aster — Hyprland Bar & Notification Daemon

Minimal Rust status bar and notification daemon for Hyprland. Replaces colorshell with a lower system footprint. No system tray, no launcher, no wallpaper logic.

Stack

Crate	Purpose
`gtk4`	UI toolkit
`gtk4-layer-shell`	Wayland layer surface anchoring
`relm4`	Component architecture for GTK4
`hyprland`	Hyprland IPC (workspace events)
`zbus`	D-Bus (notifications daemon)
`serde` + `serde_json`	Parse pywal colors.json
`tokio`	Async polling runtime

Component 1: Top Bar

Full-width bar anchored to the top of the screen via gtk4-layer-shell. Single horizontal row, three sections.

Left — Workspaces

Numbered workspace buttons sourced from Hyprland IPC
Subscribe to live workspace change events via /tmp/hypr/$HYPRLAND_INSTANCE_SIGNATURE/.socket2.sock
Active workspace highlighted with accent colour

Centre — Clock

Format: HH:MM
Updated every second

Right — System Stats

Displayed left to right: CPU% → RAM% → Power draw (W) → WiFi SSID

Stat	Source
CPU usage	`/proc/stat` delta between polls
RAM usage	`/proc/meminfo`
Power draw	`/sys/class/power_supply//power_now` or `current_now voltage_now`
WiFi SSID	Parse `iw dev` output — no NetworkManager dependency, no system tray

Polled every 2 seconds.

Component 2: Notification Daemon

Implements the org.freedesktop.Notifications D-Bus interface via zbus.

On Notify call: spawn a GTK4 layer-shell popup anchored top-right, 20px from edge
Shows: app name, summary, body
Auto-dismisses after the hint timeout (default 5s if unset by sender)
Multiple notifications stack vertically downward
Supports CloseNotification

Theming

Read ~/.cache/wal/colors.json on startup. Reload on SIGHUP for live wallpaper-change integration.

pywal key	Role
`special.background`	Bar background (with slight CSS transparency)
`colors.color0`	Widget background / secondary surfaces
`colors.color15`	Foreground text
`colors.color1`	Accent — active workspace, highlights

Apply as a GTK CSS provider at the Display level so the bar and all notification popups share the same palette automatically.

Explicit Non-Goals

No system tray (StatusNotifierItem / XEmbed)
No launcher or search (external tool handles this)
No wallpaper engine (external tool handles this)
No Bluetooth, volume, or media controls

Suggested File Structure

aster/
├── Cargo.toml
└── src/
    ├── main.rs                # Init GTK app, spawn bar + notification daemon
    ├── bar/
    │   ├── mod.rs
    │   ├── workspaces.rs      # Hyprland IPC workspace subscription
    │   ├── clock.rs           # Second-tick clock widget
    │   └── stats.rs           # CPU, RAM, power draw, WiFi SSID
    ├── notifications/
    │   ├── mod.rs             # zbus D-Bus service
    │   └── popup.rs           # GTK4 layer-shell popup window + stack
    └── theme.rs               # pywal reader + GTK CSS provider injection

Build Order for Claude Code

Follow this sequence so each step is independently testable:

Scaffold — Cargo.toml with all dependencies, module stubs, empty main.rs
Layer shell anchor — blank GTK4 window pinned to top of screen; confirm it appears correctly on your setup before adding any widgets
Theme loader — read colors.json, build CSS string, inject as CssProvider at display level
Bar layout — three-section Box, no data yet, just structure with placeholder labels
Workspaces — Hyprland IPC socket reader, live workspace buttons
Stats poller — tokio task polling CPU/RAM/power/WiFi, sending results to bar via channels
Clock — second-tick timer widget
Notification daemon — zbus service on session bus claiming org.freedesktop.Notifications
Notification popup — layer-shell window anchored top-right, vertical stack, auto-dismiss timer
Wire SIGHUP — reload colors.json and re-inject CSS on signal

First Prompt for Claude Code

Create a new Rust project called aster. It is a minimal Hyprland status bar and notification daemon. Start with Cargo.toml — I need gtk4, relm4, gtk4-layer-shell, hyprland, zbus, tokio, serde, and serde_json as dependencies. Then scaffold the module structure from the file tree in the brief and get a blank GTK4 window anchored full-width to the top of the screen with gtk4-layer-shell before adding any widgets. The layer-shell anchor is the most environment-sensitive step so I want to confirm it works on my setup first.

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