wild-pc/CLAUDE.md

CLAUDE.md

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

Overview

Castle is a personal software platform — a monorepo of independent projects (services, tools, libraries) managed by the castle CLI. The registry config is split into three directories under your config root:

• programs/ — Software catalog (source, behavior, stack, system_dependencies, build)
• services/ — Long-running daemons (run, expose, proxy, systemd)
• jobs/ — Scheduled tasks (run, cron schedule, systemd timer)

Each program has a stack (development toolchain: python-fastapi, python-cli, react-vite) and a behavior (runtime role: daemon, tool, frontend). Scheduling, systemd management, and proxying are orthogonal operations. Services and jobs reference a program via program: for description fallthrough.

Key principle: Regular projects must never depend on castle. They accept standard configuration (data dir, port, URLs) via env vars. Only castle programs (CLI, gateway) know about castle internals.

Programs: create new, or adopt existing

A program is a source repo castle knows how to work with (dev verbs) and deploy. There are two ways to get one:

• castle program create — scaffold new code from a stack (a creation-time template). Stacks are guidance for how new code is written; they are NOT required at runtime.
• castle program add — adopt an existing repo (a local path or git URL), wherever it lives. No stack needed — castle detects sensible dev-verb commands (pyproject→uv/ruff/pytest, Cargo.toml→cargo, etc.) or you declare them.

Stacks vs programs are decoupled: a stack seeds a new program's default verb commands and scaffold, but a program stands on its own via its declared commands: (and source:/repo:). A program may have no stack at all.

Stack guides (for writing new code, AI-facing):

• @docs/registry.md — Registry architecture, castle.yaml structure, lifecycle
• @docs/stacks/python-fastapi.md — FastAPI service patterns (config, routes, models, testing)
• @docs/stacks/python-cli.md — CLI tool patterns (argparse, stdin/stdout, piping, testing)
• @docs/stacks/react-vite.md — React/Vite/TypeScript frontend patterns

Quick start

# New daemon, scaffolded from a stack
castle program create my-service --stack python-fastapi --description "Does something"
cd /data/repos/my-service && uv sync
castle service create my-service --program my-service --port 9001   # declare the service
castle service deploy my-service && castle service enable my-service # unit + start
castle gateway reload                                                # update reverse proxy routes

# New tool from a stack
castle program create my-tool --stack python-cli --description "Does something"

# Adopt an existing repo (no stack required)
castle program add ~/projects/some-rust-tool
castle program add https://github.com/me/widget.git --name widget

castle program create scaffolds under /data/repos/ (override with CASTLE_REPOS_DIR) and registers the program in castle.yaml with an absolute source:. castle program add registers an existing repo in place (or records its repo: URL for castle program clone).

Castle CLI

The CLI lives in cli/ and is installed via uv tool install --editable cli/.

The CLI is resource-first: operations live under the resource they act on (program, service, job, gateway). Names can collide across resource types (a program and a service may share a name), so the resource is explicit. Platform-wide lifecycle and the cross-resource overview are top-level.

# Programs — the software catalog
castle program list [--behavior daemon] [--stack python-cli] [--json]
castle program info <name> [--json]
castle program create <name> [--stack ...] [--description ...]   # scaffold new
castle program add <path|git-url> [--name ...]                   # adopt existing repo
castle program clone [name]                                      # clone repo: source
castle program delete <name> [--source] [-y]
castle program run <name> [args...]                              # declared run command
castle program install|uninstall [name]                          # activate tools/frontends
castle program build|test|lint|format|type-check|check [name]    # dev verbs

# Services — long-running daemons
castle service list [--json]
castle service info <name> [--json]
castle service create <name> [--program P] [--port N] [--health ...] \
                      [--path ...] [--host ...] [--port-env ...] [--runner ...]
castle service delete <name> [-y]
castle service deploy <name>                                     # generate unit + route
castle service enable|disable <name>                             # systemd enable/disable
castle service start|stop|restart <name>                         # systemd lifecycle (one)
castle service logs <name> [-f] [-n 50]

# Jobs — scheduled tasks (same verbs; create takes --schedule)
castle job create <name> [--program P] --schedule "0 2 * * *" [--runner ...]
castle job <list|info|delete|deploy|enable|disable|start|stop|restart|logs> ...

# Platform-wide (top-level)
castle list [--behavior ...] [--stack ...] [--json]   # programs + services + jobs
castle status                                         # unified status
castle deploy [name]                                  # apply config → units + Caddyfile
castle start | stop | restart                         # all services (+ gateway)
castle gateway start|stop|reload|status               # the Caddy gateway

Bringing everything online is the two honest steps castle deploy && castle start (apply config, then start) — there is no bundled up.

Dev verbs resolve per-program: a declared commands: entry (or build:) overrides the stack default, falling back to the program's stack handler, else the verb is unavailable. So a wired-in repo with no stack works as long as it declares its commands. Tools are reached via castle program list --behavior tool.

Infrastructure

Castle uses two roots, each overridable by an env var: CASTLE_HOME (config, code, artifacts, secrets; default ~/.castle) and CASTLE_DATA_DIR (program data I/O on a dedicated volume; default /data/castle). Paths below use $CASTLE_HOME and $CASTLE_DATA_DIR accordingly.

• Gateway: Caddy at port 9000 — both a reverse proxy (to local/remote services) and a static file server (for built frontends, served in place from <source>/<dist>). Config generated from castle.yaml into $CASTLE_HOME/artifacts/specs/Caddyfile. A route maps an address (path or host) to a target of kind static/proxy/remote; castle gateway status lists them. Dashboard (castle-app) served at root.
• Systemd: User units generated under ~/.config/systemd/user/castle-*.service. Use drop-in overrides (*.service.d/*.conf) for extra env vars that castle deploy shouldn't overwrite (e.g., CASTLE_API_MQTT_ENABLED).
• Containers: runner: container services use Docker (preferred on this system due to rootless podman UID mapping issues). Deploy resolves the runtime via shutil.which("docker").
• MQTT: Mosquitto broker runs as castle-mqtt (Docker container on port 1883). Data in $CASTLE_DATA_DIR/castle-mqtt/, config in $CASTLE_DATA_DIR/castle-mqtt/config/.
• Data: Service data lives in $CASTLE_DATA_DIR/<service-name>/ (default /data/castle/<name>/), passed via the generated <PREFIX>_DATA_DIR env var.
• Secrets: $CASTLE_HOME/secrets/ — never in project directories.

API Endpoints (castle-api, port 9020)

Core:

• GET /health — Health check
• GET /stream — SSE stream (health, service-action, mesh events)

Deployments (the unified view of services + jobs + programs):

• GET /deployments — List all (add ?include_remote=true for cross-node)
• GET /deployments/{name} — Deployment detail
• GET /status — Live health for all services

Programs / Services / Jobs (typed views + editing):

• GET /programs, GET /programs/{name} — Program catalog (?behavior=tool to filter)
• POST /programs/{name}/{action} — Run a program verb (install/uninstall/build/…)
• PUT|DELETE /programs/{name} — Edit or remove a program entry
• GET /services, GET /services/{name}, PUT|DELETE /services/{name}
• GET /jobs, GET /jobs/{name}, PUT|DELETE /jobs/{name}

Config:

• GET / — Full registry; PUT / — Save registry
• POST /apply — Apply registry changes; POST /deploy — Deploy to runtime

Gateway:

• GET /gateway — Gateway info + full route table (every route tagged kind=static|proxy|remote, with its address and target)
• GET /gateway/caddyfile — Generated Caddyfile content
• POST /gateway/reload — Regenerate Caddyfile and reload Caddy

Mesh:

• GET /mesh/status — MQTT connection state, broker info, peer list
• GET /nodes — All known nodes (local + discovered remote)
• GET /nodes/{hostname} — Node detail with deployed components

Service actions:

• POST /services/{name}/{action} — start/stop/restart
• GET /services/{name}/unit — Systemd unit content

Mesh Coordination (opt-in)

Multi-node discovery is disabled by default. Enable via env vars:

CASTLE_API_MQTT_ENABLED=true    # Connect to MQTT broker
CASTLE_API_MQTT_HOST=localhost   # Broker address
CASTLE_API_MQTT_PORT=1883        # Broker port
CASTLE_API_MDNS_ENABLED=true    # Advertise/discover via mDNS

Key modules: castle_api.mesh (MeshStateManager), castle_api.mqtt_client (paho-mqtt wrapper), castle_api.mdns (python-zeroconf wrapper).

Per-Project Commands

All projects use uv. Commands run from each project's directory:

uv sync                     # Install deps
uv run pytest tests/ -v     # Run tests
uv run ruff check .         # Lint
uv run ruff format .        # Format

Services also support: uv run <service-name> to start.

Code Style

• Linting/formatting: ruff — shared ruff.toml at repo root (100-char lines)
• Type checking: pyright — shared pyrightconfig.json at repo root
• Testing: pytest, pytest-asyncio for async tests
• Python: 3.13 for services, 3.11+ minimum for tools/libraries

Key Files

• castle.yaml — Registry (three sections: programs, services, jobs)
• core/src/castle_core/manifest.py — Pydantic models (ProgramSpec, ServiceSpec, JobSpec, RunSpec)
• core/src/castle_core/config.py — Config loader (castle.yaml → CastleConfig)
• core/src/castle_core/generators/ — Systemd unit and Caddyfile generation
• cli/src/castle_cli/templates/scaffold.py — Project scaffolding templates
• pyproject.toml — uv workspace root (core, cli, castle-api)
• ruff.toml / pyrightconfig.json — Shared lint/type config