Getting Started

This guide walks you through setting up a Styrene workstation and joining the mesh.

Prerequisites

  • macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel) or Linux (NixOS, Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora)
  • A terminal

Install nex

nex is the machine lifecycle tool. It manages packages, identity, and provisioning.

curl -fsSL https://nex.styrene.io/install.sh | sh

Or via Cargo:

cargo install nex-pkg

Bootstrap your machine

nex init

This installs Nix (via Determinate installer) and Homebrew (on macOS), scaffolds a nix-darwin or NixOS configuration, and prepares the machine for declarative package management.

Create your identity

nex identity init

Prompts for a passphrase. Generates ~/.config/styrene/identity.key — an encrypted file containing your 32-byte root secret. All protocol keys (SSH, git signing, age, WireGuard, mesh) are derived deterministically from this root.

Back up this file. Losing it means losing your identity.

Configure git signing

nex identity git
# Prompts for name and email, configures git globally

Register SSH keys

nex identity ssh --add github
# Registers the label and prints the pubkey — paste into GitHub

Verify

nex identity show
# Displays hash, pubkey, SSH host key, age key

nex doctor
# Checks identity file, permissions, git signing, SSH labels

Install mesh tools

nex install ykman          # YubiKey Manager (if using hardware identity)

Start the mesh daemon

styrened                    # standalone daemon (current)
# styrene daemon            # unified binary (coming soon)

On first run with no identity file, the daemon generates one automatically. If you already ran nex identity init, it uses that.

The daemon:

  1. Loads the StyreneIdentity
  2. Initializes Reticulum transport
  3. Connects to the Styrene Community Hub for transport relay and LXMF propagation
  4. Begins discovering peers on the mesh

Verify mesh status

styrene status     # Show node identity, uptime, peer count
styrene peers      # List discovered mesh peers
styrene announce   # Broadcast your identity

Provision edge devices

USB installer

nex forge user/my-profile --disk /dev/sdX

Builds a bootable NixOS USB with your profile baked in. Boot the target, run the installer, and the device joins the mesh automatically.

OCI container

nex build-image user/my-profile

Apply a profile to an existing machine

nex profile apply user/my-profile

Configuration

nex config

~/.config/nex/config.toml — package management preferences, identity config (SSH labels, git name/email).

Styrene config

~/.config/styrene/ — identity file, daemon configuration.

~/.styrene/ — daemon database, IPC socket.

Next steps

Graph

Backlinks