StateRelay

Problem

Developers constantly switch machines — desk, laptop, home — and lose context every time: which branch was active, what was uncommitted, which files and tabs were open, where the terminal was, what was in the browser.

Overview

StateRelay is a cross-platform workspace handoff tool for developers. It captures the working state around a Git repository — branch, commit, uncommitted file snapshots, editor context, terminal directories, and browser URLs — and moves it to another machine, so switching computers doesn't mean rebuilding your whole development context by hand.

Engineering Challenges

• Capturing a coherent snapshot of workspace state across Git, editor, terminal, and browser without a running background service
• Verifying session integrity end-to-end — SHA-256 content checks plus Ed25519-signed sessions from trusted device identities
• Local network transfer and zero-configuration device discovery via mDNS, with optional mutual TLS for trusted devices
• Restoring safely: dry-run previews and conflict protection so a restore never silently overwrites local changes

Stack

Implementation Status

• Go CLI: capture / restore / send / listen / device trust
• JSON session files with SHA-256 integrity checks
• Ed25519-signed sessions from trusted device identities
• mDNS device discovery + optional mutual TLS
• SQLite handoff history, dry-run restore, conflict protection
• VS Code extension for editor state capture/restore
• Background service
• Desktop UI
• Deeper editor/browser integrations

Architecture