YAP

Yet Another Protocol

A small peer-to-peer messaging project written in Rust.

YAP is an experiment in building a simple messaging protocol and network stack from scratch, using QUIC for transport.

YAPPPP. I shouldn't do that. ANYWAY.

What is YAP?

YAP lets peers connect directly to each other and exchange messages.

The basic idea is:

Alice ───────── Internet ───────── Bob
          direct connection

Rather than:

Alice ──> Central server ──> Bob

The project is still under active development, so expect things to break. Spectacularly.

Workspace

YAP is split into several crates:

yap/
├── yap-protocol/    Protocol and packet definitions
├── yap-core/        Networking and peer management
└── yap-cli/         Command-line client

yap-protocol

Defines the data that YAP peers exchange.

This is kept separate from the networking code so that other YAP clients can implement the protocol without needing to use the CLI.

yap-core

Handles the actual networking.

Currently this is built around:

• Rust
• QUIC
• Quinn
• Tokio
• Serde

yap-cli

The terminal client.

Example:

yap> connect 127.0.0.1:7332
Connecting to 127.0.0.1:7332...
Connected.

yap> yap hello!

Current status

YAP is early-stage.

Currently working on:

• Rust workspace
• Separate protocol crate
• Core networking crate
• CLI client
• QUIC connections
• Peer usernames
• Direct messaging
• Chat messages
• JSON packet serialization
• Multiple peers
• Git repository
• Internet-wide peer connections
• NAT traversal
• Peer discovery
• Protocol versioning
• Encryption/identity design
• GUI clients

The long-term goal is for two YAP clients on different networks to communicate directly over the Internet.

Building

You need a recent Rust toolchain.

Clone the repository and run:

cargo check

To run the CLI:

cargo run -p yap-cli

Development

YAP is primarily a learning project.

The goal isn't to reinvent every piece of networking infrastructure on Earth. It's to understand how the pieces fit together by actually building them.

If something is broken:

that's probably part of the development process.

Contributing

Contributions, experiments, alternative clients, protocol ideas, and particularly GUI clients are welcome.

A GUI client does not need to use the YAP CLI. As long as it speaks the YAP protocol, it can be its own thing.

License

Apache License 2.0.

---

YAP.

Yet Another Protocol.

Yet another packet.

Yet another compiler error.

Yet another cargo check.

🦀