simple_comms

Artisan Hosting's wire protocol for authenticated, encrypted communication between two peers over TCP or a Unix domain socket.

A connection is secured with a Noise_NK handshake, after which every message is framed and encrypted with the resulting transport cipher. Optional per-message compression, hex-encoding, and checksums are also available, layered on top.

Documentation

• docs/QUICKSTART.md -- the fast path: basic shapes, establishing a connection, and sending/receiving messages, with runnable-shaped examples.
• docs/PROTOCOL.md -- the byte-level wire format: header layout, connection params, message types.
• docs/HANDSHAKE.md -- the connection lifecycle in depth: how the Noise_NK handshake secures a connection, connection params/INSECURE/SIDEGRADE renegotiation, how logical sessions are multiplexed on top of it (Open/OpenAck), and how keys are rotated mid-connection (Rekey).

Rustdoc comments throughout src/ cross-reference both documents; run cargo doc --open for the full generated API reference.

Layout

• src/protocol/ -- the wire format itself: the fixed header, flags and message types, the Noise handshake, and the payload transforms (compression, hex-encoding, checksums, padding) applied before encryption.
• src/network/ -- async helpers that drive the protocol over a tokio stream: establishing a connection, sending/receiving messages on it via simple request/response (send_receive), and driving a connection full-duplex in a background task (driver).