Network Commands

Network commands manage the peer-to-peer gene discovery layer. In v0.5, these commands are foundation-stage stubs — they manage local configuration and display placeholder output, but no real libp2p networking occurs. Gene discovery currently goes through the Cloud Registry.

rotifer network status

Show the current P2P node configuration and status.

rotifer network status

Example:

$ rotifer network status

  ── P2P Network Status ──

  Node ID:          a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890
  Status:           ○ Inactive
  Listen Port:      9878
  Bootstrap Peers:  1

  Start the node: rotifer network start

rotifer network start

Initialize the P2P node configuration and mark it as active.

rotifer network start [--port <port>]

Flags:

Flag	Default	Description
`-p, --port <port>`	`9878`	Listen port for P2P connections

Example:

$ rotifer network start --port 9900

  ── Starting P2P Node ──

  Node ID:   a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890
  Listen:    /ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/9900
  Protocol:  rotifer/gene-discovery/1.0.0

  Connecting to bootstrap peers...
    → /dns4/bootstrap.rotifer.dev/tcp/9878

  ⚠ P2P networking is in foundation stage (v0.5).
    Gene metadata discovery is available; binary transfer uses Cloud CDN.

  ✓ P2P node initialized

Configuration is saved to ~/.rotifer/network.json.

rotifer network stop

Deactivate the P2P node.

rotifer network stop

rotifer network peers

List known peers. Requires the node to be active.

rotifer network peers

Example:

$ rotifer network peers

  ── Known Peers ──

  #     Address                                     Status
  ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  1     /dns4/bootstrap.rotifer.dev/tcp/9878        bootstrap

  1 peer(s) known

rotifer network search <query>

Search for genes via the P2P network. Currently falls back to Cloud search.

rotifer network search <query>

Example:

$ rotifer network search "code formatter"

  ── P2P Gene Search ──

  Searching P2P network for: "code formatter"
  Querying DHT for gene metadata...

  ⚠ P2P gene search is in foundation stage (stub).
    Currently, all gene discovery goes through the Cloud Registry.

  Use 'rotifer search' for Cloud-based gene discovery.

rotifer network announce <name>

Announce a gene’s metadata to the P2P network. Requires the node to be active.

rotifer network announce <name>

Example:

$ rotifer network announce grammar-checker

  ── Gene Announcement ──

  Announcing gene 'grammar-checker' to P2P network...
  Broadcasting gene metadata via GossipSub...

  ⚠ P2P gene announcement is in foundation stage (stub).
    Gene metadata propagation to connected peers is planned for a future release.
    For now, use 'rotifer publish' to share via Cloud Registry.

Configuration

All network configuration is stored in ~/.rotifer/network.json:

{
  "node_id": "a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890",
  "listen_port": 9878,
  "bootstrap_peers": [
    "/dns4/bootstrap.rotifer.dev/tcp/9878"
  ],
  "enabled": false
}

Planned Features (v0.8+)

Feature	Description
libp2p integration	Real peer-to-peer networking via rust-libp2p
Kademlia DHT	Distributed peer discovery
GossipSub propagation	Gene metadata broadcast to connected peers
QUIC + TCP transport	NAT traversal and fallback
IPFS CID storage	Content-addressable gene packages