Bread

A reactive automation fabric for Linux desktops.

Bread is a modular desktop automation runtime built around a single idea: your desktop should behave like a programmable system, not a collection of disconnected config files.

Instead of scattering behavior across shell scripts, compositor configs, udev rules, and ad-hoc daemons, Bread centralizes runtime awareness into a coherent layer that can observe, interpret, and react to system state dynamically.

Status: Early development. The daemon (breadd) is stable. The Lua automation API is under active development.

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How it works

Bread runs a long-lived daemon (breadd) that:

1. Ingests raw signals from your compositor, hardware, and OS
2. Normalizes them into stable, semantic events (bread.device.dock.connected, bread.monitor.connected, etc.)
3. Maintains a live model of your desktop state
4. Delivers those events to Lua modules that implement your automation

Your automation lives in Lua. You subscribe to events, read state, and call APIs:

bread.on("bread.device.dock.connected", function()
    bread.profile.activate("desk")
    bread.exec("waybar --config ~/.config/waybar/desk.jsonc")
end)

bread.on("bread.device.dock.disconnected", function()
    bread.profile.activate("default")
end)

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Architecture

breadd/          Rust daemon — event pipeline, state engine, IPC, adapter supervision
bread-cli/       CLI frontend — talks to breadd over a Unix socket
bread-shared/    Shared types — RawEvent, BreadEvent, AdapterSource
packaging/       Arch PKGBUILD and systemd user service

The daemon is structured in four layers:

• Adapters — interface with Hyprland IPC, udev, power state, and network interfaces
• Normalizer — transforms raw adapter signals into semantic Bread events
• State engine — maintains runtime state and dispatches events to subscribers
• Lua runtime — loads your modules, registers handlers, executes automation

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Requirements

• Linux (Arch recommended)
• Wayland compositor (Hyprland for full functionality)
• Rust toolchain (stable, 2021 edition)
• udev (standard on systemd systems)

Optional but preferred:

• UPower (for battery events via D-Bus rather than sysfs polling)
• rtnetlink (for network events; falls back to sysfs polling without it)

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Installation

From source

git clone https://github.com/Breadway/bread.git
cd bread
cargo build --release

Binaries will be at target/release/breadd and target/release/bread.

Install them:

sudo install -Dm755 target/release/breadd /usr/local/bin/breadd
sudo install -Dm755 target/release/bread /usr/local/bin/bread

Arch Linux (PKGBUILD)

cd packaging/arch
makepkg -si

systemd user service

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cp packaging/systemd/breadd.service ~/.config/systemd/user/
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now breadd

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Configuration

Bread reads from ~/.config/bread/breadd.toml. All values are optional — the daemon runs with defaults if the file doesn't exist.

[daemon]
log_level = "info"   # trace | debug | info | warn | error

[lua]
entry_point = "~/.config/bread/init.lua"
module_path = "~/.config/bread/modules"

[adapters.hyprland]
enabled = true

[adapters.udev]
enabled = true
subsystems = ["usb", "input", "drm", "power_supply"]

[adapters.power]
enabled = true
poll_interval_secs = 30

[adapters.network]
enabled = true

[events]
dedup_window_ms = 100

Your automation lives in ~/.config/bread/init.lua:

-- ~/.config/bread/init.lua

require("modules.devices")
require("modules.workspaces")

bread.on("bread.system.startup", function()
    bread.profile.activate("default")
end)

---

CLI reference

All commands communicate with the running daemon over a Unix socket at $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/bread/breadd.sock.

bread reload                          # Hot-reload all Lua modules
bread state                           # Dump full runtime state as JSON
bread events                          # Stream live normalized events
bread events --filter bread.device.*  # Stream filtered events
bread modules                         # List loaded modules and status
bread profile-list                    # List defined profiles
bread profile-activate <name>         # Activate a named profile
bread emit <event> --data '{}'        # Manually fire an event (for testing)
bread ping                            # Check daemon connectivity
bread health                          # Daemon version, uptime, PID

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Event reference

Events follow the namespace convention bread.<subsystem>.<noun>.<verb>.

Event	Trigger
bread.system.startup	Daemon fully initialized
bread.device.connected	Any device attached
bread.device.disconnected	Any device removed
bread.device.dock.connected	Dock attached
bread.device.dock.disconnected	Dock removed
bread.device.keyboard.connected	Keyboard attached
bread.monitor.connected	Display connected
bread.monitor.disconnected	Display disconnected
bread.workspace.changed	Active workspace changed
bread.window.focus.changed	Focused window changed
bread.window.opened	Window opened
bread.window.closed	Window closed
bread.power.ac.connected	AC adapter plugged in
bread.power.ac.disconnected	AC adapter unplugged
bread.power.battery.low	Battery ≤ 20%
bread.power.battery.very_low	Battery ≤ 10%
bread.power.battery.critical	Battery ≤ 5%
bread.power.battery.full	Battery at 100%
bread.network.connected	Network interface came online
bread.network.disconnected	Network interface went offline
bread.profile.activated	Profile switched

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Lua API

Events

-- Subscribe to an event
bread.on("bread.monitor.connected", function(event)
    print(event.data.name)
end)

-- Subscribe once, then auto-unsubscribe
bread.once("bread.system.startup", function(event)
    -- runs exactly once
end)

-- Emit a custom event (for cross-module communication)
bread.emit("mymodule.something", { key = "value" })

State

-- Read a value from runtime state by dot-separated path
local monitors = bread.state.get("monitors")
local workspace = bread.state.get("active_workspace")
local power = bread.state.get("power")

Profiles

bread.profile.activate("desk")
bread.profile.activate("default")

Execution

-- Fire-and-forget: returns immediately, process runs in background
bread.exec("kitty")
bread.exec("notify-send 'Dock connected'")

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IPC protocol

The daemon exposes a Unix socket at $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/bread/breadd.sock. The protocol is newline-delimited JSON — useful for scripting or building tooling outside the CLI.

Request:

{ "id": "1", "method": "state.get", "params": { "key": "monitors" } }

Response:

{ "id": "1", "result": [ { "name": "HDMI-A-1", "connected": true } ] }

Available methods: ping, health, state.get, state.dump, modules.list, modules.reload, profile.list, profile.activate, events.subscribe, emit.

events.subscribe upgrades the connection to a streaming mode — the daemon pushes events line by line until the client disconnects.

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Contributing

Bread is early-stage software. Contributions, issues, and feedback are welcome.

The daemon (breadd) is the most stable part of the codebase. The Lua API surface is where most active development is happening.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.