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Spool

LAN browsing

The plugin exposes Spool’s LAN game-sharing from Game Mode: discover peers, browse their shared games, and download one into your library. The QAM library page has a LAN button that navigates to /spool/lan.

The headless server does the network work; the React UI only renders it. The Deck running the plugin is a pure consumer — the server’s discovery listener watches for peer announces but the plugin doesn’t announce itself or run a file server.

Why the server proxies peer requests

Section titled “Why the server proxies peer requests”

The UI runs under https://steamloopback.host. A peer’s file server is plain http://<peer-ip>:<port>, so the browser would block those fetches as mixed content. To dodge that, the UI never talks to a peer directly — it asks the local headless server (http://127.0.0.1, a secure origin) to proxy the request, and the server fetches from the peer server-side.

Pages and polling

Section titled “Pages and polling”

LanPage (/spool/lan) polls GET ${base}/lan/peers every 3 s and lists discovered peers — device name (or IP) and game count. A peer with no file server (file_server_port === 0, discovery-only) is dimmed and not selectable. Activating a peer navigates to /spool/lan/:peerAddr/:peerPort.

PeerGamesPage (/spool/lan/:addr/:port) shows that peer’s shared games:

  • GET ${base}/lan/peers — to resolve the peer’s display name.
  • GET ${base}/lan/peers/:addr/:port/games — the peer’s game list (PeerGame[]), proxied server-side.
  • GET ${base}/lan/peers/:addr/:port/games/:id/cover — each cover, proxied so the grid can <img>-load it by URL.

It also tracks an in-flight download: on mount and then every 500 ms (while a download is starting / transferring) it polls GET ${base}/lan/download and renders a progress box — game name, status, a progress bar, bytes done / total, and transfer speed — with a Cancel button that issues DELETE ${base}/lan/download { install_token }. It toasts on completion. Activating a game navigates to its detail page.

PeerGameDetailPage (/spool/lan-game/:addr/:port/:gameId) shows the game’s size and whether it’s shareable, with a Download button. The button posts:

POST ${base}/lan/install { peer_addr, peer_port, game_id }

which returns an install_token, then navigates back so the peer page’s poller picks up the progress.

Server side

Section titled “Server side”

post_lan_install (plugin_server.rs) resolves the install root (lan.install_dir from config, defaulting to ~/.local/share/Spool/lan-games) and the bandwidth cap (lan.download_max_mbps), loads the library fresh, and kicks off lan::install::begin_install — the same content-addressed, blake3-verified, resumable transfer the desktop app uses (LAN sharing). There’s a single in-flight install slot. Because the headless server has no Tauri event bus, progress isn’t pushed as events — the install’s progress and library:changed callbacks are no-ops, and the UI polls GET /lan/download instead.