Manager Overview

bilbycast-manager is the centralized control plane for bilbycast. It provides a web dashboard, REST API, and WebSocket connectivity for real-time status, configuration, and control of distributed media transport nodes.

Key Features

Web dashboard — Real-time overview of all managed devices with status, flows, and bitrate
Network topology — Live visual map with graph and signal flow views
Node management — Register, configure, and monitor edge nodes and relay servers remotely
AI assistant — AI-assisted flow configuration with support for multiple LLM providers
Device driver pattern — Extensible architecture supporting edge nodes, relays, and third-party devices
Role-based access control — Four-level hierarchy: Viewer, Operator, Admin, SuperAdmin
Encryption at rest — All secrets encrypted with AES-256-GCM

Architecture

The manager is a full-stack Rust application:

Backend — Axum REST/WebSocket server with SQLite database
Frontend — Embedded static HTML + vanilla JavaScript (Tailwind CSS dark theme)
Communication — All nodes connect outbound to the manager via WebSocket, enabling management behind firewalls and NAT

Device Driver Pattern

The manager uses a driver-aware architecture where each device type has a registered driver:

Driver	Device Type	Description
EdgeDriver	`edge`	bilbycast-edge transport nodes
RelayDriver	`relay`	bilbycast-relay servers
AppearXDriver	`appear_x`	Appear X encoder/gateway units (via API gateway sidecar)

New device types are added by implementing the DeviceDriver trait — the hub, database, API routes, and AI assistant work automatically for any registered driver.

Deployment

# Build
cargo build --release

# Initialize database and create first admin
./target/release/bilbycast-manager setup --config config/default.toml

# Start the server
./target/release/bilbycast-manager serve --config config/default.toml

Required environment variables:

BILBYCAST_JWT_SECRET — 64-char hex string for JWT signing
BILBYCAST_MASTER_KEY — 64-char hex string for AES-256-GCM encryption

See the Deployment Guide for full setup instructions and TLS configuration.