What you need
Rymnet is a Rust workspace: three binaries you build and install with Cargo. There is no hosted service to sign up for — every participant runs their own node.
rustc --version cargo --version
Install the binaries
From the rymnet/ workspace directory:
cargo install --path crates/rym # the rym CLI cargo install --path crates/rymnetd # the peer/gateway daemon cargo install --path crates/rymsh # the interactive shell
Make sure ~/.cargo/bin is on your PATH, then confirm each binary runs:
rym --help rymnetd --help rymsh --help
You can also run any of them straight from the workspace without installing, using cargo run -p <crate> -- <args>.
Initialize your node
Every node has its own Ed25519 identity, generated once and stored under ~/.rymnet/ (override with --data-dir for testing multiple nodes on one machine):
rym init rym node id rym node status
Connect to the network
A brand-new node knows about zero peers. Bootstrap from a single known IP:
rym peer connect <known-ip>
This exchanges identities with that peer and asks it for its peer list, so one good bootstrap address is usually enough to join the wider mesh. You can also add a peer manually with rym peer add if you already know its address and public key.
Claim a domain and publish a site
rym domain claim yourname.rym rym site create yourname.rym # writes a starter index.html/style.css rym site publish yourname.rym # hashes, chunks, signs, indexes, announces
Publishing does everything in one step: validates the source, hashes every file, writes content-addressed chunks, signs a manifest, saves it locally, indexes the HTML for search, and announces signed search records to your configured peers.
View it
Start the local gateway daemon and open your site through it:
rymnetd run
http://127.0.0.1:7447/yourname.rym/
The gateway independently re-verifies the domain claim, the site manifest signature, and every chunk hash before it serves a single byte — it never trusts its own disk cache blindly.
Or skip straight to the shell
Most people never touch the raw rym commands directly — rymsh wraps the whole publish pipeline behind one command (publish yourname.rym) and adds a full virtual computer, browser, search, accounts, and email on top. See the rymsh and rym CLI pages for the full reference.