Durable store-and-forward transport for unattended devices over Tor
Aromatic is a small demonstrator for moving authenticated low-bandwidth payloads between remote devices and a central collector without public IPs, exposed DNS, or vendor cloud dependency.
It is designed for situations where:
- networks are awkward
- topology is opaque
- public reachability is painful
- uptime matters more than speed
- small payloads matter more than streams
Aromatic is not a dashboard, a fleet platform, or a remote shell.
It is a narrow tool with one job: accept small payloads locally, persist them safely, deliver them over Tor, and only forget them after confirmed receipt. That’s it.
Why this exists
A lot of remote infrastructure still depends on fragile assumptions: exposed services, public IPs, VPN complexity, DNS dependency, vendor cloud control planes, and centralized failure domains.
That model works until it doesn’t.
For unattended systems—field sensors, remote telemetry, difficult network environments, long-lived infrastructure—boring durability matters more than convenience theater. Aromatic explores a simpler model:
local process -> durable queue -> Tor -> collector -> durable inbox
No public surface. No required cloud service. No account-based trust model. Just durable delivery.
Architecture
Aromatic is a single Rust binary with two roles:
aromatic node
Runs on the remote device.
- accepts payloads from local processes
- stores them durably before transmission
- sends them to the configured hub over Tor
- retries if delivery fails
- deletes only after valid ack
aromatic hub
Runs on the receiving side.
- receives messages from nodes
- verifies integrity and identity
- stores them durably
- emits ack
- exposes minimal inspection/export commands
Delivery Semantics (The Actual Product)
Not speed. Not UI. Not dashboards. Durability.
Every message is:
- accepted locally
- persisted locally
- assigned sequence metadata
- hashed and signed
- transmitted
- acknowledged by the hub
- removed only after valid ack
If the network disappears, the message stays queued. If Tor restarts, delivery resumes. If the device reboots, the queue survives.
Quickstart
1. Initialize hub
aromatic hub init aromatic hub invite
2. Initialize node
aromatic node init aromatic node enroll --invite <code>
3. Send a payload
echo '{"temp_c": -18.2, "battery": 87}' \ | aromatic node send --stdin --type application/json
4. Inspect hub inbox
aromatic hub inbox
Status & Evaluation Build
Aromatic is a demonstrator. It exists to support real conversations with operators and researchers before pretending we know the final product shape. The goal is not to build a startup from assumptions; the goal is to build less stupid things.
This evaluation build uses shareware-style limits instead of subscriptions or hard shutdowns. Evaluation limits include:
- 1 hub
- limited enrolled nodes
- payload size cap
- retained message cap
If limits are reached: no silent failure, no data loss, and existing data remains readable/exportable.