textwire

Browse the web and search from a phone with no data connection, over plain SMS.

  • 26 commits
  • last push 14 Oct

Active

The phone texts a request to a number the server owns. The server fetches the page or runs the search, reduces it to readable text, compresses it with a trained zstd dictionary and sends it back as numbered SMS frames. The app reassembles them, asks again for any that went missing, and shows a clean, tappable page. Built and tested end to end in process, including lost and reordered texts, and runnable with no phone and no account.

What stands out

  • Trained zstd dictionary and a framed wire format with golden vectors
  • Retransmission of lost and reordered SMS frames
  • make simulate runs the real server against a virtual phone, sends nothing
  • A hard daily SMS budget caps the cost of any mistake
  • Landing page and handbook built from the repository's own Markdown