Clipbin Desktop

An open-source game recorder for Windows and Linux, inspired by Plays.tv. Rust and GPUI provide the desktop interface; the recording engine uses libobs and official OBS capture components.

SPEC.md defines the agreed v1 product requirements.

Current state

The recording foundation is being validated (see docs/validation.md). clipbin-obs records official OBS capture sources through one hardware encoder into keyframe-aligned segments and reports honest status; clipbin-probe exercises it. It passes the Linux headless rig and the hardware sign-off on CachyOS/Hyprland/RX 9070 XT; all Windows validation is still to do.

The desktop app detects Steam games, owns the recorder on a background thread, persists settings and sessions, and loads recorded sessions from disk. Linux detects Steam’s reaper processes and watches their pidfds; Windows reads Steam’s registry state and watches native process handles (cross-checked, not run). Game exit finalises a session; closing the window keeps the current session recording until the game exits, then exits the app. Ctrl+Q or Quit stops the output cleanly.

The desktop interface follows the web Clipbin's look (zinc dark theme, purple accent, Geist Mono): a session library, a session timeline with bookmarks and a clip selection, clips, and settings. It shows sessions from disk; CLIPBIN_SAMPLE_LIBRARY=1 fills it with example sessions for interface work. Playback and frame seeking work across completed segments, including active sessions and missing footage, with combined audio, mute/volume, Space/K to play/pause and J/L or arrows to step frames. Sessions and clips use cached frame thumbnails. Exports copy the recorded codec to MP4 in a background job, save local clip metadata, and support opening/deleting clips. Ctrl+Shift+F9 clips the last configured interval; Ctrl+Shift+F10 protects a bookmark. Both also have sidebar buttons. Wayland uses the GlobalShortcuts portal (first-use approval, portal rebinding); X11 uses native key grabs and Windows uses RegisterHotKey. Settings offer independent alternate function keys. Storage cleanup keeps unprotected footage within the budget. Autostart and a tray are not implemented yet; after closing the only window, reopening it without a tray is a follow-up.

Windows is a first-class target. Every change must keep the Windows code paths building (cargo clippy --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc) and list what still needs validating on Windows.

Layout

crates/
  clipbin-core/       Settings, Steam detection and session storage; independent of GPUI and OBS.
  clipbin-media/      FFmpeg: stream-copy clip export, scaled video/audio playback and cached thumbnails.
  clipbin-obs/        Recording engine over the pinned libobs runtime; all unsafe code is in src/ffi.rs.
  clipbin-probe/      Validation probe for capture, encoders, segments and status.
  clipbin-desktop/    GPUI application and initial session-library view.
scripts/obs/          Assemble the pinned OBS runtime for Linux (built from source) and Windows (official release).
scripts/rig/          Headless Wayland/X11 desktop for capture tests on machines without a display.
scripts/validate/     Validation suites: Linux rig, Linux hardware, Windows.
docs/validation.md    Validation status and findings.
.gitea/workflows/     Formatting, lint, test and Windows cross-checks.
SPEC.md               Product requirements and acceptance checks.

Keep capture and session operations out of the UI thread. Core uses serde/JSON, dirs, tempfile, rustix on Linux and winreg/windows-sys on Windows. Raw OBS calls live in clipbin-obs/src/ffi.rs; raw Windows process calls live in the small clipbin-core/src/windows_process.rs bridge.

Development

Use Rust 1.98.0, as pinned in rust-toolchain.toml. GPUI is pinned to 0.2.2, with Wayland and X11 enabled. Cargo.lock pins transitive dependencies.

Keep the lockfile checked in and use --locked. It currently pins libc to 0.2.186 because GPUI’s transitive xattr 0.2.3 dependency fails to compile against 0.2.190 on Linux.

On Arch/CachyOS, install the native build dependencies:

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel pkgconf fontconfig freetype2 wayland libxcb libxkbcommon libxkbcommon-x11 openssl clang ffmpeg alsa-lib pipewire-alsa libpulse

OBS runtime

Clipbin bundles a pinned OBS 32.0.4 runtime (scripts/obs/versions.env) with only the official plugins it uses. The libobs crate's headers match that version; the engine refuses to start against any other.

• Linux: scripts/obs/build-linux.sh builds libobs and the plugins from source into target/obs-runtime/linux-x86_64. Arch/CachyOS build dependencies:

  sudo pacman -S --needed cmake ninja extra-cmake-modules ffmpeg x264 pipewire libpulse libdrm libva jansson curl libxcomposite libxinerama libxrandr wayland-protocols simde uthash nlohmann-json mbedtls3 pciutils srt librist ffnvcodec-headers amf-headers
  

• Windows: scripts/obs/assemble-windows.sh (Git Bash) verifies and unpacks the official release zip into target/obs-runtime/windows-x86_64, copying files byte-for-byte so the Game Capture hook keeps its signature.

Development builds find the runtime through .cargo/config.toml; clipbin-probe's build script places obs-ffmpeg-mux (and on Windows the OBS DLLs) next to the executable, where OBS looks for them.

On Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential pkg-config libfontconfig1-dev libfreetype6-dev libwayland-dev libxcb1-dev libxkbcommon-dev libxkbcommon-x11-dev libssl-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libswresample-dev libasound2-dev libpulse-dev pipewire-alsa

Media dynamically links FFmpeg through ffmpeg-next 9. Linux uses system FFmpeg 8. On Windows, set FFMPEG_DIR to an FFmpeg 7.1 shared development package with MSVC import libraries, matching the OBS-bundled avcodec-61, avformat-61, avutil-59, swscale-8 and swresample-5 DLLs. Keep those OBS DLLs alongside the desktop executable; do not mix FFmpeg major versions. Audio uses cpal (PulseAudio or ALSA/PipeWire on Linux, WASAPI on Windows).

For Windows, use the MSVC Rust toolchain and Visual Studio Build Tools with the Desktop development with C++ workload. Windows support needs validation on a Windows machine; see docs/validation.md.

Run the desktop shell from an active graphical session:

cargo run --locked -p clipbin-desktop

The desktop app needs a working Wayland or X11 session on Linux, or a Windows desktop. It does not start a web server. On this remote development machine, bind any future development server to its tailnet IP.

Use the Quit button or Ctrl+Q to quit.

Checks:

cargo fmt --all -- --check
cargo clippy --locked --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo test --locked --workspace
# Windows code paths, from any platform (rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-msvc):
cargo clippy --locked --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc -p clipbin-core -p clipbin-obs -p clipbin-probe --all-targets -- -D warnings

Clips/bookmarks/cleanup validation: scripts/validate/linux-clips.sh. Native X11 hotkey validation: scripts/validate/linux-hotkeys.sh. Both run in the headless rig. Real Hyprland portal hotkeys and Windows runtime behaviour still need validation.

Recording validation on Linux, headless: scripts/validate/linux-rig.sh. Automatic desktop sessions: scripts/validate/linux-session.sh (fake Steam reaper, recording and library screenshots, close-window survival, game exit and explicit Quit). Playback fixtures: scripts/validate/playback-fixture.sh. Playback/audio e2e: scripts/validate/linux-playback.sh [output-dir] (moving preview, active recording, gaps, thumbnails, audio monitor, timing and CPU report). Fake Steam rigs must run serially because discovery reads the machine’s /proc. Interface screenshots, headless: scripts/rig/screenshot-ui.sh (screens: sessions, session, clips, settings, failed, empty). The rig has no input devices; rig-pointer drives a virtual pointer (move, click, down/up, scroll, sleep on stdin) and wtype types. CLIPBIN_TRACE_FRAMES=1 logs frame times.

Development builds optimise dependencies ([profile.dev.package."*"]): unoptimised GPUI made screens noticeably slow, with first frames of 200–300 ms.

The core can also be checked without native UI dependencies:

cargo check --locked -p clipbin-core

First recording milestone

1. Validate official OBS capture and recording-health signals on CachyOS, Hyprland and the RX 9070 XT at 1440p60. Passed on CachyOS/Hyprland/RX 9070 XT (H.264, HEVC, AV1).
2. Select and pin a tested OBS runtime, Rust bindings, and official plugin set together. Preserve the original signed Windows capture-hook binaries. Pinned to OBS 32.0.4 and libobs crate 5.0.1; Windows runtime unvalidated.
3. Prove one continuous hardware encoder can produce short keyframe-aligned segments and remux clips across their boundaries while recording continues. Proven in the rig and on the RX 9070 XT with VA-API H.264, HEVC and AV1.
4. Integrate the recorder without blocking GPUI, then add native playback and seeking.

The capture integration uses official OBS components only: Windows Game Capture/Window Capture, X11 Xcomposite, and Wayland PipeWire/desktop-portal capture. Third-party game hooks are excluded.

License

GPL-3.0-only. See LICENSE.