docs: put daemon mode on the website and tighten the README

The website made three claims daemon mode falsifies — "No TTY, no daemon",
"no daemon, no MCP server, no API key", and "no GUI and no daemon mode yet"
under what-this-is-not. All three corrected.

Adds a docs section and a home feature card, both leading with the reason
rather than the mechanics: the server allows one session per account, so
parallel one-shot commands either displace each other or mean a throwaway
username per run, which is account churn on infrastructure other people
maintain. A daemon is one login for as long as you work.

The README section said that three times over and buried the reasoning below
the mechanics; rewritten to state it once, up front. It now also covers which
commands stay local and that shares add reaches a running daemon, which was
meant to land earlier and silently did not — the edit anchored on text that
only existed in SKILL.md.
This commit is contained in:
Michel de Graaf
2026-07-27 14:04:14 +02:00
parent fe56a070e1
commit 3f914c4425
4 changed files with 94 additions and 31 deletions
+25 -24
View File
@@ -118,10 +118,8 @@ Everything else is a one-shot command that runs headless.
### Daemon mode
A one-shot command logs in, does its job, and exits, which means nothing
outlives it and two commands at once fight over the server's one-session-per-
account rule. Run a daemon instead and it holds the session while everything
else borrows it:
A one-shot command logs in, does its job, and exits. Run a daemon instead and
it holds the session while everything else borrows it:
```bash
soulseek-rs daemon # stays in the foreground; leave it running
@@ -129,8 +127,21 @@ soulseek-rs search 'aphex twin' # no login, no flags — uses the daemon
soulseek-rs # the TUI attaches to the same session
```
From a script, start it and wait for it — it takes a second or two to log in,
and a command that arrives early opens a session of its own instead:
**Why you want this.** The server allows one session per account. Without a
daemon, two commands at once either cut each other off or push you into a
throwaway username per run — account churn on infrastructure other people
maintain and share. A daemon is one login for as long as you work, and one
share index instead of a rescan every invocation. It also lets a download
outlive the command that queued it, and keeps collecting chat while nothing is
attached. If you drive this from a script or an agent, start one.
Commands find it by themselves. It listens on a Unix socket only your user can
open, so there is nothing to configure and no secret to pass around — the same
arrangement Docker and ssh-agent use. With no daemon running, everything
behaves exactly as it did before; `--no-daemon` forces that for one run.
From a script, start it and *wait* for it: it takes a second or two to log in,
and a command that arrives early opens a session of its own instead.
```bash
soulseek-rs daemon status --json >/dev/null 2>&1 || {
@@ -142,28 +153,18 @@ soulseek-rs daemon status --json >/dev/null 2>&1 || {
}
```
Commands find it by themselves. The daemon listens on a Unix socket only your
user can open, so there is nothing to configure and no secret to pass around —
the same arrangement Docker and ssh-agent use. With no daemon running,
everything behaves exactly as it did before; `--no-daemon` forces that for one
run.
What this buys: downloads that outlive the command that queued them, several
clients (or agents) on one account at once, and a chat window that keeps
collecting while nothing is attached.
It is also the neighbourly way to use the network. The server allows one
session per account, so parallel one-shot runs either displace each other or
push you into registering a throwaway name per run — account churn on
infrastructure other people maintain. A daemon is one login for as long as you
work, and one share index instead of a rescan per invocation. If you are
driving this from a script or an agent, start a daemon.
```bash
soulseek-rs daemon status # who it is, what it shares, who is attached
soulseek-rs daemon stop
```
Everything that touches the network goes through it. `config`, `skills`,
`completions` and `portmap` stay local, because they are about this machine
rather than a session. `shares add`/`remove` do both: they write the config
file *and* update a running daemon, so a folder is served straight away rather
than at its next start. Files land on the *daemon's* filesystem — `daemon
status` reports where.
For a client on another machine, bind a TCP port as well and give it the
token:
@@ -173,7 +174,7 @@ soulseek-rs daemon token # the secret that connection needs
```
There is no transport encryption, so put SSH or a TLS proxy in front of
anything non-loopback. Note that files land on the *daemon's* filesystem.
anything non-loopback.
Third-party clients are first-class: the daemon speaks newline-delimited
JSON-RPC 2.0 described by an [OpenRPC](https://open-rpc.org) document