An unloaded balance rendered as `0`. Zero is not a loading state — it is
a number, and it is the one number that frightens people. Someone
opening the dashboard while the RPCs were still in flight was told, in
the wallet's own typeface, that their money was gone.
There is no formatting fix for that. The fix is to stop claiming a
figure we do not have, so `null` now means "not known yet" and `0` means
"none", and the two are kept apart end to end: the refs start at null,
a rail becomes a number only when its call actually succeeds, and a
snapshot key that was never written stays unknown instead of becoming a
zero.
In place of the figure, a small dot-matrix scans in the rail's own
colour. It inherits currentColor, so on-chain shimmers orange, Lightning
yellow, Cashu purple, Fedimint blue and Ark teal with no colour table to
keep in sync — and it is sized to the figure it stands in for, so
nothing jumps when the real number lands. It carries role="status" and
names what it is waiting for; a shimmering box with no text is nothing
at all to a screen reader.
Two consequences worth stating. The total is withheld until every rail
that makes it up is known — summing nulls as zero would show a total
*lower* than the rails beneath it, which is worse than showing nothing
because it looks authoritative. And the Ark row stays hidden while its
balance is unknown, since "unknown" must not be read as "> 0" on the
many nodes with no Ark sidecar.
The LND app UI had the same bug in a different shape: its tiles start as
an em-dash, but renderBalances() runs on every poll including before the
first response, and `num(null && …)` is 0 — so the dashes were painted
over with "0 sats" almost immediately. Same treatment, in plain CSS.
Also fixes a stale assertion in AppHeroSection's suite, which has been
red since 9ccc325a changed "Restarting..." to a real ellipsis; and two
test proofs that used a plausible-looking hex string for `C`. The V3
codec never parses that field so it went unnoticed, but the V4 encoder
hands it to the reference implementation, which checks the point is
actually on secp256k1. Real curve points now.
Frontend: 996 tests green. Backend: 1436 green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Archipelago
Self-sovereign Bitcoin node OS and manifest-driven app platform.
Archipelago is a bootable personal server OS for Bitcoin infrastructure,
self-hosted apps, mesh communication, decentralized identity, and federation.
Apps are packaged as declarative manifest.yml files and run as rootless
Podman containers managed by the Rust backend.
What is here
core/- Rust workspace: backend API, container runtime, security, OpenWrt helpers, and performance/resource management.neode-ui/- Vue 3 + TypeScript frontend.apps/- app manifests and custom app container sources.docker/- supporting container build contexts for UI companion surfaces.image-recipe/- bootable image/ISO build inputs.Android/- Android companion app.scripts/- development, release, deployment, and validation tooling.docs/- architecture, app packaging, operations, API, and roadmap docs.
Platform model
Archipelago is built as a developer-ready app platform, not a fixed appliance:
- Apps are declared in
apps/<app-id>/manifest.yml. - The Rust parser in
core/container/src/manifest.rsis the canonical schema. - The orchestrator compiles manifests to rootless Podman/Quadlet runtime state.
- App data lives under
/var/lib/archipelago/<app-id>/. - Secrets are generated or read from
/var/lib/archipelago/secrets/and injected through Podman secrets rather than static environment values. - Release and app catalogs are signed and verified against a pinned trust anchor.
Start with:
- Architecture
- Developer Guide
- App Developer Guide
- App Manifest Spec
- Nostr Git Source Hosting Plan
- Troubleshooting
Quick start
Frontend
cd neode-ui
npm install
npm start
The dev UI runs at http://localhost:8100 with a mock backend on :5959.
Backend
cd core
cargo build
cargo test --all-features
Linux is the supported backend runtime and release-build target. macOS is fine for frontend work and many Rust compile/test loops, but host integration tests that touch Podman, systemd, networking, or image build paths require Linux.
App manifests
./scripts/validate-app-manifest.sh apps/filebrowser/manifest.yml
python3 scripts/generate-app-catalog.py
python3 scripts/check-app-catalog-drift.py --release --strict
scripts/generate-app-catalog.py requires Python with PyYAML installed.
Documentation map
The full, grouped index lives at docs/README.md. The most common entry points:
| Doc | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Architecture | System layers, crates, data paths, security model |
| Developer Guide | Local setup, code workflow, testing |
| API Reference | JSON-RPC API overview |
| App Developer Guide | How to package and test apps |
| App Manifest Spec | Manifest schema and validation rules |
| Nostr Git Source Hosting Plan | ngit/NIP-34 contribution workflow and maintainer model |
| Apps README | Packaged app catalog overview |
| Image Recipe | Bootable image build flow |
| Roadmap | Shipped, in-progress, and planned work |
| Archive | Historical plans, audits, and handoffs |
Contributing
Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request. For security issues, follow SECURITY.md and do not open a public issue.
License
Archipelago is licensed under the MIT License. Third-party notices are listed in NOTICE and generated license inventories in component release artifacts.