frq

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# frq

A **[freeq](https://github.com/codegod100/freeq)** client written in
**[jolt](https://github.com/jolt-lang/jolt)**, as
[glimmer](https://github.com/jolt-lang/glimmer) components painted by
**[Vidya](https://tangled.org/nandi.uk/vidya)**/egui.

It is a proof of concept port of [sleek](../sleek), which is the same client in
Rust against egui directly. The screens are sleek's — connect, chats, chat,
discover, settings, under a tab bar — but each is hiccup over glimmer's widget
tags rather than immediate-mode drawing code, and state lives in ratoms instead
of an `AppState` struct.

```
src/frq/atproto.jolt handle → DID → PDS → session, and the SASL payloads
src/frq/oauth.jolt   the broker flow: login URL, loopback capture, /session
src/frq/store.jolt   the saved sign-in, mode 600 in the config directory
src/frq/avatars.jolt profile pictures, by DID or handle
src/frq/profile.jolt who someone is: the Bluesky profile behind a nick
src/frq/media.jolt   image links: spot them, fetch them once, cache on disk
src/frq/upload.jolt  a pasted picture to freeq's media endpoint, as multipart
src/frq/av.jolt      calls: the signaling, and a handle on the media plane
src/frq/clock.jolt   the reader's own zone, twelve-hour times, day headings
src/frq/emoji.jolt   the picker's catalog: every drawable emoji and its name
src/frq/irc.jolt     IRC over TLS or TCP: parser, reader thread, SASL, PRIVMSG
src/frq/state.jolt   the ratoms every screen reads, and `apply-msg!`
src/frq/app.jolt     the screens
```

## Tracing

`FRQ_TRACE=1` prints every IRC line sent and received to stderr, which on
Android is logcat.

## Running

Both native libraries, then the app:

```bash
just lib
just run
```

`just lib` fetches both shared objects this client loads —
[jolt-native](https://gitlab.com/nandithebull/jolt-native)'s `libvidya`, the
retained-tree ABI glimmer paints through, and `libjoltmoq`, the AV media plane
— out of that project's release, by the digests in `scripts/*.dotslash`, and
links them into `build/lib`. Nothing is compiled: no Rust toolchain, and no
jolt-native checkout beside this one. It needs `patchelf`, and only to name
libasound in `libjoltmoq.so`, which v0.1.3 does not — see the comment in
`scripts/lib.bb`; that goes away with the release that links it. `just bump` moves every pin to the
latest release at once, and `just bump v0.1.2` to a named one.

`just run` is `jolt -M:frq` with `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` pointed at `build/lib`. It
connects to `irc.freeq.at:6697` over TLS and joins `#test`. Untick TLS on the
connect screen (or point it at `127.0.0.1`) for a local server's
plain listener:

```bash
cargo run --release --bin freeq-server        # in the freeq checkout
```

## In a terminal

The screens are hiccup over glimmer's reconciler, and the reconciler does not
know what is under it — so the same tree paints into a terminal through
jolt-native's `libjolttui`, which exports libvidya's retained-tree ABI over a
grid of cells instead of a GPU window.

It is the client, not a preview of it. `frq.app/start!` is what a launch does —
the saved settings, the rooms this client has been in, the sign-in that
connects itself — and `src/frq/tui.jolt` hands it the terminal's timers instead
of the window's. Nothing in `frq.app` changed.

```bash
nix run .#tui                             # or: just tui
just tui --headless --cols=90 --rows=60   # one screenshot on stdout
just tui --headless --demo                # a buffer of its own, no server
just tui --headless --wait=9000           # long enough to have connected
```

The headless one is `tui_headless` — the same layout and the same painting with
the writer taken off the end — which is what a screenshot in a bug report or a
CI check should be. It paints once and prints, so `--wait=` is how long the
client is given first: the default is a picture of the connect screen, because
that is where a client is a moment after launch, and `--demo` fills a `#tui`
buffer for a screenshot that is not waiting on a server at all.

Logs go to stderr, which in a terminal session is the screen frq is painting.
Send them somewhere: `nix run .#tui 2>/tmp/frq.log`.

What a terminal has not got, frq does without: pictures, avatars and the
lightbox draw nothing, and calls are off — the media plane paints frames into
a texture, and there is no texture here. And frq's spacing is written in
points, for a window — the backend is handed `:points-per-cell 8` so those
numbers land in cells, but `below-messages` in `src/frq/app.jolt` is point
*arithmetic* rather than a point *length*, and a scale cannot fix it: it
reserves about thirteen rows more than the compose bar needs, so the bottom of
the backlog is pushed out of the list.

Two things are unpinned, because the terminal backend is not in a jolt-native
release yet: `libjolttui.so` comes out of a jolt-native checkout's target
directory (`JOLT_NATIVE=…`, or beside this tree) for `just tui`, and the flake
carries a second `jolt-native-tui` input at the rev that has it — its own input
rather than a bump, so the window half stays on the release the rest of the
tree names. Both become one pin when it ships.

## Signing in

Three modes on the connect screen.

**Bluesky** (OAuth, the default way in) follows sleek's flow: frq binds a
loopback port, puts it in `return_to`, and opens
`auth.freeq.at/auth/login?handle=…`. The broker runs the OAuth dance with the
PDS and redirects back to that port with the handoff in the URL *fragment*, so
it never reaches a server as a query string. The page frq serves there has one
job: POST the fragment back to itself. What comes back is a single-use SASL
`web-token` and a durable `broker_token`; later connections mint a fresh token
from the durable one at `/session` and skip the browser.

The durable token is saved to `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/frq/session.edn` (mode 600) so
a restart resumes without one, along with the handle and nick it belongs to —
and it connects on its own at launch when one is there.
The web-token beside it is single-use and deliberately not saved. A token the
broker no longer honours is dropped — from disk and memory — and the browser
flow runs once more, rather than failing the same way on every Connect.

**App password** signs in without a browser, straight to the user's own PDS:
`resolveHandle` → DID → PDS from the DID document → `createSession`. The
password goes to that PDS and nowhere else, is never written to disk, and is
dropped once the session exists.

Either way freeq sees only a token. The SASL mechanism is
`ATPROTO-CHALLENGE` in both cases — `method: "web-token"`, which the server
resolves through its own token store, or `method: "pds-session"` with the
server's nonce echoed back so the token cannot be replayed elsewhere.

A refused sign-in is reported and the connection carries on as a guest.

## Android

An APK whose native halves come from jolt-native's release and whose Jolt half
is frq's: `libvidya.so` (the Rust/egui C ABI, which owns the event loop as the
NativeActivity's own library), `libjoltmoq.so` (the media plane) and
`libjoltapp.so` (frq compiled to a Chez boot image, linked against both).

```bash
./android/build-apk.bb run      # build, install, launch on a connected device
./android/build-apk.bb log      # logcat, filtered
```

Needs an SDK and a cross-built Chez in `~/.cache/vidya-chez-android`; the NDK
comes down through `scripts/android-ndk.dotslash`. `just apk` builds the same
APK as a buck2 graph, which is the incremental way in.

TLS does not work there: jolt reaches OpenSSL through the dynamic loader, and
Android has no public `libssl` to load. The connect screen falls back to the
plain `:6667` listener on its own, which is why the plain transport is the raw
`socket`/`connect`/`send`/`recv` calls rather than jolt's `java.net.Socket`
surface — that surface does not work on Android either, while the syscalls do.

## What the PoC covers

* TLS (`:6697`, via jolt.mvn-http's OpenSSL bindings) or plain TCP (`:6667`)
* Guest connect (`NICK`/`USER`), `001` welcome, `PING`/`PONG` keepalive
* Auto-joins `#test` on `irc.freeq.at`
* Join channels, channel buffers with unread counts, send and receive `PRIVMSG`
* Backlog on join, and `CHATHISTORY` for the channels freeq restores instead
* Twelve-hour timestamps from the server's own clock, with a heading wherever
  the day changes
* A chip above a reply quoting what it answers, and a click that goes there;
  ↩ beside a sender to answer them, with `+draft/reply` on the way out
* Emoji reactions: colour pills under a message, ☺ beside the sender to open a
  picker over every emoji Vidya can draw (popular first, then Unicode's own
  groups, searchable by name), and a second click on a pill to take yours off
  — sent as `TAGMSG`, and restored from the server's own tally when the
  backlog comes back
* Inline previews for PNG links, fetched once and cached under
  `$XDG_CACHE_HOME/frq/media`; click one to see it full size
* Ctrl+V in the draft attaches the picture on the clipboard: it is previewed
  under the box and uploaded to freeq's media endpoint while you write the line
  it goes with, and only on the way out does it become the link — which is the
  whole of what sending an image over IRC means. The draft itself is never
  written into. Text pastes as text, as it always did: the picture path is the
  keystroke the field had no text to answer with
* Join/part notices, DMs bucketed under the sender's nick
* Discover list, search over buffers, disconnect
* The rooms you have opened, remembered across runs and listed in the order
  you last used them (`$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/frq/channels.edn`)
* Conversations listed most recently opened first
* Bluesky avatars beside the sender, resolved from the DID freeq tags each
  message with
* Calls: a Call button opens one in a channel, a banner offers Join where
  somebody already has, and in one there is mute, deafen, video and leave. Mute
  and deafen are separate — a deafened microphone still carries your voice.
  Whoever turns a camera on appears as a tile; the self-view is labelled You
  and sits last, where it cannot push a face you are talking to off the row

## Calls

Signaling is IRC and lives here: `+freeq.at/av-start`, `av-join` and `av-leave`
go out as TAGMSGs and the server broadcasts `+freeq.at/av-state` back, which is
what actually moves this client's state — a press is optimistic, and the server
settles it. Losing a race to open a call (`start-collision`) is answered by
joining the call that won rather than by reporting an error, since the person
asked to be in a call in that room and there is one.

Media is not IRC and is not here. Audio and video ride MoQ — Media over QUIC —
through freeq's SFU, and that is `libjoltmoq`: Opus, H.264, capture and
transport, lifted out of sleek rather than written a second time in jolt.
`src/frq/av.jolt` is the whole of what frq says to it, and two of its rules
shape this side:

* **Nothing calls back.** Status and video are polled, drained by a timer that
  glimmer runs on the loop thread — the only thread allowed to touch a node.
* **A frame is borrowed.** The decoder's own buffer is handed to Vidya as a
  pointer and painted by an `:image` with a `:feed`. The pixels never become a
  jolt value and are never copied on this side, which is the only way thirty
  frames a second is affordable here.

The SFU is dialled once the server has minted a token, not when we ask to join:
a remote SFU refuses a connection without one, and the MoQ client then retries
in a loop that looks exactly like a hang.

## Limits

* **TLS and plain TCP only** — no WebSocket, no iroh. On Android, plain only.
* **No `did:key` signing, no credential gates, no E2EE.** Sign-in of either
  kind needs TLS, so it is desktop-only — the Android build connects as a
  guest.
* **Only the broker token is persisted**, and only for OAuth. An app-password
  sign-in is not remembered.
* **Previews are PNG only** — the tree backend's decoder reads no other
  format, and a fetch needs TLS, so the phone shows links. The link is left in
  place either way.
* **Nothing evicts the media cache.**
* **Calls are desktop-only.** `libjoltmoq` is not built for Android here, and
  the camera and microphone paths that are would still need the runtime
  permissions the APK does not ask for.
* **One call at a time**, which is the media plane's rule and the microphone's.
* **No call is offered in a DM** — freeq's AV signaling is a channel's.
* **Pasting a picture needs a sign-in and a desktop.** The upload is filed
  under the DID of a live session, so a guest cannot make one; and it is read
  off the clipboard through the ABI's `vidya_clipboard_image_png`, which
  arboard backs on desktop and nothing backs on Android. It also shares
  nothing to your PDS and posts nothing to Bluesky — those fields are opt-in
  and this client does not send them.
* **No scrollback trimming or threads.**
* A sent line waits up to 200ms for the reader thread to flush it.
* Message lists are keyed vboxes; glimmer-vidya has no `:listbox` yet.