The private relay lets an OpenChamber client (mobile app, browser, or another desktop) reach a user's OpenChamber instance through OpenChamber-hosted infrastructure when the instance is not directly reachable (behind NAT, no public URL, no tunnel). The instance dials **outbound** to the relay; nothing needs to be exposed inbound.
Traffic is **end-to-end encrypted between the two endpoints** (client and host instance). The relay infrastructure forwards opaque ciphertext and cannot read application traffic — it is an untrusted transport, not a trusted middlebox.
This module (`packages/web/server/lib/relay/`) is the **host side**: it runs inside the OpenChamber web server (so it works for Electron desktop, headless server, and CLI installs alike). The **client side** lives in `packages/ui/src/lib/relay/`. The **relay service itself** is a separate Cloudflare Worker in the `openchamber-website` repo and only brokers connections.
## The three layers
Traffic is modeled as three stacked layers. The relay understands only Layer 1; Layers 2–3 exist solely between the client and the host.
1.**Relay routing (Layer 1)** — outbound WebSocket connections to the relay, connection brokering, and host authentication to the relay. The relay routes each client to the correct host and forwards frames verbatim.
2.**End-to-end encryption (Layer 2)** — an authenticated encrypted channel established directly between client and host, keyed so the relay cannot participate. Built on standard WebCrypto primitives (ECDH key agreement + AEAD framing). The host's encryption public key is distributed to the client out-of-band via the pairing payload and is the client's trust anchor.
3.**Tunnel multiplexing (Layer 3)** — because an OpenChamber client speaks many concurrent HTTP requests, an event stream (SSE), and WebSockets to one origin, the encrypted channel carries a small multiplexing protocol. It frames HTTP request/response (including streamed bodies) and WebSocket sub-streams so the whole app works over one encrypted connection.
-`service.js` — thin entrypoint: relay config (enabled flag + relay URL), the management routes (`GET/POST /api/openchamber/relay/{status,enable,disable}`), a `getPairingCandidate()` accessor (the relay transport candidate folded into pairing-v2 links when enabled, consumed by the pairing-session route in `core-routes.js`), and lifecycle wiring. Started from `packages/web/server/index.js` only when the user has explicitly enabled the relay. The relay endpoint defaults to the OpenChamber-hosted relay but can be pinned to a self-hosted relay via the `OPENCHAMBER_RELAY_URL` env var (must be `ws://`/`wss://`); when set it overrides the stored setting for the host connection, the pairing candidate, and status, so paired clients inherit the endpoint automatically.
-`identity.js` — the host's stable identity: the long-lived signing keypair (shared with the push relay, defines the routing id) plus a long-lived encryption keypair (the E2EE trust anchor). Reused across restarts; never rotated implicitly.
-`signing-key.js` — storage/derivation of the signing keypair and the routing id, shared with the notifications runtime.
-`host-client.js` — the long-lived connection manager: one outbound control connection to the relay, a per-client data connection for each connected device, reconnect/backoff, and the E2EE responder handshake per connection.
-`host-lock.js` — the per-machine host claim. Every local instance sharing the data dir shares the relay identity (same serverId), so concurrent relay hosts evict each other at the relay worker (`4001: Control replaced`) and paired devices land on whichever local process won last. The claim file (`<data-dir>/relay-host.lock`, `{ pid }`) makes this deterministic: `service.js` only starts the host when no LIVE process holds the claim (stale claims from dead pids are ignored), goes to `standby` otherwise, and a 30s watcher both takes over when the claimant dies and stands down when another process claims. A standby watcher waits a 2-minute grace after the claim frees before taking over, so a cleanly restarting host (app update/relaunch) — which reclaims at boot with no wait — always wins the restart window over a bystander instance. Explicit user intent — creating a pairing link or hitting `/relay/enable` — force-claims; the previous holder's watcher sees the takeover and backs off instead of fighting. Instances created with `allowPassiveHost: false` (dev servers via `OPENCHAMBER_RELAY_HOST=off`, the Electron dev shell via `OPENCHAMBER_ELECTRON_DEV`; `OPENCHAMBER_RELAY_HOST=on` overrides) never start the host passively at all — boot, demand reconcile, and watcher takeover leave them in `standby`; only explicit enable/pairing hosts there. The claim is cooperative (the relay worker still enforces the single host slot); it only decides which process keeps retrying.
-`tunnel-host.js` — the per-connection dispatcher: decrypts tunnel frames and forwards HTTP/SSE/WS to the local server over loopback, then streams responses back. Enforces a path allowlist and never injects credentials.
-`downstream-scheduler.js` owns end-client delivery credit and round-robin transmission across response streams. It selects plaintext frames before encryption.
-`tunnel-client.ts` — the client tunnel: exposes a `fetch()`-compatible and a WebSocket-compatible surface backed by the encrypted tunnel.
-`tunnel-payloads.ts`, `runtime-tunnel.ts`, `runtime-socket.ts` — payload helpers, the active-tunnel singleton, and the shared "open a runtime WebSocket the right way" helper.
Relay is not a separate link format: it is one transport candidate inside the unified **pairing v2** payload (`packages/ui/src/lib/connectionPayload.ts`). A relay candidate is `{ type: 'relay', relayUrl, serverId, hostEncPubJwk }` — no embedded token; the client redeems the one-time pairing secret over the tunnel like any other candidate.
- **SSE** — long-lived streamed responses (the event stream and notifications). These are just HTTP responses whose body streams; the tunnel needs no special SSE handling.
- **WebSocket** — the endpoints that use a real socket (the global event stream on platforms that support WS, terminal I/O, dictation, and desktop dev-server previews).
Request bodies crossing the tunnel are buffered on the host and forwarded to loopback only once the client's `StreamEnd` frame arrives (bodies above ~512 KB stream live instead). A body whose frames were lost in transit therefore never reaches the loopback server as an empty/truncated chunked body — the host aborts the stream and the client sees an ambiguous transport failure it can retry, instead of the loopback server's bare `400` ("Failed to send message (400)" from the mobile app).
- The tunnel is **transport only**. The OpenChamber server still authenticates every tunneled request exactly as it authenticates a direct remote client. The relay path grants reachability, not authorization.
- Clients carry their normal credential. HTTP and SSE requests authenticate with the client's bearer token (a header). **WebSocket upgrades cannot send headers**, so they authenticate with a short-lived URL-scoped token minted beforehand and passed as a query parameter. This asymmetry is important when adding new WebSocket features (see the skill).
- The host authenticates itself to the relay with a signed handshake using its long-lived signing key.
- Enabling the relay is explicit opt-in and disabled by default; disabling it severs all relay reachability immediately.
1.**Pairing.** The host issues a pairing-v2 link (QR / deep link) carrying a one-time secret and a list of transport candidates. When the relay is enabled, one candidate is the relay transport (its endpoint, routing id, and encryption public key — the E2EE trust anchor). The client redeems the secret over the first reachable candidate; over the relay candidate it opens the E2EE tunnel first, then redeems through it, and stores the connection.
2.**Presence.** When the relay is enabled, the host opens one outbound control connection and waits.
3.**Connect.** The client connects for a given routing id; the relay notifies the host over the control connection; the host opens a matching per-client data connection.
4.**Handshake.** Over that connection pair, client and host run the E2EE handshake and derive a shared encrypted channel the relay cannot read.
5.**Traffic.** All normal app traffic is multiplexed and encrypted through that channel. On the host, decrypted requests are dispatched to the local server over loopback with the actual loopback origin, so normal origin checks still apply without trusting client-supplied origin metadata; responses stream back encrypted. Reconnects re-establish a fresh channel and the app's existing retry machinery recovers.
The E2EE and framing logic exists twice: TypeScript in `packages/ui/src/lib/relay/` (shared by the client and the normative reference) and a JavaScript mirror in this module (the host, which is plain JS ESM). They **must stay byte-compatible** — a client encrypted by one must decrypt on the other. A cross-compatibility test (`cross-compat.test.js`) imports the TS modules directly and exercises a full TS-client ↔ JS-host exchange. Any change to the wire format, frame codec, handshake, or batching must update both sides and keep that test green.
## Runtime integration (client)
Relay mode plugs into the existing client transport layer rather than a parallel path: `runtime-switch` activates the tunnel singleton, `runtime-fetch` routes runtime requests through it, `runtime-url`/`runtime-socket` yield tunnel-backed URLs and sockets, and `runtime-auth` mints the URL-scoped token through the tunnel. Direct-URL connections and the Electron realtime-proxy path are unaffected.
## Design invariants (do not regress)
- The relay never sees plaintext application traffic; it sees only routing metadata (routing id, connection identifiers, timestamps, coarse counts).
- Pairing secrets travel in URL fragments only, never in query strings, never logged.
- The host dispatcher never injects credentials; the server authenticates each tunneled request.
- The tunnel is transparent to the app: adding relay support to a feature should not require the feature to know the relay exists — it goes through the shared runtime transport helpers.
- The two implementations stay byte-compatible and the wire format is versioned/negotiated so mixed client/host app versions degrade gracefully rather than break.
For the operational rules that keep future changes (new WebSocket endpoints, transport refactors, terminal/voice porting) from breaking this, load the `relay-transport` skill.
