Starcom

Session Terminal And Remote COMmander.

A small native client for persistent remote tmux sessions. Linux, macOS, and Windows clients; Linux hosts with stock SSH and tmux. No remote Starcom service. Built with Rust, Blade, egui, and Alacritty's terminal core.

Wave	Matrix	Retro

Install

Prebuilt binaries are attached to each GitHub Release on v* tags. Linux and Windows builds are unsigned; macOS builds are ad-hoc codesigned, not notarized.

Platform	Artifact
Linux x86_64	.tar.gz, .AppImage, .deb, .rpm
macOS Apple Silicon	.zip app bundle, .dmg (ad-hoc signed)
Windows x86_64	.zip

From source:

cargo install --locked --git https://github.com/navigato-rs/starcom

That builds the desktop client. Run starcom or starcom --demo. A recent stable Rust is required (rust-version is 1.96).

The crates.io starcom crate is a name reservation and is not a working install.

Desktop integration

make install

On Linux this puts the binary, .desktop entry, and icon under ~/.local, so Starcom appears in the application menu. On macOS it also writes ~/Applications/Starcom.app (Launchpad and Spotlight); a .desktop file is not a macOS launcher. $(PREFIX)/bin is on the PATH in both cases.

To install system-wide instead (/usr on Linux, /Applications on macOS):

sudo make install PREFIX=/usr

To remove:

make uninstall

Run

From a checkout:

cargo run --release --locked
cargo run --release --locked -- --demo

Use + to open the connection screen. Pick a Host from ~/.ssh/config or type another destination; Starcom resolves supported user/host/port/key settings and resolves ProxyJump through Sunset’s shared client and reports unsupported policy instead of bypassing it. Choosing a host lists the named windows in Starcom's managed starcom tmux session, then selects the first available one so Connect is the next click. Attached sessions are green and unavailable, and hosts already connected in this workspace appear first and in green, including destinations absent from SSH config. Typing is focused in the new-session field after the host choice. A tab is registered for that session while it connects and remains available for an explicit retry after failure. A narrow left sidebar groups session names under full-width server headers; each header carries that server's latency and pending input indicator. Each tab is one named window. Tabs on the same resolved server share one SSH connection, one tmux control client, one reconstructed view, and one reconnect schedule.

Tabs are saved and resumed automatically by reconnecting once per server and reopening their named windows; this can be disabled in Settings. Startup uses the same SSH authentication and host-key checks as Connect, while the saved file holds destinations, never credentials. Create is the one action that may start a tmux server. Later creates use new-window on the existing control stream. The same host view lists other tmux sessions in the same one-row-per-session list. Selecting one replaces Connect with explicit Migrate and Terminate actions; migration moves its windows into the managed session and connects to the first one. All non-managed tmux sessions use this same path, regardless of which tool created them; they are yellow and show the pane count of each source window. Obsolete v0.3 saved-tab records no longer create independent runtime attachments or preselect a host. Switching hosts supersedes an in-flight lookup immediately, and a late answer cannot replace the new host's result.

The desktop currently supports local scrollback, selection and copying, pane split/move/zoom/close controls, moving a pane into an automatically named new logical session/window on the same server, session rename, per-window key/value notes backed by tmux user options, and opt-in shared tmux pane resizing. Wheel events go to the application when it asked for mouse reports or uses the alternate screen; unmodified clicks go only when requested, while drags stay local selection. Focus a connected pane, then drop up to eight files onto the window to upload them over SFTP into /tmp. Large drops ask before uploading. Switching sessions keeps an in-flight transfer going; Cancel or closing that session stops it. Transport loss reconnects automatically with visible, cancellable backoff and pauses after ten retries for an explicit retry rather than looping forever; authentication, trust, and missing-session failures stop and wait for you. Red tabs distinguish recovery: an unreachable server offers Reconnect, while a reachable server with a missing named window or a rebooted tmux server offers Recreate for a new empty window under the saved name.

SSH and cryptography use Rust libraries; OpenSSL is not a build dependency. Host keys must already be trusted.

Desktop usage · SSH details · Synchronization limits · session model · Roadmap

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