webcat

webcat

Mad science p2p pipe across the web using webrtc that uses your Github private/public key for authentication and a signalhub for discovery

npm install -g webcat

Usage

webcat lets you establish a p2p pipe to other github users over the web. Let's say I wanted to connect to @maxogden

First I need to configure webcat once

webcat --configure
Enter your github username: mafintosh

Then on my machine I run

webcat maxogden
hello max

On Max's machine he runs

webcat mafintosh
hi mathias

webcat will create a p2p pipe between connect me and max by using a signalhub to exchange webrtc metadata and Github private/public keys to authenticate that Max is actually @maxogden and that I am actually @mafintosh

On my machine my prompt now looks like

webcat maxogden
hello max
hi mathias

And on Max's machine it now looks like

webcat mafintosh
hi mathias
hello max

Use cases

You can use webcat to pipe files across the internet!

On my machine

webcat maxogden < some-file

On Max's machine

webcat mafintosh > some-file

Pipe to yourself

Assuming you have your github key on two different machines you can also open and pipe between them by using the same username.

On one machine connected to the internet that has your Github key

echo machine one | webcat mafintosh

On another machine connected to the internet that has your Github key

echo machine two | webcat mafintosh

Programmatic usage

You can use webcat from node as well.

var webcat = require('webcat')

var stream = webcat('mafintosh') // put in the name of the person you want to talk to
process.stdin.pipe(stream).pipe(process.stdout)

License

MIT