telescreen documentation

What touches the network, what never does

The TUI never touches the network. Only the producer reads upstream, only the actor writes upstream, and only after a recorded double-key approval. The queue is 0700/0600 plain files under ~/.local/state/recdep; every state change is a file rename you can audit with ls and cat.

Reading paths

Set it up

1. Install (2 min): the binary and the demo screen.
2. Enroll the agents (4 min): what telescreen install writes where, identity, units.
3. Your first record (3 min): take, dictate, draft, approve, on the demo record.

Run it day to day

• Configuration guide (3 min): which file to edit for which wish, task by task.
• Configuration reference (2 min per lookup): every telescreen.yaml field and env key, as tables.
• Add a watch (2 min): make the shipped producer watch something new.
• Write a producer (3 min): file records from anything.
• Swap the actor (3 min): enroll your own actor in place of the shipped one.
• Use another agent (3 min): run the shipped subcommands with an agent CLI other than claude.
• Troubleshooting (2 min): symptom, cause, fix.

Understand it deeply

• Design: speakwrite (4 min): how a stance becomes a posted reaction; flow, guardrails, rationale.
• Queue contract (4 min): normative; the grammar every component honors.
• Actor contract (4 min): normative; the publish procedure and the publisher table.
• Design: the names (3 min): the 1984 lore, for pleasure.

Reference

• Vocabulary: one term per concept; every page uses these words.
• CLI reference: every command and flag. The telescreen_*.md pages are generated by make docs; the Configuration reference and the Vocabulary are hand-written.
• Configuration reference: the telescreen.yaml schema, the built-in action map, every env key.
• Contracts: the Queue contract and the Actor contract.
• Files and paths: state under ${XDG_STATE_HOME:-$HOME/.local/state}/recdep/; config in ~/.config/telescreen.yaml, identity and secrets in ~/.config/minitrue.env, ~/.config/speakwrite.env, ~/.config/thinkpol.env; units in ~/.config/systemd/user/; skills in ~/.claude/skills/.

FAQ

Does the screen need the agents? No. It works on the queue alone, and any process that writes conforming records is a producer; the contract is the Queue contract.

Can an agent post something on its own? No. Nothing posts without a double-key approval recorded on disk, and discarding a draft revokes a pending approval.

Is there a trash? No. Deleting is real: the memory hole removes the file.