A BitTorrent client that lets you search inside the files you share — and find torrents that other peers publish — all on the same mainline DHT every other client already uses.
SwartzNet behaves like any other BitTorrent client on the wire — a vanilla peer sees a normal BEP-3/5/9/10/44 connection — but it adds full-text search across the content you've downloaded, optional keyword search across every SwartzNet peer you're connected to, and a DHT-backed discovery layer that lets you find torrents by topic rather than just by infohash.
- Search inside your torrents, not just their names. PDFs, EPUB / DOCX / ODT office docs, subtitles (SRT/VTT), plaintext and source code are text-extracted on completion and indexed with Bleve. Bleve's query syntax (
+required,-excluded,"phrases",field:value) all work. - Three frontends, one daemon. CLI for scripting, browser-based web UI at
http://localhost:7654/, and a native cross-platform desktop GUI — all running against the same engine, index, and config. - Distributed keyword search, no new network. Two peers that speak the
sn_searchBEP-10 extension can query each other's indexes over the same TCP connection they're already using for BitTorrent. Keyword → infohash pointers published on the existing mainline DHT via BEP-44 mutable items. - Spam resistance built in. A persistent Bloom filter of known-good infohashes (auto-populated by successful downloads), a Bayesian-smoothed per-publisher reputation tracker, and a targeted "flag this is spam" gesture that demotes only the indexers responsible for the flagged hit.
- Full torrent-client features. Create new
.torrentfiles, select which files in a multi-file torrent to actually download, cap upload/download bandwidth, cap concurrent active downloads, per-torrent indexing opt-out, system-tray operation on Linux / macOS / Windows. - Fully backwards compatible. No new reserved bit, no new DHT verb, no new UDP port. A vanilla client sees a regular peer speaking BEP-3/5/9/10/44.
Head to the latest release and download:
| Platform | CLI | GUI |
|---|---|---|
| Linux x86_64 | swartznet-vX.Y.Z-linux-amd64 |
swartznet-gui-vX.Y.Z-linux-amd64 |
| Linux ARM64 | swartznet-vX.Y.Z-linux-arm64 |
(build from source) |
| macOS Intel | swartznet-vX.Y.Z-darwin-amd64 |
(build from source) |
| macOS Apple Silicon | swartznet-vX.Y.Z-darwin-arm64 |
(build from source) |
| Windows x86_64 | swartznet-vX.Y.Z-windows-amd64.exe |
(build from source) |
Verify the download with the SHA256SUMS file attached to the release:
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMSThen chmod +x swartznet-* on Unix-likes and move it somewhere on your $PATH.
The CLI binary is fully static (no CGo, no glibc dependency). The GUI binary requires a working OpenGL stack — on Linux that means libgl1 and a running X11 or Wayland session.
Requires Go 1.24 or later (pinned in go.mod).
# CLI only — pure Go, cross-compiles to every platform.
go build -o swartznet ./cmd/swartznet
# Native GUI — requires CGo and platform build deps.
# Linux: sudo apt-get install -y gcc libgl1-mesa-dev xorg-dev libxkbcommon-dev
# macOS: xcode-select --install
# Windows: MSYS2 with mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain
./scripts/build-gui.sh devFor cross-platform GUI release builds use fyne-cross (Docker-based). Details in docs/08-operations.md.
# Downloads + seeds, auto-indexes metadata and file contents.
# Also starts the HTTP API on localhost:7654 so you can open the
# web UI in a browser or use --swarm / --dht in another terminal.
swartznet add "magnet:?xt=urn:btih:..."# Local index only — works without a running daemon.
swartznet search ubuntu
swartznet search --limit 50 "ubuntu 24.04"
swartznet search +linux -windows name:iso
# Include search-capable peers you're connected to.
swartznet search --swarm ubuntu
# Also query the BEP-44 DHT keyword index.
swartznet search --swarm --dht ubuntu# Build a .torrent from a local folder, with trackers.
swartznet create -o myfiles.torrent \
--tracker https://tracker.example.com/announce \
--comment "My collection" \
/path/to/my-content
# Same, but also start seeding it from the current host.
swartznet create -o myfiles.torrent --seed \
--data-dir ~/share \
/path/to/my-contentswartznet-guiThe window presents five tabs — Downloads, Search, Status, Companion, Settings — and the app runs in your system tray so closing the window doesn't stop the daemon. See docs/08-operations.md for a tour of each tab.
 Status tab — live operational dashboard |
 Settings — sharing, bandwidth, queue |
Useful GUI flags for demos and scripting:
--torrent <path.torrent>— preload a.torrentfile at startup (repeat for multiple).--tab <downloads|search|status|companion|settings>— open on a specific tab.
Any running swartznet add daemon serves a single-page web UI at http://localhost:7654/. Same features as the native GUI, accessible over SSH port-forward without any extra install.
| Frontend | When it's the right choice | Binary |
|---|---|---|
CLI (swartznet) |
Scripts, SSH sessions, CI, headless servers | Static, ~40 MB, no CGo |
Web UI (http://localhost:7654/) |
Remote access via port-forward, no extra install | Embedded in the CLI binary via go:embed |
Native GUI (swartznet-gui) |
Desktop use with system tray, native file dialogs, create-torrent wizard, context menu | Fyne v2.7, ~46 MB, CGo (OpenGL) |
All three call into the same internal/daemon package and can run concurrently against the same data directory.
SwartzNet embeds anacrolix/torrent (Go, MPL 2.0) as its BitTorrent engine and layers three search features on top:
- Layer L (local): piece-completion callback feeds downloaded file contents through a text-extractor registry (PDF, EPUB, DOCX, ODT, plaintext, subtitles) into a local Bleve full-text index.
- Layer S (peer-wire): a BEP-10 extension called
sn_searchthat lets two SwartzNet peers exchange keyword queries over the same TCP connection they're using for BitTorrent. Strictly opt-in — vanilla peers never see a search message. - Layer D (DHT): keyword → infohash mappings published as BEP-44 mutable items on the existing mainline DHT, keyed by per-publisher ed25519 pubkey with the keyword as salt.
Read docs/05-integration-design.md for the architecture diagram, the sn_search wire format, the ingestion pipeline, and the threat model.
The docs/ directory is organized by audience. Start with docs/README.md for a guide, or jump straight to:
- Whitepaper:
docs/whitepaper.pdf(rendered) ordocs/whitepaper.md(source) — the design vision, the three search layers, and the compatibility argument in one document. - Using SwartzNet:
docs/08-operations.md - Porting
sn_searchto another client:docs/06-bep-sn_search-draft.mdanddocs/07-bep-dht-keyword-index-draft.md - Architecture:
docs/05-integration-design.md - Research background:
docs/01-04plusdocs/09anddocs/10 - History:
CHANGELOG.md(releases) anddocs/MILESTONES.md(milestone-by-milestone engineering log)
Backwards compatibility. A vanilla BitTorrent client connecting to SwartzNet sees a standard BEP-3 handshake with the LTEP bit set and a standard LTEP m dictionary; if it doesn't advertise sn_search, we never send it a search message. Items we store on the DHT are standard BEP-44 mutable items, served by vanilla nodes under the same rules as any other BEP-44 data. See docs/05-integration-design.md §8 for the explicit test matrix.
Non-goals. SwartzNet is not Tor. Users who need network-level anonymity should layer a VPN or Tor transport themselves. SwartzNet also does not enforce copyright or jurisdictional content restrictions — users are responsible for what they search and download, as with every existing BitTorrent client. See docs/05-integration-design.md §9 for the full threat model.
Default paths (Linux/macOS):
- Downloaded data:
~/.local/share/swartznet/data - Search index:
~/.local/share/swartznet/index - Persistent identity (ed25519 keypair):
~/.local/share/swartznet/identity.key - Known-good Bloom filter:
~/.local/share/swartznet/known-good.bloom - Reputation tracker:
~/.local/share/swartznet/reputation.json
All honour $XDG_DATA_HOME. All overridable with --data-dir / --index-dir and siblings. See swartznet help for the full flag list.
The HTTP API binds to localhost:7654 by default (loopback only). Override with --api-addr; set to empty string to disable.
Main branch is where active work happens. Pre-releases land on v0.x.y tags; the first GA will be v1.0.0.
# Run the test suite under -race.
go test -race ./...
# Build both binaries.
go build -o dist/swartznet ./cmd/swartznet
./scripts/build-gui.sh devSee docs/05-integration-design.md §12 for the roadmap.
Contributing. APIs are still in motion, so please open an issue before sending large patches so we can align on the approach. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the build/test workflow and the mainline-compatibility ground rules, and SECURITY.md for how to report a vulnerability privately.
Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.
The BitTorrent engine is anacrolix/torrent under MPL 2.0; the rest of this repository is Apache 2.0.