frq

  1
  2
  3
  4
  5
  6
  7
  8
  9
 10
 11
 12
 13
 14
 15
 16
 17
 18
 19
 20
 21
 22
 23
 24
 25
 26
 27
 28
 29
 30
 31
 32
 33
 34
 35
 36
 37
 38
 39
 40
 41
 42
 43
 44
 45
 46
 47
 48
 49
 50
 51
 52
 53
 54
 55
 56
 57
 58
 59
 60
 61
 62
 63
 64
 65
 66
 67
 68
 69
 70
 71
 72
 73
 74
 75
 76
 77
 78
 79
 80
 81
 82
 83
 84
 85
 86
 87
 88
 89
 90
 91
 92
 93
 94
 95
 96
 97
 98
 99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273

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

## Tracing

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

## Running

The app:

```bash
just run
```

Every recipe lives in the `justfile` itself. Each one that runs frq re-enters
`nix develop` and comes back to the same recipe, so `just run` and
`nix develop --command just run` are one code path rather than two. Nothing has
to be installed for that but Nix.

`just run` is `jolt -M:frq` inside `nix develop`, with `LD_LIBRARY_PATH`
pointed at the shell's `JOLT_NATIVE_LIB` — the flake's build of
[jolt-native](https://gitlab.com/nandithebull/jolt-native), which is both
shared objects this client loads: `libvidya`, the retained-tree ABI glimmer
paints through, and `libjoltmoq`, the AV media plane. The source frq runs is
the working tree; everything under it is built rather than fetched, at the revs
`flake.lock` names. Nothing has to be installed but Nix, and no jolt-native
checkout beside this one.

The APK is the other half of that: it takes the two libraries out of
jolt-native's *release* instead, by the digests in `nix/android.nix`, because a
derivation's inputs have to be fetchurl. `just bump` moves those pins — and
deps.edn's glimmer-vidya sha — to the latest release at once, and
`just bump v0.1.2` to a named one.

`jolt` on its own does not work in this tree: `deps.edn` names both libraries
under `:jolt/native`, so every invocation loads them before it reads a line and
dies if the loader cannot find them. `just repl` is that jolt with the shell
under it — a REPL, or `just repl nrepl-server` for an editor.

frq 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.clj` 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
just tui --headless --dump                # and the tree the library holds
```

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.

The spacing is written in points, for a window, and a cell is about eight of
them across and sixteen down — so the backend is handed both numbers and each
prop is divided by the axis it measures. A gap of half a cell rounds to
nothing, which is what `:spacing 8` against a 16-point row is: thirteen
messages fit where rounding it up left room for two.

The two reserves in `src/frq/app.clj` are the one thing a scale cannot
answer, because they are counted in rows of chrome rather than in lengths: a
window's row is 34 points and a terminal's is one cell. `chrome-row` is where
that is said, and `frq.tui` sets it.

`just tui` is `just run`'s two halves with the other backend under them: this
tree's source on the flake's everything-else, in the dev shell. jolt-native
carries both native libraries and both Jolt sides — glimmer-vidya for the
window, glimmer-tui for the terminal — so one input answers for either, and
nothing here needs a checkout beside the tree.

## 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
just apk run                    # build, install, launch on a connected device
just apk log                    # logcat, filtered
```

Needs nothing on the machine but Nix and an `adb`: the build is
[`nix/android.nix`](nix/android.nix), and the SDK, the NDK, the arm64 Chez
cross target and the OpenSSL the app carries are all built or fetched there.
`nix build .#apk` is the same thing without adb; on a machine with a remote
builder, hand it the store rather than a `builders` entry —
`FRQ_NIX_STORE=ssh-ng://eu.nixbuild.net just apk`, and see the header of
`nix/android.nix` for why.

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.clj` 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.