#1113779 RFP: shwim -- Peer-to-peer terminal sharing

#1113779#5
Date:
2025-09-02 13:37:35 UTC
From:
To:
* Package name    : shwim
  Version         : 25.9.0
  Upstream Contact: meejah
* URL             : https://github.com/meejah/shwim
* License         : MIT/Expat?
  Programming Lang: Python
  Description     : Peer-to-peer terminal sharing

SHell WIth Me lets a “host” share their terminal with a “guest” peer
on another computer.

This combines the cryptography of Magic Wormhole (via Fowl) and the
terminal-sharing of tty-share into a secure, end-to-end encrypted,
peer-to-peer terminal sharing application.

The Host computer runs shwim by itself, producing a <magic-code>. The
Guest computer runs shwim <magic-code>.

You are now sharing a single terminal running on “host”. Beware: the
guest can type, run commands, etc. so only do this with humans you
would hand your local keyboard over to.

The Host may pass --read-only to ignore input from the Guest.

The ShWiM terminal UI running, showing a connection to the mailbox
server, generated code but no peer yet Slightly Longer Explanation

Once the two things happen (i.e. “shwim” on the host and “shwim ” on
the guest), there is a secure tunnel between both computers. The host
will decide a random port and run tty-share as a server; the guest
will run tty-share as a client.

On both computers, tty-share will be running as a subprocess with
correct options to do networking via Magic Wormhole only. All raw-mode
terminal I/O is forwarded to this tty-share process so things like
curses etc work as expected.

Once either side exits, the networking forwarding is done – there is
no long-term credential sharing or any other network set preserved or
altered on the “host” nor “guest” computers.
----

tty-share and wormhole are already in debian, this should be pretty
easy to package.

#1113779#12
Date:
2026-10-03 17:39:01 UTC
From:
To:
This software is now located at https://github.com/magic-wormhole/shwim

The license is MIT.

I'm happy to make any (reasonable) changes to the software that make Debian packaging easier.

#1113779#17
Date:
2026-10-03 20:52:12 UTC
From:
To:
I took a look and it seems to depend on a higher version of
magic-wormhole than we have in debian, 0.24.0 > 0.18.0. So that will
have to be updated before this can be packaged.

But otherwise it should be straightforward as anarcat mentioned. I'm
willing to take it on if the aforementioned update is likely to happen.

sney