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The runspec console chat-room server — a dumb message pipe with presence: console SSH-tunnel door + OIDC-authenticated browser web door

Project description

runspec-room

The server behind the runspec-console chat room — a dumb message pipe with presence. It holds, per room, the connected participants, their live presence, and a durable transcript, and it does three things: accept connections, stamp + persist each inbound message, and broadcast every message / presence change to everyone else in the room. All the intelligence stays in the consoles — the server never runs anything.

See docs/design/console-room-server.md for the full design and decisions.

Status — complete server (S1–S3)

Two front doors, one process:

  • Console door — an NDJSON listener on localhost, which each runspec-console reaches by opening a direct-tcpip channel over its existing pooled SSH connection. A console's right to be in the room is its SSH access — no new exposed port, no second credential.
  • Browser door — a WebSocket endpoint (/ws) plus a small vanilla static frontend (transcript / composer / presence) with recent-history backscroll for people. Authenticated via OIDC (no passwords stored); identity comes from the signed-cookie session. TLS is self-terminated or left to a reverse proxy.

Run it

pip install -e .

# Full server (browser + console doors):
console-room --port 8080 --ndjson-port 8765 --db ./console_room.db

# Console door only (no web deps needed):
console-room --ndjson-only --ndjson-port 8765 --db ./console_room.db

The console door stays on localhost — consoles tunnel in. Open the browser door at the web port.

Enabling login (OIDC) + TLS

Without OIDC config the browser door runs in dev mode — unauthenticated, identity from a ?user= join form (a warning is logged; don't expose it). Set the OIDC env vars to require single sign-on:

export CONSOLE_ROOM_OIDC_ISSUER="https://login.microsoftonline.com/<tenant>/v2.0"
# or CONSOLE_ROOM_OIDC_METADATA_URL=<discovery doc URL>
export CONSOLE_ROOM_OIDC_CLIENT_ID="…"
export CONSOLE_ROOM_OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET="…"
export CONSOLE_ROOM_SESSION_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)"
export CONSOLE_ROOM_PUBLIC_URL="https://room.example.com"   # for the redirect_uri
# register  $CONSOLE_ROOM_PUBLIC_URL/auth/callback  as the redirect URI at your IdP

console-room --host 0.0.0.0 --port 443 \
  --tls-cert /etc/ssl/room.crt --tls-key /etc/ssl/room.key

uvicorn is proxy-header-aware (X-Forwarded-Proto), so you can drop --tls-* and let nginx/Caddy terminate TLS instead.

Run it as a service (no root)

A systemd user unit ships in deploy/console-room.service — it runs as you, no root, surviving logout via enable-linger.

pip install --user runspec-room          # or into a venv (then fix ExecStart)

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cp deploy/console-room.service ~/.config/systemd/user/

# config (optional) — the server reads CONSOLE_ROOM_* env:
mkdir -p ~/.config/console-room
cat > ~/.config/console-room/console-room.env <<'EOF'
CONSOLE_ROOM_NDJSON_PORT=8765
CONSOLE_ROOM_PORT=8090
# CONSOLE_ROOM_HOST=0.0.0.0          # expose the browser door (then set OIDC!)
# CONSOLE_ROOM_OIDC_ISSUER=...
EOF

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now console-room
loginctl enable-linger "$USER"           # keep it running after you log out

systemctl --user status console-room
journalctl --user -u console-room -f     # logs

Edit ExecStart in the unit if console-room isn't at ~/.local/bin/console-room (e.g. a venv). To serve only the console NDJSON door, append --ndjson-only to ExecStart.

Wire protocol (NDJSON, one JSON object per line)

Console → server:

{"type":"hello",   "room":"ops", "user":"alice@web01"}
{"type":"message", "room":"ops", "text":"rolling out"}
{"type":"presence","room":"ops", "status":"available"}

The first frame must be hello — that's how a console declares its identity (the server can't see the OS user over the tunnel). The name is bound to the connection and stamped onto every later message; per-frame user fields are ignored, so a frame can't spoof a different sender.

Server → client:

{"type":"message", "room":"ops", "sender":"alice@web01", "text":"rolling out", "id":"…", "ts":0.0}
{"type":"presence","room":"ops", "user":"alice@web01", "status":"available"}

The server echoes a sender's own message back (with the assigned id/ts); a console drops its own echo so it never re-reacts to its own messages.

Browsers speak the same message / presence schema over the WebSocket — but their identity comes from the connection (the ?user=&room= query in dev, the OIDC session in S3), so they send no hello frame.

Develop

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

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