crabidy

A client/server music player. A headless gRPC server owns the library, the play queue, and audio output; a terminal UI connects to it over localhost (or the network). Media comes from pluggable providers, each mounted as a subtree of one library:

/
├── tidal        Tidal streaming (see tidaldy/README.md)
├── youtube      YouTube search & playlists (see ytdy/README.md)
├── fs           a local music folder (see fsdy/README.md)
├── queues       saved play queues (managed by the server)
├── bookmarks    link snapshots of library subtrees (`w`)
└── captures     downloaded snapshots with local audio (`W`)

Binaries

• crabidy-server — the server: providers, queue, playback, gRPC on 0.0.0.0:50051. Also serves the web client at that address (see below).
• cbd-tui — the terminal client. Press ? inside for all key bindings.
• cbd — both in one process: starts the server, waits until it accepts connections, then runs the TUI. Adopts an already-running server instead of failing on an occupied port.
• cbd-web — the browser client (Leptos/WASM), with the same functionality as the TUI. Not run directly: it is built to a bundle and embedded into crabidy-server (see cbd-web/README.md).

Quick start

The toolchain is managed by devenv:

devenv shell          # provides rust, yt-dlp, and friends
cargo run -p cbd      # server + TUI in one process

Or run the halves separately: cargo run -p crabidy-server and, in another terminal, cargo run -p cbd-tui.

Configuration

All configuration lives in ~/.config/crabidy/ (the platform config directory). Every file is optional; missing providers simply do not mount. Files are created/rewritten on first start with their defaults filled in.

File	Component	Documentation
tidaly.toml	Tidal	tidaldy/README.md
ytdy.toml	YouTube	ytdy/README.md
fsdy.toml	local fs	fsdy/README.md
cbd-tui.toml	cbd-tui	below
cbd.toml	cbd	below (same options as cbd-tui.toml)
crabidy-server.toml	server	below (never auto-created)

The server-managed folders (queues/, bookmarks/, captures/) also live in ~/.config/crabidy/; they need no configuration and hold plain folders of track files in the format documented in fsdy/README.md.

cbd-tui.toml and cbd.toml

Client configuration. cbd-tui (the standalone terminal client) reads cbd-tui.toml; cbd (server + TUI in one process) reads its own cbd.toml. They are separate files with the same options so the two can run side by side on one machine — a common setup is cbd playing locally against its in-process server while cbd-tui points at a remote server (e.g. a Raspberry Pi). A shared file would force one to follow the other's address.

# Where to find the server. Default (both files): localhost, which is
# what cbd's own in-process server listens on. Point cbd-tui.toml at a
# remote server to use it as a remote control.
address = "http://127.0.0.1:50051"

# Credentials, when the server has [auth] configured (see below).
# `user` is the role name; leave both empty against an open server.
# The password is stored in plaintext — keep this file private.
user = ""
password = ""

# Show the frequency-spectrum bars under the track progress. Default true.
spectrum = true

Every option is also available as a command-line flag (cbd-tui --address ..., cbd --address ...).

crabidy-server.toml — roles and rights

By default the server is open: everyone who can reach the port has full control. Adding an [auth] section turns on HTTP basic auth for every RPC and hands out roles (see architecture/roles-auth.md):

• owner — everything (the normal user).
• queue-owner — anything on the queue and playback, but no library writes: no bookmarks (w), captures (W), queue saving, renames or deletes.
• queue-appender — may browse/search and append tracks to the queue; nothing else.

[auth]
# One PHC hash per role; omit a role to disable it. Generate with:
#   crabidy-server hash-password   (reads the password from stdin)
owner = "$argon2id$v=19$m=19456,t=2,p=1$..."
queue_owner = "$argon2id$..."
queue_appender = "$argon2id$..."

Clients authenticate with the role name as the basic-auth user (see cbd-tui.toml above). A malformed crabidy-server.toml aborts server startup rather than silently running open. Note that the transport is plain HTTP/2: fine on a trusted home network, but anything exposed further needs TLS termination (reverse proxy, VPN) in front.

Using the library

Navigation is vim-style: j/k select, l enters the selected folder, h goes to the parent, Tab switches between library and queue, Enter replaces the queue with the selection. % creates a node where the pane title shows % to add (e.g. a search term), e renames, d deletes. / filters the current pane (library or queue) live as you type — Enter keeps the filter, Esc clears it.

• w saves the selection as a bookmark (links; needs the source provider to replay) or, in the queue pane, saves the queue.
• W captures the selection: the subtree is mirrored under /captures/<name> with every track's audio downloaded next to its metadata — fully local playback afterwards. Captures are incremental: re-capturing the same name resumes and completes it; tracks whose source cannot be captured are recorded as skipped (red in the UI, skipped by playback). Download captures can take long; progress is shown in the library pane. Inside /captures, d deletes any folder or single track from disk (audio included) after a y/N confirmation.

Press ? for the full binding table.

A row of frequency-spectrum bars is drawn under the track progress while audio plays (the server taps its own output, runs the FFT, and streams the bars, so it works whether the server is local or remote). Turn it off with spectrum = false in the client config.

Web client

crabidy-server serves a browser client with the same functionality as the TUI at its own address (http://<server>:50051/) — same navigation, same keys (j/k/h/l, %, e, d, w, W, queue and playback controls, ? for help), plus clickable equivalents and a light/dark theme toggle. It talks gRPC-web to the same service the TUI uses, so it honors the same [auth] roles (it shows a login form when the server requires credentials).

It is compiled to a WASM bundle and embedded into the server binary, behind the default-on web-ui cargo feature. A plain cargo build needs no WASM toolchain — it embeds a "not built" placeholder page until you build the bundle:

devenv shell -- build-web        # writes cbd-web/dist
cargo build -p crabidy-server    # embeds it

Build the server with --no-default-features for a headless, gRPC-only binary. See cbd-web/README.md for the dev loop and details.

Logs

cbd and cbd-tui log to ~/.local/state/crabidy/ (daily files); crabidy-server logs to stderr. Stream URLs and credentials are redacted from logs by design.

Development

Design documents live in architecture/, per-feature quality gates in quality/, and implementation plans in plan/. See CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md for the development workflow and coding rules.