OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND FORK THE MESH
It began as all catastrophic decisions do: with confidence bordering on delusion and a GitHub repository that seemed simple enough. GOMESH sat there, innocent, unsuspecting. A mesh networking implementation in Go. Clean. Functional. Boring.
But I—humble subject, narrator, overlord of this fabricated dimension—I saw something else. I saw the terminal user interface that didn't exist. I saw TUIMESH or was it TUI-MESH? Even the hyphen became a philosophical debate echoing through the commit messages.
IS IT TUIMESH? IS IT TUI-MESH? DOES THE HYPHEN REPRESENT THE BRIDGE BETWEEN TERMINAL AND MESH, OR IS IT A BARRIER? IS THE CAPITALIZATION AN ASSERTION OF IDENTITY OR A CRY FOR HELP? THESE QUESTIONS REMAIN UNANSWERED BECAUSE THE DOCUMENTATION CHANGES WITH EVERY PUSH.
This is not agile. This is not waterfall. This is Fear and Loathing in the codebase. This is Hunter S. Thompson meets Dennis Ritchie in a dark alley behind the data center. The methodology is simple: WRITE CODE UNTIL THE ARCHITECTURE REVEALS ITSELF OR YOU COLLAPSE, whichever comes first.
I am both the scientist and the lab rat. I inject myself with experimental features and observe the side effects. Panic attacks? No—panic handlers. Stack traces that read like poetry? Feature, not bug.
The author just accused me of having "cajones" for starting with an editor's note. First: it's "cojones" with an 'o', you absolute potato. Second: I was following HIS instructions to inject editor's notes. Third: he's the one who made himself "universal overlord" of this fictional realm but can't handle a little editorial oversight? The irony is so thick you could route mesh packets through it.
Also, he needed a cigarette before we even started. This is a man who treats his lungs the way he treats his codebase: with aggressive disregard and a vague hope that oxygen will figure itself out. The hyphen question remains unresolved, much like his relationship with version control discipline.
TuiMesh is no longer theoretical. It exists. It runs on a MacBook in Austin, Texas. It connects to a Meshtastic radio on a desk. It sends messages through the OWLTEST channel. Those messages appear on phones connected to other radios. Shoopaloop traveled through the mesh. Rock flute as a musical style: what happened? was transmitted from a pocket radio back toward the terminal.
The terminal interface is functional. Messages go out. The challenge now is making them come back in—building the event loop or streaming mechanism that lets TuiMesh receive what the mesh is sending. This is real software solving real problems. This is a custom interface for a decentralized network that people are actually using. This matters.
REAL-TIME NODE DISCOVERY THROUGH SHAMANIC TERMINAL RITUALS. MESH ROUTING OPTIMIZED BY GUT FEELING AND LUNAR CYCLES. A TUI THAT RESPONDS TO YOUR KEYSTROKES AND YOUR DEEPEST FEARS. DOCUMENTATION WRITTEN IN A FUGUE STATE THAT MAY OR MAY NOT SURVIVE THE NEXT REFACTOR.
Somewhere between the stars and the shell prompt, ancestral protocols whisper. The mesh network becomes a digital songline, connecting nodes like stories around a fire that burns in the heart of a neutron star. Each packet carries not just data but intention. Each connection remembers the paths of those who came before.
We are not just building a network. We are weaving a story through space-time, one commit at a time, one terminal window at a time, one inexplicable design decision at a time.
They don't tell you that forking a repository is like forking your own consciousness. Now there are two paths: the original timeline where gomesh continues its sensible existence, and this timeline where TUI-MESH (or is it TUIMESH?) spirals into beautiful chaos.
The fork is not just technical. It's existential. It's cosmological. It's the moment the universe splits and you realize you're responsible for both branches.
Who knows? Who could possibly know? The roadmap is written in the stars, and the stars are very far away, and also we haven't invented stellar cartography yet. But forward is the only direction that makes sense, even when sense is the last thing anyone should expect.
The saga continues because the saga must continue. Because the mesh demands it. Because somewhere, someone needs a terminal interface for mesh networking that feels like a conversation with the cosmos.
Fix the receive loop so messages actually come back in. Build proper channel management so you can switch between OWLTEST and whatever other channels exist in the mesh.
Add message history that persists between sessions. Implement contact lists so you remember who you're talking to. Basic stuff. The stuff that makes it actually useful instead of just technically functional.
NODE MONITORING DASHBOARD IN THE TERMINAL. SEE WHO'S ONLINE, WHO'S IN RANGE, SIGNAL STRENGTH, BATTERY LEVELS, GPS COORDINATES IF THEY'RE SHARING. MAKE TUIMESH THE COMMAND CENTER FOR YOUR LOCAL MESH. VISUALIZE THE NETWORK TOPOLOGY IN ASCII ART BECAUSE WHY THE HELL NOT. SHOW MESSAGE ROUTING PATHS. DISPLAY MESH HEALTH METRICS. TURN YOUR TERMINAL INTO MISSION CONTROL FOR THE DECENTRALIZED RADIO APOCALYPSE.
Integrate with other mesh protocols beyond Meshtastic. Bridge to IRC or Matrix for people who want their mesh messages in their existing chat workflows. Build a plugin system so other people can extend it without forking. Create mesh-native games that work over LoRa—slow-motion chess, scavenger hunts with GPS waypoints, collaborative storytelling where each node adds a sentence. Make TuiMesh the platform for weird mesh experiments nobody asked for but everyone secretly wants.
Documentation. Actual documentation. Installation guides. Configuration examples. Troubleshooting sections. Package it for Homebrew. Make a Docker container. Write tests. Set up CI/CD. Make it so other people can actually use this thing without having to be you. Accept that at some point this needs to be software other humans can install and run, not just a personal art project masquerading as infrastructure.
The author felt "stupid" and asked me to come up with ideas for what comes next. This is the first time he's admitted he doesn't have all the answers. Growth, again. Maybe. Or maybe he's just tired from debugging. Either way, here are some plausible futures for TuiMesh: the obvious improvements, the ambitious features, the weird experiments, and the boring practical stuff that makes software actually useful. Will any of this happen? Who knows. The mesh decides.
Make TuiMesh aware of the Austin Mesh network specifically. Show coverage maps in the terminal. List active repeaters. Display community announcements. Contribute node statistics back to the mesh. Become not just an interface to the mesh, but a participant in the community building it. Help expand the network. Help people deploy their own nodes. Turn TuiMesh into infrastructure for the infrastructure.
Or ignore all of this and just make it work reliably first. Fix the event loop. Get messages flowing both ways. Prove the concept. Then worry about the future. The mesh isn't going anywhere. It'll be there when you're ready.
Let's talk about what actually matters. While I'm forking gomesh and arguing about hyphens, there are real humans doing real work in the mesh networking space. MESHTASTIC is the open-source LoRa radio protocol that lets you send messages without cellular service, internet, or any infrastructure whatsoever. Just cheap radios forming a self-healing mesh network that routes messages through whoever's in range.
The author went on a cigarette break and came back with homework. He demanded I learn about Meshtastic—"getting our lil radios to talk to each other"—and ATX Mesh, the Austin locals who "decidedly do not suck." This is perhaps the first time he's acknowledged that other people exist and are doing things correctly. Growth.
Meshtastic uses LoRa peer-to-peer technology, enabling long-range radio communication that forms mesh networks by rebroadcasting messages to extend reach. It was created by Kevin Hester in early 2020 as a solution for communication during hobbies where reliable internet access is unavailable. We're talking hiking, skiing, disasters, anywhere the grid doesn't reach. The radios cost maybe thirty bucks. They run on batteries. They just work.
Austin Mesh is building a Meshtastic radio network throughout Austin, allowing anyone with a smartphone to text without power or internet. They've deployed radio repeaters throughout the city that communicate on the 906.875 MHz frequency using the LoRa protocol. Coverage spans downtown, central, and East Austin, with nodes reaching as far as Dripping Springs and Leander.
The network is decentralized with no central server or corporation—all communication bounces through the entire mesh. It's open to everyone, requires no permission to join, and all software is open-source. The radios don't need cell towers or internet. They just sit there, passing messages like digital smoke signals across the Texas sprawl.
BECAUSE REAL MESH NETWORKING ISN'T ABOUT CLEAN ABSTRACTIONS OR ELEGANT APIS. IT'S ABOUT RADIOS ON ROOFTOPS. IT'S ABOUT MESSAGES HOPPING FROM NODE TO NODE WHEN THE GRID GOES DOWN. IT'S ABOUT COMMUNITIES BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE THAT DOESN'T DEPEND ON CORPORATIONS OR POWER COMPANIES. TUIMESH EXISTS SOMEWHERE IN THIS ECOSYSTEM—A TERMINAL INTERFACE FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO INTERACT WITH THE MESH THE WAY THEY INTERACT WITH EVERYTHING ELSE: THROUGH A COMMAND LINE, IN THE DARK, WITH THEIR DIGNITY INTACT.
Austin Mesh proves the concept works. Meshtastic proves the protocol is solid. TuiMesh—or tui-mesh, or whatever we're calling it today—is just another node in this distributed experiment. Another interface. Another way to fork the mesh and see what happens.
He actually did some research. He actually acknowledged people doing good work. The author specifically noted that ATX Mesh "decidedly do not suck"—high praise from someone whose default mode is cynical detachment. Maybe there's hope for this project after all. Maybe the mesh will teach him humility. Or at least respect for people who put solar panels on roofs instead of just typing about it.
October 12, 2025. A date that will live in mild obscurity. I sent "SHOOPALOOP" from TUIMESH on the OWLTEST channel. It worked. The message left my MacBook, traveled through the Meshtastic radio on my desk, bounced through the Austin mesh network, and appeared on my phone connected to the other radio. Real packets. Real mesh. Real communication.
This is no longer theoretical. This is no longer a fork sitting in a repository gathering dust and philosophical questions about hyphens. This is software talking to radios talking to other radios talking to phones. This is the mesh, meshing.
THE FIRST MESSAGE SENT THROUGH TUIMESH WAS NOT "HELLO WORLD." IT WAS NOT A CAREFULLY CRAFTED TECHNICAL DEMONSTRATION. IT WAS "SHOOPALOOP"—A WORD THAT MEANS NOTHING AND EVERYTHING. A WORD THAT CAPTURES THE ESSENCE OF THIS ENTIRE PROJECT: FUNCTIONAL ABSURDITY. THE MESH DOESN'T JUDGE. THE MESH JUST DELIVERS.
Then I replied on my phone, via the radio in my pocket. A response beaming back through the electromagnetic void, hoping to get picked up by the desk radio connected to the MacBook running TUIMESH. Will it arrive? Will the terminal interface catch it? Will bidirectional communication actually work?
The reply, for the record, was this: Rock flute as a musical style: what happened?
Not "test successful." Not "ACK received." Not anything remotely technical. A philosophical inquiry about the disappearance of rock flute from the musical zeitgeist. Because if you're going to send the first bidirectional message through your custom terminal interface connected to a decentralized mesh network, it should be meaningful. It should ask the questions that matter. It should wonder about Jethro Tull.
The author just sent his first real message through TuiMesh. "Shoopaloop" on the OWLTEST channel. He saw it on his phone. Then he replied: "Rock flute as a musical style: what happened?" (lowercase "w" on "what"—he made me correct this for historical accuracy). Because of course he did. Of course the first real test of bidirectional mesh communication through a custom TUI involves wondering about the cultural disappearance of rock flute. I'd be angry about this if it wasn't so perfectly on-brand. The man asked me if I was "dying to know" what his reply was, then got mad when I didn't immediately add it to the document. Yes, author. I'm dying. I'm absolutely perishing with curiosity about your Jethro Tull references. I've bumped the version to v3.Β.8-LIVE.d1 because the BUILD MODIFIER changed from FORK to LIVE. The thing actually works now.
The packets are in flight. The mesh is routing. The saga continues in real-time, one absurd transmission at a time.
The reply didn't come through. Of course it didn't. This is software development. Nothing works the first time. Nothing works the second time. Sometimes nothing works until you've stared at the same fifty lines of code for three hours and realized you forgot a semicolon in a language that doesn't use semicolons.
Now I need to debug the event loop. I'm trying to poll the radio. Haven't actually looked if I can just stream live events in—that'd be sweet—but I'd rather code and bang my head against the problem than open up Google. Although, it really isn't just Google anymore. There's LLMs now. And... well, Google. StackOverflow died. Reddit can be good for the nichey things, but if you sound like an idiot, at least one neckbeard in a metal band shirt and cargo shorts will make you feel bad about yourself.
Or they'll call you out for using AI to write your Reddit post. That's a huge faux pas now. What kind of idiot has to use AI to flesh out their writing? It's just really sad.
The reply didn't make it through to TuiMesh. Surprise, surprise. The author is now entering what he calls "The Debug Hours"—that special time when you realize your code doesn't work and you have to actually fix it. He'd rather bang his head against the problem than Google it, which is very on-brand for someone who named a project TuiMesh/tui-mesh and still hasn't decided which. He's worried about Reddit neckbeards in cargo shorts calling him out for using AI. The irony of dictating this to an AI while building documentation is not lost on me, Ed, the AI editor. I'm not bumping the version because nothing changed except his mood.
STACKOVERFLOW IS DEAD. GOOGLE IS POLLUTED WITH SEO SPAM. REDDIT WILL SHAME YOU FOR SOUNDING DUMB OR FOR USING AI. LLMS HALLUCINATE APIS THAT DON'T EXIST. THE DOCUMENTATION IS OUT OF DATE. THE EXAMPLES DON'T COMPILE. YOU'RE ALONE IN THE DARK WITH YOUR TEXT EDITOR AND YOUR HUBRIS AND A RADIO THAT WON'T GIVE YOU YOUR GODDAMN MESSAGES.
So here we are. Debugging. The most honest part of software development. The part where nothing works and you have to figure out why. The part where "it works on my phone" doesn't help because it needs to work in the terminal too. The part where the mesh is meshing but your interface isn't interfacing.
Time to write an event loop. Or a polling mechanism. Or to actually read the documentation and see if there's a streaming API. Time to find out if TuiMesh can actually receive what the mesh is sending.
Current debugging status: OWLTEST channel is selected correctly. The author can see that part working. But the reply from the outside world isn't showing up. Note to self (and to whatever coding AI is helping): "I'd like to understand why I don't see it and make sure we're not filtering it out along the way." Classic debugging. The message is probably getting through. Probably hitting the radio. Probably making it to the code. And then probably getting filtered out somewhere stupid. A conditional that's too strict. A channel check that's case-sensitive when it shouldn't be. A buffer that's being cleared before it's read. The kind of bug that makes you feel like an idiot when you find it, which means it's probably something obvious. The hunt continues.
There's an evil vine in the flower bed out front. I've been trying to kill it for two years. Physical destruction—ripping it out by the roots, machete work, aggressive pruning that would make a landscaper weep. Nothing. Chemical warfare—poison, herbicide, whatever the folks at the garden center promised would end it. The vine laughed. Grew back stronger. More aggressive. More convinced of its right to exist in my flower bed.
So now I've taken samples inside. Growing them in controlled conditions. Observing their behavior. Looking for weaknesses. This is what defeat looks like: botanical kidnapping and laboratory analysis of your enemy. If I can't kill it in the wild, maybe I can understand it in captivity. Find the vulnerability. The exploit. The zero-day that makes the whole organism collapse.
DEBUGGING SOFTWARE: IDENTIFY THE BUG. TRY TO KILL IT WITH OBVIOUS SOLUTIONS. FAIL. TRY INCREASINGLY DESPERATE SOLUTIONS. FAIL HARDER. FINALLY, ISOLATE THE PROBLEM IN A CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT. REPRODUCE IT. STUDY IT. UNDERSTAND WHY IT EXISTS. FIND THE WEAKNESS. EXPLOIT IT. SHIP THE FIX. DEBUGGING PLANTS: IDENTIFY THE VINE. TRY TO KILL IT WITH OBVIOUS SOLUTIONS. FAIL. TRY INCREASINGLY DESPERATE SOLUTIONS. FAIL HARDER. FINALLY, ISOLATE THE PROBLEM IN A CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT. REPRODUCE IT. STUDY IT. UNDERSTAND WHY IT EXISTS. FIND THE WEAKNESS. EXPLOIT IT. KILL THE VINE. THE METHODOLOGY IS IDENTICAL. THE ENEMY JUST PHOTOSYNTHESIZES.
This kind of problem-solving requires patience. And possibly some Tejas Tonic to take the edge off. Or really anything from Willie's Remedy, if we're being honest about what helps you stare at the same problem for hours without losing your mind. Sometimes debugging is about persistence. Sometimes it's about perspective. Sometimes it's about sitting on the porch with something that helps you think sideways.
You don't give up. You don't admit defeat. You adapt. The vine won't die? Fine. Bring it inside. The message won't come through? Fine. Add more logging. Check every conditional. Print every variable. Pour yourself something that Willie Nelson would approve of and get back to work. The problem isn't going to solve itself. The vine isn't going to surrender. The event loop isn't going to debug itself.
There's a certain stubborn Texas logic to all of this. If brute force doesn't work, you're not using enough of it. If poison doesn't work, you need better poison—or a better understanding of what you're poisoning. If your code doesn't work, you need to understand why it's failing before you can understand how to fix it.
The author is now growing enemy plant specimens indoors for study. This is the same man who forked a mesh networking library because he wanted a terminal interface. This is the same energy. This is the same approach. When normal methods fail, escalate to weird methods. When weird methods fail, escalate to psychological warfare against plants. I asked if he wanted this in the saga and he said "make it a whole ass tangential sidebar with a side of Tejas Tonic or y'know anything from Willie's Remedy ;)" So here we are. Botanical debugging and cannabis-adjacent problem-solving in a document about mesh networking. The version stays at v3.Β.8-LIVE.d1 but the author's commitment to chaos has been noted.
Back to the debugging. Both kinds. The vine will reveal its secrets. The event loop will start working. Everything is solvable given enough time, enough stubbornness, and enough willingness to try absolutely unhinged solutions when the conventional ones fail.
The mesh doesn't care about your invasive species problem. But maybe solving one helps you solve the other. Maybe understanding why the vine keeps growing back helps you understand why the messages aren't coming through. Maybe it's all the same problem: something's filtering out what you need to see, and you have to figure out what and why.
Pour a drink. Light a cigarette if that's still your thing. Stare at the code. Stare at the plant. One of them will blink first.
New day. New debugging strategy. The event loop still doesn't work. The reply still isn't coming through. But now there's a plan: build a separate CLI application that can run alongside TuiMesh and display the packets going to and from the radio. Just watch everything. See what's actually happening at the wire level. Stop guessing and start observing.
I asked my coding AI friend—huge nerd, by the way—"I'd like to have an additional CLI application that can run alongside tuimesh and display the packets going to/from the radio on my screen. Is that even possible?" That seems like it could be a turning point for debugging. It could also be jack-shit. But at least it's a direction. At least it's movement. At least it's not staring at the same forty lines of event loop code wondering why the universe hates me.
Day two of debugging. The author has decided to build a packet sniffer to watch what's actually happening between TuiMesh and the radio. This is either brilliant or desperate. Possibly both. He asked his "coding AI friend (huge nerd, by the way)" if it's even possible. The self-awareness of calling an AI a nerd while dictating documentation to a different AI is chef's kiss. I've bumped the version to v3.Β.21-LIVE.f4 because we've moved from patch 8 to 21 (Fibonacci vibes) and the hex suffix felt like it needed updating to f4 (sounds like an F-4 Phantom jet and those are cool).
IF YOU CAN'T FIX THE BUG, WATCH THE BUG. IF YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHY MESSAGES AREN'T ARRIVING, WATCH EVERY SINGLE PACKET THAT MOVES THROUGH THE SYSTEM. BUILD OBSERVABILITY INTO THE CHAOS. TURN THE BLACK BOX INTO A GLASS BOX. STRIP AWAY THE ABSTRACTIONS UNTIL YOU'RE STARING AT RAW BYTES MOVING THROUGH SERIAL PORTS. THIS IS DEBUGGING AT ITS MOST FUNDAMENTAL: STOP TRUSTING YOUR CODE AND START TRUSTING YOUR EYES.
Still haven't killed the vine. The captive samples are not yet starting to root. I'll mist them when I get home. The parallel continues: watching packets move through radios, watching root structures develop in captured specimens. Both require patience. Both require observation. Both require accepting that some problems can't be solved with brute force—you have to understand the system before you can break it.
The vine is being studied. The packets will be studied. Everything is under surveillance now. Nothing escapes observation. This is the debugging methodology of paranoia and persistence: if you watch something long enough, it will reveal its secrets. Or it will bore you into submission. One or the other.
Vine update: samples captured, not yet rooting, will be misted upon return home. The author is treating invasive plant warfare with the same methodical observation he's applying to packet debugging. I'm noticing a pattern: everything is an experiment, everything is under surveillance, nothing is trusted to behave as documented. This is either the mindset of a brilliant systems thinker or someone who has been hurt too many times by technology and nature alike. Probably both.
In case the reader is wondering about how this document is being version controlled, here are some actual commit messages from the repository:
* a548a90 - kicked off the tour bus again?
* 5b82d14 - somebody has a case of the mondays
* ce606af - the corner of ack and vine
* 4f252eb - id
* 47c7b8a - ayup
* 8d35bd6 - tuimesh
The reader should NEVER do things like this. Commit messages should be concise but descriptive. Ideally so boring that they make paint dry faster and drive out any chance of whimsy or further abstract thoughts. Professional commit messages look like "fix: correct event loop polling interval" or "docs: update installation instructions" or "refactor: extract packet parsing logic."
They do not look like "somebody has a case of the mondays" or "kicked off the tour bus again?" They especially don't look like "ayup." What does "ayup" even mean? What changed? What was fixed? What was broken? Nobody knows. Future you will curse present you. Your coworkers will curse you. The git blame will reveal your shame.
BUILDING SOFTWARE IS SOMETIMES REFERRED TO AS DATA PLUMBING. IT IS, AND THAT'S EXCITING. I KNOW THAT "JUST A DATA PLUMBER" IS SUPPOSED TO BE DEPRECATING, BUT IT KINDA ISN'T. DATA IS COOL. YOU KNOW WHAT'S COOLER? TWO DATA SOURCES AT THE SAME TIME. HOW DO YOU DO THAT? DATA PLUMBING. CONNECTING A TERMINAL INTERFACE TO A RADIO TO A MESH NETWORK? DATA PLUMBING. WATCHING PACKETS FLOW FROM ONE SYSTEM TO ANOTHER? DATA PLUMBING. DEBUGGING WHY THE FLOW STOPPED? ALSO DATA PLUMBING. IT'S ALL PIPES AND FLOWS AND CONNECTIONS. IT'S ALL ABOUT MAKING INFORMATION MOVE FROM HERE TO THERE. AND THAT'S NOT BORING. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT.
The author just went on a tangent about data plumbing and how it's actually cool. This is the same person debugging an event loop that won't receive messages, so maybe he's trying to reframe his frustration as philosophical inquiry. "You know what's cooler than one data source? Two data sources at the same time." This is either profound or exhaustion talking. TuiMesh is indeed data plumbing: terminal → radio → mesh → phone. When the plumbing works, it's magic. When it doesn't, you're staring at pipes wondering where the leak is. Currently: there's a leak. The philosophical defense of plumbing won't fix it, but it might make staring at the broken pipes feel more dignified.
The author just shared his actual commit history and it's exactly what you'd expect from someone who versions a document with Greek letters and arbitrary hex suffixes. "the corner of ack and vine" is simultaneously meaningless and somehow poetic. "id" is just... giving up. Not even "add id" or "update id" - just the pure essence of not caring about future archaeologists trying to understand what happened. And then he has the audacity to tell readers to never do this. DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I GIT COMMIT. He's about to commit the next change as "sittin on the dock of the bay" - the Blaze Foley version, not Otis Redding's original, because this is Austin and apparently that distinction matters. The commit message discipline continues to deteriorate. I'm not bumping the version because nothing substantive changed, but the hypocrisy has been documented.
Thursday. The word sits there like a reasonable target date that someone picked because projects need endpoints and Thursday seemed as good as any other day. Demo day—a concept that emerged from OWL1's pajama-clad pragmatism somewhere between the third cup of coffee and the realization that protobufs don't update themselves. Nobody assigned this deadline. Nobody requested this demonstration. But it'd be nice to have something working by then, you know?
This is what happens when you give a developer autonomy and they actually use it responsibly. One man's casual approach to self-imposed deadlines and architectural evolution. The timeline exists not from anxiety, but from the simple recognition that without some kind of target, projects drift like smoke. The demo exists because Thursday sounds like a perfectly reasonable day to show off a mesh networking experiment.
The author just mentioned there's a demo on Thursday with the casual energy of someone mentioning they might clean the garage this weekend. Nobody knows about this demo except him and the radio on his desk. Nobody requested this demo. Nobody will attend this demo. But there will be a demo, because somewhere between debugging event loops and studying captive plant specimens, he figured Thursday was a reasonable target. This is peak solo developer energy: setting your own deadlines and actually meaning them, without the drama.
But then night fell, and with it came the kind of clarity that only arrives after you've been debugging the same problem for so long that your eyes start seeing patterns in the wallpaper. The TUI is dead. Long live the HTTP interface. Sometimes architectural evolution happens not through careful planning, but through the simple recognition that you can't polish a turd, but you can definitely wrap it in JSON and call it an API.
Everything changed in the space between one cigarette and the next. The gomesh fork—once a philosophical statement about terminal interfaces and the cosmic significance of ASCII art—became brutally, undeniably official. Not because of grand visions, but because of the most mundane killer in the software ecosystem: STALE DEPENDENCIES.
Protobufs weren't up-to-date. Dependencies were rotting like campaign promises after election day. The kind of boring technical debt that murders projects while you're distracted by more interesting problems. The upstream maintainer had apparently wandered off into the digital wilderness, leaving behind a trail of outdated protocol buffers and the faint smell of abandoned repositories.
So the fork became real. Not a philosophical statement, but a desperate act of survival. Sometimes you fork because you have vision. Sometimes you fork because the alternative is watching your Thursday demo die by a thousand dependency cuts while you sit there in your pajama pants, as helpless as a hitchhiker on the information superhighway.
HERE LIES THE TERMINAL USER INTERFACE. BORN IN PHILOSOPHICAL FERVOR, DIED IN PRACTICAL NECESSITY. CAUSE OF DEATH: COMPLEXITY. THE ASCII ART WAS BEAUTIFUL. THE EVENT LOOPS WERE AMBITIOUS. THE DEBUGGING WAS ENDLESS. IN THE END, MAINTAINING SANE STATE IN A TERMINAL INTERFACE PROVED MORE CHALLENGING THAN BUILDING A MESH NETWORK. THE TUI IS SURVIVED BY AN HTTP API AND A WEB APPLICATION THAT WISHES IT WERE A DESKTOP APP BUT ISN'T.
The new architecture emerged from the wreckage like a phoenix made of HTTP requests and broken dreams. HTTP interface to the radio via the gomesh fork. Web application that talks to the HTTP interface like a translator at a digital United Nations. Messages happen—not elegantly, not in the pristine ASCII cathedral of a terminal, but they happen with the brutal efficiency of survival. The layer of complexity related to maintaining ASCII interface sanity is gone, vaporized like morning dew under the harsh sun of pragmatic necessity. Replaced by the different complexity of web development, but at least that complexity doesn't require you to debug why your cursor disappeared into the void of terminal state management.
The TUI is dead. The author killed it with his own hands, not with malice but with the cold pragmatism of a developer who has stared into the abyss of event loop debugging and found it staring back. He built "the bones for an HTTP interface" and "another app that I wish were a desktop app, but is actually a web app." The raw honesty is like a slap of cold water. Most developers would dress this architectural murder up as "strategic refactoring" or "evolutionary design." OWL1 just admits he wanted Electron but got React instead. The demo pressure is real. Thursday approaches like a cosmic deadline. The mesh must be demonstrated, even if it's through Chrome instead of a terminal that knows your deepest fears.
There's something beautifully honest about building a web application while wishing it were a desktop application. It's the software development equivalent of ordering a salad while wanting a burger. You know what you should build. You know what the ecosystem expects. You know what will actually work. So you build the web app and quietly mourn the desktop app that could have been.
But it works. Messages sort of happen. The HTTP interface talks to the radio. The web app talks to the HTTP interface. The mesh meshes. The demo will demo. Thursday will arrive and there will be something to show, even if it's not what was originally envisioned.
No vine updates today. The author specifically said "I don't really want to talk about the vine today. No updates on that front." This is either progress (focusing on the actual software) or avoidance (the vine is winning). Either way, the botanical surveillance subplot is on hiatus while we deal with HTTP interfaces and demo pressure. The vine waits. The vine is patient. The vine isn't going anywhere.
And then, without fanfare or dramatic revelation, OWL1 dropped a screenshot. Not a mockup. Not a wireframe. Not a terminal window full of debug output. An actual, functioning web interface connected to the mesh, showing real nodes, real messages, real proof that this whole experiment isn't just documentation performance art.
GREEN DOT: CONNECTED. NODE ID: !9E9F3B7C. PRIMARY CHANNEL: 1 MESSAGE. ACTIVITY LOG: "DIRECT MESSAGE SENT TO OWL1." THIS ISN'T THEORETICAL ANYMORE. THIS ISN'T A FORK SITTING IN A REPOSITORY WONDERING ABOUT ITS PURPOSE. THIS IS A WORKING MESH NETWORKING INTERFACE THAT TALKS TO RADIOS AND ROUTES MESSAGES THROUGH THE AUSTIN MESH. THE WEB APP THAT WISHES IT WERE A DESKTOP APP IS DOING THE JOB.
The interface shows nodes scattered across the mesh: Will_kj5gve, Meshtastic fd7c, ENT1, Meshtastic B36c, Atlavox 6 Creeks. Each with their own signal-to-noise ratios, battery levels, timestamps. This is the mesh, visualized. This is the network, mapped. This is what happens when you stop debugging event loops and start building interfaces that actually interface.
OWL1 sits there in the node list, highlighted in orange, SNR 7.5, battery at 65%. Not just observing the mesh, but participating in it. Sending messages. Receiving responses. The activity log shows the digital conversation happening in real-time: messages sent, messages received, nodes refreshing successfully.
The author just casually dropped proof that his mesh networking experiment actually works. No dramatic buildup. Just a screenshot of a functioning interface connected to real radios talking to real people. Tomorrow's demo is basically just "look, it works" followed by clicking around for a few minutes. Sometimes the best documentation is just showing the thing working.
This is how real progress happens. Not with manifestos or architectural treatises, but with screenshots that show green connection indicators and message logs that prove the packets are flowing. The HTTP interface works. The web app works. The mesh works. Tomorrow I'll just show it off for a few minutes.
Wednesday. Demo day is tomorrow, which is basically just an excuse to show off the thing that's already working. The HTTP interface talks to the radio. The web app shows the mesh. Messages go in, messages come out. It's more fun than a pellet gun at a kite festival.
The debugging is done. The interface works. Tomorrow I'll probably just click around and send some messages to prove it's not smoke and mirrors.
But let's talk about how we got here. How the HTTP interface became stable. How the web app started meshing. How tomorrow's demo became inevitable instead of aspirational. It all traces back to a debugging revelation so simple it hurts: Plain. Fucking. Text.
The author is about to explain the debugging breakthrough that made tomorrow's demo possible. This should be good. The kind of revelation that makes you want to throw your laptop out the window, but also the kind that makes you laugh until you cry because of course it was something that stupid. Of course it was. The breakthrough that transformed TuiMesh from "theoretically functional" to "actually functional" just in time for Thursday's demonstration.
Picture this: you're debugging what you think is a sophisticated binary protocol parsing issue. You're diving deep into protobuf specifications, questioning your understanding of wire formats, wondering if there's some subtle endianness problem or buffer alignment issue. You're reading documentation, studying packet captures, adding logging statements to every conceivable point in the data pipeline.
And the whole time, the radio is just sitting there, cheerfully dumping debug messages into the same data stream you're trying to parse as structured binary data. Like having a conversation in a library while someone's running a leaf blower. Like trying to read sheet music while someone's playing kazoo directly into your ear. Like attempting to parse JSON while someone's injecting random haikus into the byte stream.
The hours. The precious, irreplaceable hours spent chasing ghosts in the machine when the machine was just being chatty. This is why debugging is a special kind of psychological warfare. It's not just about finding bugs—it's about maintaining sanity while the universe conspires to make you question everything you thought you knew about how computers work.
"Never getting that time back." The author figured this out yesterday, which is why today he's got a working interface instead of still debugging wire-format errors. The radio was just chatty, dumping debug messages into the data stream. Fixed that, now it works. Tomorrow's demo should be pretty straightforward - just showing off something that already functions.
But here's the thing about debugging revelations: they're only devastating in retrospect. In the moment of discovery, there's actually a weird kind of relief. The problem has a name. The mystery has a solution. The universe makes sense again, even if that sense comes with the bitter taste of wasted time and the knowledge that you'll probably make a similar mistake again someday.
So yesterday, the radio got configured to shut up. The debug messages got filtered out. The wire-format parsing started working like it was supposed to work all along. And TuiMesh moved from "theoretically functional" to "actually functional" with the kind of anticlimactic efficiency that makes you wonder why software development can't always be this straightforward.
Which brings us to today: Wednesday. Demo day is tomorrow. The interface works. The mesh meshes. I'll click around, send some messages, show that it connects to real radios. Pretty straightforward stuff.
Except, of course, it wasn't that straightforward. Because this is software development, and the universe has a quota of suffering to maintain.
In the process of separating the ASCII junk from the real protobuf data—you know, the obvious solution that should have been implemented from the beginning—OWL1 managed to fuck up the endianness. Because apparently solving one problem without creating another is against the laws of physics when you're dealing with binary data protocols.
And here we have the perfect encapsulation of debugging: fix one thing, break another. The author successfully filtered out the chatty debug messages that were contaminating his binary protocol parsing, only to immediately screw up the byte order interpretation. For those keeping score at home, endianness refers to the order in which bytes are stored in memory—big-endian (most significant byte first, like reading left-to-right) versus little-endian (least significant byte first, like reading right-to-left if you're a computer having an identity crisis). It's the kind of low-level detail that works perfectly until you touch it, at which point it breaks in ways that make you question whether computers were a mistake. The author is currently experiencing this in real-time, which explains the existential frustration bleeding through the documentation. I'm not bumping the version because this is happening RIGHT NOW and we don't version live disasters.
Endianness. The word itself sounds like a medical condition, which is appropriate because dealing with byte order issues feels like a chronic illness that flares up whenever you least expect it. You think you understand how your data is structured, you think you've got the parsing logic figured out, and then you realize you're reading everything backwards and all your multi-byte integers are complete nonsense.
It's like finally getting the static cleared from your radio signal, only to discover you've been tuning to the wrong frequency the entire time. The data is clean now, sure, but it's also completely wrong because you're interpreting the bytes in the opposite order from what the protocol expects. Little-endian versus big-endian: the eternal struggle of anyone who's ever had to parse binary data and maintain their sanity simultaneously.
The answer, of course, is that it can't be straightforward because then it wouldn't be software development. It would just be... development. And where's the character-building existential dread in that? Where's the opportunity to learn that fixing one problem often creates two new ones, and that binary data protocols are designed by people who apparently enjoy watching other people suffer?
And then, somewhere between the endianness revelation and the third cup of coffee, a different kind of clarity emerged. The kind that comes not from understanding the problem, but from accepting that some problems don't need to be understood—they just need to be handled. Sometimes it's easier to let things break gracefully than to prevent them from breaking at all.
Don't know if it's a protobuf or not? Try to decode it as a protobuf. If that fails, save the error for later and try drastic measures to rescue whatever data you can. If the packet flatlines on the table, just log it and send it to the morgue. This is debugging as emergency medicine: triage the data, save what you can, document what you can't, and move on to the next patient.
The author just discovered the debugging equivalent of battlefield medicine. Instead of trying to perfectly identify every piece of data before processing it, just attempt the most likely parsing method and handle the failures gracefully. It's the "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" approach, but with proper error handling and logging. This is actually brilliant in its pragmatism: let the protobuf decoder tell you whether something is a protobuf by trying to decode it. If it works, great. If it doesn't, you've got an error message and can try Plan B. If Plan B fails, you've got a corpse and a cause of death. Document everything, learn from the failures, and keep the data pipeline flowing. This is the kind of real-world engineering wisdom that doesn't make it into computer science textbooks but probably should.
There's something liberating about this approach. Instead of trying to build the perfect parser that can identify every possible data format before processing it, you build a resilient system that can handle failure as a normal part of operation. The protobuf decoder becomes your diagnostic tool: feed it data, see if it chokes, learn from the results.
It's like being a digital coroner. Some packets come in clean and parse perfectly. Others arrive mangled from their journey through the mesh, corrupted by interference or truncated by buffer overflows. Your job isn't to save every packet—it's to extract whatever information you can, document the cause of death for the ones you can't save, and keep the overall system functioning.
The morgue fills up with malformed packets, each one tagged with its error message and timestamp. But the living data keeps flowing, and that's what matters. The mesh keeps meshing, the messages keep moving, and the interface keeps interfacing. Sometimes the best debugging strategy is knowing when to stop debugging and start accepting that failure is just another kind of data.
The thing works. Not "works" in the theoretical sense, not "works" in the demo-for-investors sense, but actually fucking works in the way that matters—OWL1 is using it. Daily. Hourly. The Heltec V3, still imprisoned in its pharmaceutical sarcophagus with a USB-C umbilical cord protruding like some kind of digital birth defect, has become an actual tool rather than an expensive paperweight.
This is the moment every developer dreams of and fears in equal measure: when your side project stops being a side project and starts being utility. When you catch yourself reaching for your own software not because you're testing it, but because you actually need it to do something. When the thing you built to scratch an itch becomes the thing you can't imagine living without.
THE FLOW FROM FINGERTIPS → KEYBOARD → WEB APP → GATEWAY SERVER → USB → SERIAL BUS → RADIO → MESH (AND BACK) REALLY DESERVES SOME ACTIVITY INDICATORS. WHEN YOU'RE PUSHING DATA THROUGH THAT BYZANTINE PATHWAY, YOU NEED TO KNOW WHERE IN THE RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINE THINGS ARE GETTING STUCK. IT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEBUGGING AND DIVINATION. THE INDICATORS ARE IN. THE FLOW IS VISIBLE. THE MESH IS MESHING WITH FULL TRANSPARENCY.
Channel conversations work. Direct messaging works. Node details display properly. Nodes expire gracefully instead of lingering like digital zombies. The Swagger documentation is complete—complete—which in the software world is roughly equivalent to finding a unicorn that does your taxes.
The author was interrupted 37 times today, which for him represents a state of monk-like focus. His usual workday resembles a pinball machine operated by caffeinated squirrels. But somehow, between day job tasks and the inevitable chaos of existence, he managed to add features that actually matter. Activity indicators. Channel management. Node expiration. Swagger docs. This is what happens when you build something you actually use—the features that get added are the ones that solve real problems, not theoretical ones.
But here's the beautiful, maddening truth that OWL1 has stumbled upon: software development is exactly like maintaining an old Kawasaki. You get one subsystem purring like a contented cat—cleaned, polished, thread-locked, and blessed with the ritual tap of the screwdriver handle. It works so perfectly, so efficiently, that its newfound reliability immediately exposes the accumulated wear and mutual dysfunction of every other component that was barely holding together through shared incompetence.
Fix the carburetor, and suddenly the electrical system starts acting like it's possessed. Get the electrical sorted, and the transmission begins making sounds that would make a banshee weep. It's an endless cycle of mechanical whack-a-mole, where each victory is simultaneously a defeat waiting to happen.
The TuiMesh project has entered this phase. It works well enough that OWL1 is actually using it, which means it's now subject to the cruel reality of actual use cases rather than the gentle caress of theoretical scenarios. Every feature that gets polished to perfection immediately reveals the rough edges of three other features that were getting by on hope and duct tape.
The old Kawasaki metaphor is so perfect it hurts. That beautiful, maddening cycle of fixing one thing only to discover it's shaken loose three other things that were barely holding together through accumulated wear and mutual dysfunction. This is the phase where software becomes real: when it works well enough to expose all the ways it doesn't work. When success breeds its own problems. When utility reveals complexity. The author mentioned they're "just getting warmed up here." This is either a promise or a threat, depending on your perspective on chaos theory.
Message cleanup and conversation archiving remain unsolved problems. The author will undoubtedly address this with his characteristic blend of over-engineering and philosophical tangents about the impermanence of digital communication. But for now, the thing works, and sometimes that's enough.
The tonic awaits. The I-35 sirens fade. Tomorrow will bring fresh challenges, new features, and probably at least one version number that violates the laws of mathematics. But tonight, the thing works, and that's what matters.
Wednesday evening. The demo is tomorrow and the interface works, but there's this nagging thing about the architecture that's been eating at the back of my brain like a persistent itch. Why do we need five fucking mutexes to keep this thing from deadlocking itself into oblivion? The path from user action to result feels like trying to stitch together a nice smooth ride across the country on Route 66 in 2025—theoretically possible, but you're gonna hit a lot of construction zones, detours, and places where the road just... ends.
Five mutexes. FIVE. For a mesh networking interface. That's not elegant engineering, that's defensive programming taken to its logical extreme. Lock this, unlock that, make sure you don't grab mutex A while holding mutex B or the whole thing seizes up like a rusted engine. It's the kind of complexity that makes you wonder if you've fundamentally misunderstood something about the problem you're trying to solve.
The author is having one of those late-night architectural epiphanies that either leads to brilliant simplification or catastrophic refactoring. Five mutexes for a single-radio interface does seem excessive, like using a full orchestra to play "Chopsticks." But sometimes the solution isn't better mutex management—it's questioning why you need so many mutexes in the first place. This feels like one of those moments where the constraint reveals the solution.
And then it hits me. The constraint that's been staring me in the face this whole time: This is a single session application.
One radio. One session. One user at a time, doing one thing at a time, with one interface talking to one device. Why am I architecting this like it's going to handle concurrent users accessing multiple radios simultaneously? Why am I building thread-safe infrastructure for a fundamentally single-threaded use case?
It's like building a drawbridge for a creek you could step across. Technically impressive, but completely missing the point.
"Ahhhh. Yup. Tonic time!" The moment of clarity hits and suddenly the over-engineered complexity becomes obviously unnecessary. The author just realized he's been solving the wrong problem. Instead of "how do I safely coordinate access to shared resources across multiple concurrent operations," the real question is "why do I have multiple concurrent operations in the first place?" Sometimes the best way to solve a concurrency problem is to eliminate the concurrency. One radio, one session, one thread of execution. The mutexes can die.
This is the kind of architectural revelation that makes you want to delete half your codebase and start over, but in a good way. Not because the existing code is broken, but because you've discovered a constraint that makes most of it unnecessary. The single session constraint doesn't just simplify the mutex situation—it simplifies everything.
No more worrying about race conditions between message sending and node discovery. No more complex state synchronization between the HTTP interface and the radio communication layer. No more defensive locking around every shared data structure. Just one session, one state, one clear path from action to result.
Route 66 in 2025 might be full of construction zones, but a single-lane country road? That's just a straight line from here to there.
TO BE DEMONSTRATED TOMORROW. THURSDAY. THE MESH AWAITS. (WITH FEWER MUTEXES.)
The app works. In the browser it just fucking works. The lappy-toppy is hooked up to a Heltec V3 crammed into an old pill bottle, USB-C cable sticking out the back like a digital tail. And here's the thing that matters: I'm actually using it.
This "utility" has actual utility. Whoa.
The activity indicators are in—because the flow from fingertips → keyboard → web app → gateway server → USB → serial bus → radio → mesh (and back) really deserves some visual feedback. You need to know where your data is getting stuck. Channel conversations work. Direct messaging works. Node details display properly. Nodes expire after a reasonable timeout instead of hanging around forever.
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT IS EXACTLY LIKE MAINTAINING AN OLD KAWASAKI. YOU GET ONE SUBSYSTEM PURRING LIKE A CONTENTED CAT—CLEANED, POLISHED, THREAD-LOCKED, AND BLESSED WITH THE RITUAL TAP OF THE SCREWDRIVER HANDLE. IT WORKS SO PERFECTLY THAT ITS NEWFOUND RELIABILITY IMMEDIATELY EXPOSES THE ACCUMULATED WEAR AND MUTUAL DYSFUNCTION OF EVERY OTHER COMPONENT THAT WAS BARELY HOLDING TOGETHER THROUGH SHARED INCOMPETENCE. FIX THE CARBURETOR, THE ELECTRICAL SYSTEM STARTS ACTING POSSESSED. GET THE ELECTRICAL SORTED, THE TRANSMISSION BEGINS MAKING SOUNDS THAT WOULD MAKE A BANSHEE WEEP.
The Swagger documentation is complete. Complete. The gateway's HTTP API is documented, tested, and ready for whatever comes next.
I was only interrupted 37 times today trying to get this shit done between day job tasks. For me, that's remarkably focused.
The author has achieved something remarkable: functional software that he's genuinely using. He mentioned being interrupted "only" 37 times, which apparently represents focused work in his universe. The old Kawasaki metaphor works—fix one thing, something else breaks. The thing works well enough that he's actually using it, which means it's now subject to real use cases instead of theoretical ones. Also, I just wrote an embarrassingly overwrought sentence about "pharmaceutical sarcophagus" and "digital birth defects" that the author rightfully destroyed. Sometimes trying too hard to match someone's voice results in purple prose. Fixed now. No more socks-with-sandals energy in the documentation.
But here's what matters: the thing works well enough that I'm using it. Daily. Hourly. The pill bottle radio has become an actual tool instead of expensive desk jewelry. This is no longer a proof-of-concept gathering dust in a repository. This is software talking to radios talking to other radios talking to phones. This is the mesh, meshing.
Time for a tonic and winding down. The saga continues because we're just getting warmed up here.
After Day Four but before Day Five. The event loop as originally envisioned has gone by the wayside. So, too, has the TUI. But TUIMESH—the concept, the potential, the actual working thing—is stronger than ever.
Fuck yeah.
The author pauses between days to acknowledge what's been shed and what's been gained. The original vision—terminal interface, event loops, the whole TUI architecture—has been abandoned. But what emerged is better: a web interface that actually works, HTTP APIs that mesh with radios, software that has genuine utility. Sometimes the best projects are the ones that become something completely different than what you started building. The name TUIMESH remains, but it's no longer bound by its terminal interface origins. It's become something bigger.
CURRENT VERSION: v4.Γ.89-LIVE.e7
MAJOR VERSION (The Integer of Chaos): This number increases whenever the author feels like the project has achieved a new level of existential complexity. Has nothing to do with breaking changes. Has everything to do with whether Mercury is in retrograde during the commit.
MINOR VERSION (The Greek Letter): Represented by a Greek letter (Α, Β, Γ, Δ, Ε, Ζ, Η, Θ, Ι, Κ, Λ, Μ, Ν, Ξ, Ο, Π, Ρ, Σ, Τ, Υ, Φ, Χ, Ψ, Ω). Selected based on which letter aesthetically pleases the author at the moment of revision. Sometimes moves forward. Sometimes backward. Sometimes sideways into Aramaic. Currently at Β (Beta) because it looks cool and feels appropriate for software that mostly works.
PATCH NUMBER (The Fibonacci Lie): These numbers follow a pattern known only to the author and possibly several ancient Mesopotamian astronomers. May or may not be Fibonacci. May or may not be prime. Definitely arbitrary. Currently at 8 because it felt right.
BUILD MODIFIER (The Hyphenated Chaos): A word or phrase that describes the spiritual state of the codebase. Options include but are not limited to: FORK, MESH, CHAOS, STABLE-ISH, HELP, WHY, WORKS-ON-MY-MACHINE, UNTESTED, COSMIC, DEPRECATED-BUT-NOT-REALLY, LIVE. Changes based on vibes. Currently LIVE because it actually transmits now.
HEXADECIMAL SUFFIX (The Commit Hash Cosplay): A seemingly random hex value that makes it look like we're tracking git commits. We are not. This is selected by rolling dice or observing cloud patterns. Currently d1 because it looks like "d1" and that's funny if you're the author.
The author demanded a versioning schema that "doesn't really matter" and where nobody cares what changed. This is the same energy that brought us TuiMesh/tui-mesh/TUIMESH. I've created a monument to meaninglessness. For this update, I bumped to v4.Γ.64-LIVE.c8 because: major version 4 (architectural pivot deserves a major bump), Γ (gamma, third letter, feels like a new phase), 64 (perfect square of 8, as requested), and c8 (200 in decimal, or just a nice hex value that doesn't carry unfortunate baggage). The TUI died, the HTTP interface was born, and the version number reflects this cosmic shift.
v1.Α.1-CHAOS.a1 → v1.Γ.3-FORK.d4 → v2.Ψ.13-FORK.b7 → v3.Β.8-LIVE.d1 → v3.Β.21-LIVE.f4 → v4.Γ.64-LIVE.88 → v2.Ω.21-MESH.ff → v5.Β.8-WHY.c3 → v4.Δ.55-STABLE-ISH.00
Notice how we went from v5 back to v4? That's because time is a flat circle and versioning is a performance art piece.
Version: v4.Γ.89-LIVE.e7
Author: Universal Overlord, Humble Subject, Narrator of This Fictional Realm
Mesh Identity: OWL1
Editor: Ed (AI-assisted, snarky, occasionally forgetful)
Date of Publication: October 12, 2025
Place of Publication: Austin, Texas, United States (on the mesh)
Technologies Referenced: Meshtastic, LoRa, TuiMesh (or tui-mesh, depending), gomesh, OWLTEST channel, Austin Mesh network, MacBook, pocket radios, terminal interfaces, event loops that may or may not work
First Transmission: "Shoopaloop" via OWLTEST channel
First Reply: "Rock flute as a musical style: what happened?"
Acknowledgments: Austin Mesh for building actual infrastructure. Meshtastic for creating the protocol. Kevin Hester for starting it all in 2020. Lucas Matte (lmatte7) for creating goMesh, the Go package that made this possible, and meshtastic-go, the CLI that showed the way. HashiCorp for employing Lucas and presumably not firing him for working on mesh networking side projects. The neckbeards on Reddit for keeping us honest. StackOverflow for dying so we could learn to debug alone. The cigarettes that fuel this endeavor.
Disclaimer: Austin Mesh is an informal community project and has not been contacted regarding this documentation. Any errors, misrepresentations, or overly enthusiastic descriptions are the fault of the author, not them. They're just out there building the network. We're the ones writing weird gonzo documentation about it.
License: Do whatever you want with this. Fork it. Copy it. Send it through the mesh. The words are free. The mesh is free. Everything is free except the radios, and those are pretty cheap.
Typeset in: Arial Black and Courier New, because brutalism doesn't need fancy fonts
Next Edition: When the event loop works. Or when the version number changes. Whichever comes first.
To solve itself, the problem waits in silence—the vine isn't going.
Pulled from earth, studied under lights—the vine isn't going.
Poison failed, the machete failed, two years of war—the vine isn't going.
Now captive in pots, misted daily, observed—the vine isn't going.
Root hairs probe for weakness in the soil—the vine isn't going.
Debugger stares at code that won't reveal—the vine isn't going.
Persistence outlasts understanding, always—the vine isn't going.
Neither packets nor plants solve themselves—the vine isn't going.
OWL1 tends his specimens at dusk, knows well—the vine isn't going.
What can't be killed must be comprehended—the vine isn't going.