Touchline Relay

Translate one tournament alert locally with QVAC, then deliver the bilingual update directly to joined peers through PearRuntime and Hyperswarm—without an application server.

Touchline Relay is a desktop matchday tool for grassroots football tournaments. An organizer writes a short operational update, translates it on-device with QVAC Bergamot (English → Spanish, French, German, or Portuguese), previews both versions, and publishes a structured announcement to a shared room. A second app instance receives it over Hyperswarm and keeps it in local history.

Why this exists

Tournament updates often get lost across WhatsApp, email, and team apps. When a pitch changes or check-in moves, late or fragmented messages cost volunteers and teams real time. Touchline Relay keeps one critical action: compose → translate locally → publish to reachable peers.

Sponsor stack (load-bearing)

Layer	Technology	Role
Local AI	QVAC SDK + Bergamot EN→ES/FR/DE/PT	On-device translation on the organizer’s machine
Desktop shell	Electron (Forge package)	UI + main-process QVAC lifecycle
P2P runtime	PearRuntime / Bare worker	Owns Hyperswarm membership and relay
Networking	Hyperswarm	Direct peer delivery of structured announcements

There is no cloud translation API, application server, account system, wallet, or general chat feed.

Honest network language

• Translation runs locally after the Bergamot model is cached.
• Messages travel directly between reachable peers.
• Peer discovery still requires network reachability (Hyperswarm bootstrap / DHT). This is not claimed as fully offline LAN messaging.

For judges

• 3-minute voiceover + shot list: docs/demo-script.md
• Submission paste pack: docs/submission-draft.md
• What we cut: docs/roadmap.md

Demo workflow (about 2 minutes)

1. Launch two instances with separate --storage paths.
2. Join the same room name on both.
3. Wait until each shows 1 peer.
4. On the organizer: set venue + priority, write an English alert, click Translate locally.
5. Confirm Spanish preview and Publish to room.
6. On the receiver: the bilingual structured announcement appears in Announcements.

Prerequisites

• Linux x64 recommended for the verified package path (this repo also carries macOS/Windows packaging config from the Pear Electron starter).
• Node.js 20+ and npm.
• Network access for first-time dependency install and QVAC model download/cache.
• A display (or Xvfb) to run the Electron UI.

Setup

git clone https://github.com/ShalyX/touchline-relay.git
cd touchline-relay
npm install

If Electron fails to install:

rm -rf node_modules/electron
npm rebuild electron

Windows setup (recording on a PC)

If you see:

Error: Cannot find addon '.' ... rocksdb-native

that almost always means a broken/partial npm install (e.g. earlier ENOSPC) or native modules not rebuilt for Electron.

# 1) Free disk first (need ~10GB free)
Get-PSDrive C

# 2) Clean install
cd C:\Users\USER\touchline-relay
git pull
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force node_modules -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Remove-Item -Force package-lock.json -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
npm cache clean --force
npm install

# 3) Rebuild natives for this Electron version
npx --yes @electron/rebuild -f

# 4) Confirm the Windows prebuild exists and is non-empty
Get-Item .\node_modules\rocksdb-native\prebuilds\win32-x64\*.node | Format-Table Name,Length

# 5) Start two peers
npm start -- --storage .\demo-a
# second terminal:
npm start -- --storage .\demo-b

If rebuild fails, install Visual C++ Redistributable x64 and retry npx @electron/rebuild -f.

Run

Development:

npm start -- --storage /tmp/touchline-a

Second peer (required for the demo; custom storage bypasses the single-instance lock):

npm start -- --storage /tmp/touchline-b

Root / hermesbox (this machine runs as root):

# always pass --no-sandbox as root (also baked into npm start)
npm start -- --storage /tmp/touchline-a

# no display / SSH headless:
xvfb-run -a npm start -- --storage /tmp/touchline-a

Demo helpers:

npm run start:demo-a
npm run start:demo-b

Optional Chromium remote debugging (used by automated QA):

npm start -- --storage /tmp/touchline-a --remote-debugging-port 9222

How users get the app

This is a desktop app, not a website. Users install/run it on their machine (organizer laptop, ops desk, second peer device).

Option A — from source (MVP / hackathon)

git clone https://github.com/ShalyX/touchline-relay.git
cd touchline-relay
npm install
npm start -- --storage ./data-organizer

Another peer (second machine or second terminal):

npm start -- --storage ./data-peer

Join the same room key on both. Translate on the organizer. The peer receives the bilingual alert.

Option B — packaged binary

npm run package
# Linux:
# out/Touchline Relay-linux-x64/Touchline Relay

Zip that folder (or build installers later) and hand it to users. No account, no cloud API key, no app server.

What “local” does not mean

• Not “terminal only forever” — Electron is a normal desktop UI.
• Not “offline guaranteed” — peer discovery still needs network reachability.
• Not multi-tenant SaaS — there is no hosted production URL in this MVP.

Static design preview (populated mock, not live network): open renderer/index.html?demo=1 in a browser.

Verify

npm test
npm run lint
npm run qvac:smoke
npm run package

What those mean:

• npm test — protocol, renderer state, instance policy, QVAC translator unit tests, and a two-peer Hyperswarm structured-announcement integration test.
• npm run qvac:smoke — real local Bergamot EN→ES translation via @qvac/sdk.
• npm run package — Electron Forge package plus a postPackage hook that restores the unstripped QVAC native prebuild (Forge otherwise truncates the Vulkan shared library).

Packaged Linux app:

out/Touchline Relay-linux-x64/Touchline Relay

Architecture

┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ Renderer (vanilla HTML/CSS/JS)│
│ room · compose · preview · UI │
└──────────────┬───────────────┘
               │ preload bridge
┌──────────────▼───────────────┐
│ Electron main                │
│ QVAC load/translate/unload   │
│ PearRuntime.run(worker)      │
└──────────────┬───────────────┘
               │ framed IPC
┌──────────────▼───────────────┐
│ Bare worker (PearRuntime)    │
│ Hyperswarm room join/publish │
│ structured NDJSON wire msgs  │
└──────────────────────────────┘

Key source:

• electron/main.js — window, QVAC IPC, Pear worker lifecycle, multi-instance policy
• lib/qvac-translator.js — official Bergamot EN→ES path
• lib/protocol.js — room key, validation, wire format, duplicate filter
• workers/main.js + workers/relay-node.js — Pear/Bare relay
• renderer/ — editorial desktop UI (“Crossing the line” mark, proof drawer)

Verified evidence (this build)

Independently verified on Linux x64:

• 16/16 automated tests pass.
• Lint exits 0 (existing require-await warnings only).
• QVAC smoke produces real Spanish output.
• Packaging preserves QVAC native library byte-for-byte vs node_modules.
• Two Electron instances with separate storage:
  • join the same room and see 1 peer each
  • organizer translates with local QVAC Bergamot
  • receiver history shows English + Spanish structured announcement
  • publisher records local relay acceptance only (not universal delivery)

Example translated line from live UI QA:

Kickoff se traslada a Pitch 2 a las 14:30. Reúnase en la puerta norte.

Bergamot quality is operational, not human-editor grade. Venue tags stay structured so names remain unambiguous.

Nice-to-haves included

• Leave room without restarting the app
• Peer receipt ACKs (connected peers only — not universal delivery)
• Target languages: Spanish, French, German, Portuguese (QVAC Bergamot EN→*)
• Installer notes: scripts/make-release-notes.md and docs/roadmap.md

Limitations

• English → Spanish only in MVP.
• No leave-room beyond process restart in MVP.
• No end-to-end delivery receipts from every peer—only local relay acceptance + observed peer receive.
• First model download can take time; keep the demo script ready for a cached model.
• Packaging fix is especially important on Linux x64 for @qvac/translation-nmtcpp.

License

MIT. Bootstrapped from the official holepunchto/hello-pear-electron starter architecture, then rebuilt for Touchline Relay.

Docs

• docs/decision.md — concept selection
• docs/design-brief.md — UI specification
• docs/submission-draft.md — DoraHacks paste-ready copy