styrened

The core of the Styrene mesh. A daemon, shared library, and TUI — everything needed to be a full peer on the Reticulum network.

Status: Alpha Source: GitHub Install: pipx install styrene

What It Does

Every running instance of styrened is a full LXMF peer — it participates in mesh transport and message propagation simply by existing. Most mesh users connect transiently; styrened devices are persistent infrastructure, growing mesh reliability as a side effect of being online.

Standard LXMF clients (Sideband, MeshChat, NomadNet) see styrened as a normal messaging peer. The Styrene wire protocol rides inside LXMF FIELD_CUSTOM_TYPE, invisible to non-Styrene participants.

Identity Management

Styrene takes over Reticulum cryptographic identity generation to make it approachable. styrened handles identity creation, storage, and announcement automatically. Identities can be:

Ephemeral — generated on first run, anonymous by default
Persistent — backed by hardware tokens (YubiKey) for long-term verifiable identity
Configurable — display name and icon for ecosystem compatibility with Sideband/MeshChat

Community Hub

New installs connect to the Styrene Community Hub (rns.styrene.io:4242) by default. The hub serves dual roles:

RNS Transport Node — relays announces between peers on the public network, connecting clients that would otherwise be invisible to each other
LXMF Propagation Node — provides store-and-forward message delivery so messages reach offline peers when they come back online

The OPERATOR profile default sets lxmf.propagation_destination to the community hub’s stable propagation hash, derived from PVC-backed identity. Every new install gets store-and-forward delivery out of the box.

The TUI’s Network tab exposes a STYRENE COMMUNITY HUB toggle (default ON) that controls both the transport peer connection and the LXMF propagation destination in a single control. Operators can toggle it off and configure custom propagation nodes or run their own hub.

As Daemon

On edge devices, styrened runs as a permanent systemd service. On operator workstations, the TUI manages it as a subprocess (or via launchd on macOS).

RPCServer — handles fleet management requests (status, exec, reboot, config)
AutoReplyHandler — responds to NomadNet/MeshChat users
Device Discovery + NodeStore — tracks mesh topology via RNS announces
ConversationService — chat history, delivery tracking, threading
LXMFService — LXMF messaging with optional propagation node mode
IPC Control Server — Unix socket for local CLI/TUI communication
TerminalService — remote shell via PTY over RNS Link
HTTP API — optional REST endpoints for local status/control

As TUI

The TUI is bundled as a subpackage (styrened.tui), installed via the [tui] extra. It provides the operator interface — fleet dashboard, mesh device discovery, encrypted chat, settings management, and an in-app upgrade flow.

styrene              # Launch TUI
styrene --upgrade    # Self-update to latest version

Key TUI screens: Dashboard (fleet overview + mesh device table), Chat (encrypted LXMF conversations), Settings (tabbed: Identity, Network, Fleet, System), Device Detail (mesh node info + actions), Exploration (non-Styrene RNS announces).

The Network settings tab has 7 panels: Community Hub (toggle), Transport, Peers (dynamic add/remove), Propagation (LXMF destination hash), Local Discovery (AutoInterface), Server, and BATMAN-adv Mesh.

As Library

Other consumers use styrened as a Python library:

RPC client/server implementations
Wire protocol v2 encoding/decoding (msgpack over LXMF)
Message models and data structures
Service lifecycle management

Installation

pipx install styrene                    # Recommended (daemon + TUI, isolated env)
pip install styrened                    # Daemon + library only (no TUI, for edge devices)
nix run github:styrene-lab/styrened     # Nix flake

Upgrading

styrene --upgrade                      # Self-update from within TUI
pipx upgrade styrened                  # Manual upgrade via pipx

NixOS (Styrix)

{
  imports = [ ../common/styrened.nix ];
  styrene.daemon.enable = true;
}

Wire Protocol

styrened instances communicate using a custom binary protocol over LXMF:

[PREFIX: "styrene.io:"][VERSION: 1 byte][TYPE: 1 byte][REQUEST_ID: 16 bytes][PAYLOAD: msgpack]

Request/response correlation uses 16-byte random IDs. Fire-and-forget messages use zero bytes. See Architecture for full protocol documentation.

Entry Points

styrened provides two console scripts:

Command	Entry Point	Purpose
`styrened`	`styrened.__main__:main`	Daemon CLI (headless)
`styrene`	`styrened.tui.__main__:main`	TUI launcher