The Astral Network

This documentation describes the Astral Network and how to interact with it.

These documents define abstract wire and protocol semantics — types, encodings, and operations are language-independent and carry no binding to any programming language.

• Core primitives
  • Alias
  • App
  • Bundle
  • Channel
  • Contract
  • Exonet
  • Identity
  • Link
  • Local Swarm
  • Node
  • Object
  • Object ID
  • Object Stream
  • Object Type
  • Op (Operation)
  • Permit
  • Protocol
  • Query
  • Query String
  • Stamp
  • Structure
  • Swarm
  • User
  • Zone
• Common types – common object types
  • ack
  • bool
  • eos
  • error_message
  • identity
  • int8
  • int16
  • int32
  • int64
  • nonce64
  • object
  • object_id.sha256
  • string8
  • string16
  • string32
  • string64
  • time
  • uint8
  • uint16
  • uint32
  • uint64
• Protocols
  • Basics – protocol documentation structure
  • apphost - on-device API for local apps (tokens, handlers, contracts, holds)
  • auth - capability contracts, signing, and action authorization
  • bip137sig - BIP-39/32/137 seed, key derivation, and message signing
  • crypto - signing and verifying hashes and text, public key derivation
  • dir - alias management, identity resolution
  • lna - lightning network analytics
  • nodes - encrypted links and multiplexed sessions between nodes
  • objects - typed object storage, retrieval, and provider discovery
  • player - music playback and play queue control
  • tree - hierarchical key-value configuration store
  • user - user identity, swarm membership, asset list
• Tools – command-line tools
  • astral-query - send queries from the command line
• Other topics
  • Narratives
    • Network Architecture - how identities, nodes, links, swarms, and contracts compose at runtime
    • Blueprints - runtime wire-structure schemas that let a node encode and decode typed objects without compiled code
    • Codec - binary framing layer: type encoders, type tags, and the canonical form of typed objects
  • Wire mechanics
    • Binary Encoding - default payload encoding: big-endian, two's complement, payload bytes only
    • JSON Encoding - optional JSON container encoding for typed objects
    • Text Encoding - Base64-based text encoding of objects
    • Op modes & composition - single vs batch execution, and chaining single-mode ops into pipelines
  • Transports
    • HTTP Transport - request-response queries via the local node over HTTP
    • WebSocket Transport - sending and receiving queries over the apphost WebSocket endpoint
    • Astral IPC - wire protocol for local processes routing queries through the node (mod/apphost)
• Scripts – repo maintenance
  • link-vocab.py – link vocabulary terms at their first prose occurrence across docs