import { Link } from 'react-router' import { HeroTerminal } from '@/components/tui/hero-terminal' import { Button } from '@/components/ui/button' import { ExtLink } from '@/components/ui/ext-link' import { Code } from '@/components/ui/inline-code' import { Cols, Eyebrow, Prose, Section, SectionHead, } from '@/components/ui/layout' import { Callout, Panel } from '@/components/ui/panel' import { Terminal } from '@/components/ui/terminal' import { LINKS } from '@/lib/links' const GLOBAL_KEYS: readonly (readonly [string, string])[] = [ ['s', 'search the network'], ['Space', 'select a result'], ['Enter', 'download / send'], ['b', "browse the owner's files"], ['c', 'chat rooms'], ['m', 'compose a private message'], ['i', 'inbox (unread counter)'], ['/', 'filter the current list'], ['a / A', 'select all / none'], ['?', 'every key, grouped by pane'], ['q', 'quit'], ] const PANE_KEYS: readonly (readonly [string, string])[] = [ ['Tab · ⇧Tab', 'next / previous pane'], ['1–3', 'focus a pane, and bring it back if hidden'], ['z', 'zoom the focused pane to the whole window'], ['w', 'hide the focused pane; the others widen'], ['W', 'every pane back on screen, zoom off'], ['↑ ↓ · j k', 'move a row in any list'], ['Home End · g G', 'first / last row'], ['PgUp PgDn · ^u ^d', 'a page, or half a page; in a chat, back through the log'], ['h l · ← →', 'scroll a long name, folder or query sideways, 0 and $ to either end'], ] const ROOM_KEYS: readonly (readonly [string, string])[] = [ ['Enter', 'join room / send message'], ['Tab · ⇧Tab', 'switch between open rooms'], ['x', 'leave the active room'], ['l', 'back to the room list'], ['↑ ↓', 'select a member'], ['b', "browse the member's files"], ['m', 'message the member'], ] const PANES: readonly { num?: number; title: string; body: string }[] = [ { num: 2, title: 'Results', body: 'Files from the network across the whole width, each name in a column of its own with its folder beside it, then size, user, bitrate, speed, free slots. Space selects, Enter queues a download. h/l or ←/→ scroll a long name and folder, 0 and $ jump to either end.', }, { num: 1, title: 'Searches', body: 'Your queries and how many results each returned. Press s to search the network; each search keeps its own result set.', }, { num: 3, title: 'Downloads / Uploads', body: 'Live transfers in both directions with progress and speed: queued, active, complete, cancelled, failed. x cancels the selected transfer.', }, { title: 'Info', body: 'Everything about the highlighted result or transfer: user, size, full path, bitrate, length, queue position, free slots.', }, ] const KeyRow = ({ combo, description }: { combo: string; description: string }) => (
soulseek-rs on your PATH, running it opens the TUI.{' '}
Installing it
{' '}
is one command on macOS, Linux and Windows.
On first run you get a login screen: sign in with an existing Soulseek account or register a new one. If a daemon is already running, the TUI attaches to it and asks for nothing. Your password goes to the OS keychain, not a plain-text file.
Downloads land in a conventional folder, and TUI state (searches, downloads, rooms) is restored across restarts.
Tab or 1–3 focuses one and its legend
turns green; z gives it the whole window, w hides it so the
others widen.
{pane.body}
? lists every
one. The essentials:
The command groups: search, get, download,{' '}
browse, wish, room, message,{' '}
serve, user, whoami, shares,{' '}
daemon, config, portmap,{' '}
skills, completions. Records are tab-separated fields,
one per line, or NDJSON with --json.
No TTY required. search --json pipes through jq into{' '}
download --stdin. Every ending has its own exit code: 4 found
nothing, 3 could not reach the server, 6 the transfer died, 7 another login took
the session away, the one a daemon spares you.
completions install gives bash, zsh and fish tab completion for all
of it, generated from the same definition the binary parses with.{' '}
completions uninstall takes it back out.
portmap tests whether your router will let peers connect back, worth
running once.{' '}
More on being reachable
If both you and a peer are behind routers with no forwarded port, browsing that peer can’t work, that’s a fundamental Soulseek/peer-to-peer limitation, not a bug.
{children}
Commands find it themselves: it listens on a Unix socket only your user can open,
so there is no address to pass and no token to handle. Without one running,
everything works as it did before, and --no-daemon gets that back for
a single command. daemon status exits 3 when none is running, which is
how a script decides whether to start one. Windows has no Unix sockets: start the
daemon with --bind 127.0.0.1:5030 and point commands at it with{' '}
config set daemon and config set daemon_token.
Every window is a view of the same session. Open a second TUI and it shows the searches and transfers already running; queue something in either and both see it. No login screen, because the daemon is already signed in, and the inbox opens on the private messages it collected while nobody was watching. The settings form edits the daemon’s download folder and share list, so paths you type there name its filesystem, not this machine’s. Close a window and its downloads keep going: they belong to the daemon.
Attach one and commands report its world: whoami names its account
and server, download prints the path on its disk, and{' '}
serve --follow watches its uploads instead of starting a second
server. It holds the session, not the wishlist: standing searches re-run under{' '}
serve --wishlist, or when you call wish run.
Your username is your standing on Soulseek, and the server permits one session per account, so two one-off commands at once cut each other off. A daemon is one login under that name for as long as you work, shares indexed once and reachable the whole time instead of going dark between invocations, and downloads that outlive the command that queued them. If you drive this from a script or an agent, start one.
Your laptop needs no Soulseek account of its own; it uses the box’s. Queue what you want and close the lid: the downloads belong to the daemon, not the command that asked for them. The box answers searches and serves uploads the whole time, which a sleeping laptop cannot.
That port has no encryption. Fine on a home network. Over the internet, reach it
through SSH instead: ssh -L 5030:localhost:5030 nas, or run the
commands on the box.
config set download_dir and shares add reach the running
daemon and take effect at once, but the box reads its own config.toml{' '}
when it restarts, so make lasting changes there. shares add also
checks the folder on the machine you type it on, so a path that exists only on the
box fails from your laptop: add shares on the box, or in the attached TUI’s
settings form, which sends paths through as typed.
It speaks newline-delimited JSON-RPC 2.0, described by an{' '}
rpc.discover, so a client can ask it what
it can do. The same document is checked in at{' '}
auth answers with the protocol version, 1 today, so a
client written against an older shape learns it at connect time.
OpenRPC is the JSON-RPC counterpart to OpenAPI: point a generator at it and you get typed bindings in whatever language you work in. Build the phone app that queues downloads on your home server from the sofa, or a web page showing what is transferring. Nobody to ask first.
Searches, transfers, rooms, private messages and shares all sit on the same
interface this CLI uses, with no private back channel it keeps for itself. Live
updates are pushed to every connected client rather than polled for:{' '}
event.room, event.message, event.upload,{' '}
event.download_status, event.browse and{' '}
event.session_loss. One rule to write against: the download folder
belongs to the daemon, so download.set_dir moves it for every
transfer and a per-download destination is ignored.
The README on GitHub and the library API reference on docs.rs stay current with the code.