CLAUDE.md

This file provides guidance to Claude Code (claude.ai/code) when working with code in this repository.

Project Overview

StartOS is an open-source Linux distribution for running personal servers. It manages discovery, installation, network configuration, backups, and health monitoring of self-hosted services.

Tech Stack:

Backend: Rust (async/Tokio, Axum web framework)
Frontend: Angular 20 + TypeScript + TaigaUI
Container runtime: Node.js/TypeScript with LXC
Database/State: Patch-DB (git submodule) - storage layer with reactive frontend sync
API: JSON-RPC via rpc-toolkit (see core/rpc-toolkit.md)
Auth: Password + session cookie, public/private key signatures, local authcookie (see core/src/middleware/auth/)

Build & Development

See CONTRIBUTING.md for:

Environment setup and requirements
Build commands and make targets
Testing and formatting commands
Environment variables

Quick reference:

. ./devmode.sh                            # Enable dev mode
make update-startbox REMOTE=start9@<ip>   # Fastest iteration (binary + UI)
make test-core                            # Run Rust tests

Architecture

Each major component has its own CLAUDE.md with detailed guidance.

core/ — Rust backend daemon (startbox, start-cli, start-container, registrybox, tunnelbox)
web/ — Angular frontend workspace (admin UI, setup wizard, marketplace, shared library)
container-runtime/ — Node.js runtime managing service containers via JSON-RPC
sdk/ — TypeScript SDK for packaging services (@start9labs/start-sdk)
patch-db/ — Git submodule providing diff-based state synchronization

Supplementary Documentation

The docs/ directory contains cross-cutting documentation for AI assistants:

TODO.md - Pending tasks for AI agents (check this first, remove items when completed)
USER.md - Current user identifier (gitignored, see below)
exver.md - Extended versioning format (used across core, sdk, and web)
VERSION_BUMP.md - Guide for bumping the StartOS version across the codebase

Component-specific docs live alongside their code (e.g., core/rpc-toolkit.md, core/i18n-patterns.md).

Session Startup

On startup:

Check for docs/USER.md - If it doesn't exist, prompt the user for their name/identifier and create it. This file is gitignored since it varies per developer.
Check docs/TODO.md for relevant tasks - Show TODOs that either:
- Have no @username tag (relevant to everyone)
- Are tagged with the current user's identifier
Skip TODOs tagged with a different user.
Ask "What would you like to do today?" - Offer options for each relevant TODO item, plus "Something else" for other requests.

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