I just finished wrapping up VSM in a Node.js TUI after a whole weekend struggling with it and decided to make it flat, better to leave room for customization of this protocol. I don't want it to be forcibly hierarchical, or impose any unnecesary constraints. I like it leaner.

Here's how it's looking:

https://github.com/cezarpena/vsm-cli/

Installation

git clone https://github.com/cezarpena/vsm-cli.git && cd vsm-cell && npm install

npm link -so you can launch with "vsm" from your terminal-

What to do with it

Honestly, I'd wrap everything in VSM right now, but I have to take out the protocol and formalize it in Golang. Stripping away all the fat first. Who knows when they're going to break into your house and steal your laptop.

A must for corporate communications that HAVE TO stay anonymous. Great for whistleblower networks. Also great for bypassing firewalls without the need to open ports on your NAT. You could use it as mIRC too, I guess, let's pin that for the near future. Honestly I had OpenClaw orchestrations in mind at the start, and I've built this for the same reason, headless integration, if you were to be using different servers for different OpenClaw jobs / routines, but wanted to make connection anonymous.

I just want my nodes not to know each other, you know? Comes with too much trouble. If one is attacked, the others are next. I don't like that. I don't see why would I let that be transparent. Or what do I care to know where the other computer is to use a service. If I don't need to know, why do I know?

This thing, network probing... Why don't all unauthorized services do silent drops? If you're unauthorized, why do you need to know? You reached that in big 26 by accident? Come on.

I honestly miss the P2P scene of the 2000s, I described it pretty well in my last blog post. I just miss its potential and don't like the constraints of Server-Client architecture. Not that I want everything to be P2P or decentralized, just that it seems lazy to me to have not a single thing nowadays which isn't Server-Client. Games, for example. Why did games have to be server-client. I get it, yes, maybe enforcing some rules, but then again, I can enforce them myself too.

It's almost like we've all been implicitly labeled as mentally incapable of sustaining systems, don't you think? Responsible or not, there's a bad ring to "How could we give THEM ... ?" in the collective envisionment of a possible new P2P run. Who's "them"? Me and you? Cattle? Oh, and let's move to the "we". Who's "we"? Sam Sheepdog? Virgin Mary?

To "we" I say you've gotten soft, way too soft. Lost ground. Teeth fallen. Sleeping a very sweet dream of which awakening will bring about the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Anyway. Philosophical grudges aside. I want to get involved in some P2P / Tor interesting projects. I don't care about this repo as much as I care about bringing back P2P. It is making a comeback and I don't want to be late. Never believe that ugly things will last, they never do. They walk away or are boo-ed out. Same with Internet Architectures.

So, on what to use this for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TorChat

Make up your own mind. Also if you've read this far I guess it's finally fair to tell you what VSM stands for: Very Subtle Mesh.