shipped	IPC protocol — join/leave/chat/DM/state
✅ shipped	Message persistence (SQLite, per-network)
✅ shipped	TUI (cmd/tui, Bubble Tea)
✅ shipped	Invite system (waste: URI, --join flag)
✅ shipped	Multi-network support (HKDF derived identities)
✅ shipped	File transfer (binary DataChannels, pull + push)
✅ shipped	Forward-secret signaling (YAW/2.1 ephemeral X25519)
✅ shipped	Peer gossip (anchor-free mesh reconnection)
✅ shipped	Web UI — browser mode + daemon mode
✅ shipped	Per-peer NAT/ICE status, identity backup/restore
✅ shipped	Per-network share directories
✅ shipped	Additional channels/rooms per network
✅ shipped	TURN relay (browser mode, coturn use-auth-secret)
✅ shipped	File transfer UX (progress, cancel, manual accept)
✅ shipped	Session persistence + logout (browser mode)
✅ shipped	Persistent multi-share config (shares.json + localStorage)
✅ shipped	Subfolder support + directory browser UI in file browser
✅ shipped	Signed invites + invite-only networks (RequireInvite)
✅ shipped	Hash-based "come hang" links (#waste:...)
✅ shipped	Protocol extensions documented in EXTENSIONS.md
✅ shipped	TURN relay for daemon mode (-turn-url / -turn-secret)
✅ shipped	TUI room creation + daemon-side room persistence
✅ shipped	Unread room indicators in TUI (* prefix)
✅ shipped	Per-network download directories (-download-dir flag + set_download_dir IPC)
✅ shipped	File transfer resume after disconnection
✅ shipped	PWA manifest — installable via "Add to Home Screen" on iOS and Android
✅ shipped	Native desktop app (Wails 2) — system tray (Linux/Windows), OS notifications, single binary
✅ shipped	Gitea Actions CI — server binaries (all platforms via cross-compile) + desktop app (Linux amd64)

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What to Keep from WASTE

• Small group — not a public network, not federated, not discoverable
• No registration — no phone number, no email, no central service
• Encrypted everything — at rest and in transit, end to end
• Equal nodes — no peer is "the server"; the anchor is dumb infrastructure
• The soul — a private overlay for people you actually trust