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nak0x 76d0906564 Add furst-serve, a local reader server 
Following a link inside an extracted article used to drop the reader back
onto the live site. The server rewrites in-page links to /read?u=... so
browsing stays in reader mode, and caches rendered pages on disk, which
takes a revisit from ~350ms to under a millisecond.

The HTTP layer is blocking and hand-rolled: GET only, one response per
connection, a fixed pool of four worker threads so memory stays
predictable, and nothing but the loopback interface is ever bound.

Routes so far:

  /            home, from ~/.config/furst/home.toml
  /read?u=     the article, with links routed back through the reader
  /go?u=       hand the original URL to the heavy browser

Pages that are not documents redirect to the original rather than being
run through an article extractor, and pages with too little text to be an
article say so and offer the escape hatches. Redirect stubs are followed
before that judgement is made.

furst-serve --open ensures a server is running, starting a detached one if
needed, then execs a browser at the reader URL. Cache entries carry a
schema number so a renderer change drops them rather than serving stale
markup.
2026-09-06 19:55:59 +02:00
furst-read Add furst-serve, a local reader server 2026-09-06 19:55:59 +02:00
furst-serve Add furst-serve, a local reader server 2026-09-06 19:55:59 +02:00
src Add furst, a URL router for low-end hardware 2026-09-06 19:18:13 +02:00
.gitignore Add furst, a URL router for low-end hardware 2026-09-06 19:18:13 +02:00
Cargo.lock Add furst-serve, a local reader server 2026-09-06 19:55:59 +02:00
Cargo.toml Add furst-serve, a local reader server 2026-09-06 19:55:59 +02:00
LICENSE Add furst, a URL router for low-end hardware 2026-09-06 19:18:13 +02:00
README.md Add furst-read, an article extractor and minimal renderer 2026-09-06 19:35:30 +02:00

README.md

furst

A URL router. It sits where your default browser used to, and sends each URL to the cheapest tool that can actually handle it — mpv for video, a pager for PDFs, a light WebKit browser for reading, and Firefox only when nothing else will do.

Built for a Core2 Duo with 4GB of RAM, where the browser is the problem.

Why

A news page is 2–5MB across 80+ requests with 1–3MB of JavaScript to parse and JIT. The same article extracted is ~20KB. Choosing a lighter engine buys 2–3×; not loading the payload at all buys 10–100×. furst is the dispatcher that decides which of those you get, per URL.

Install

cargo build --release
install -Dm755 target/release/furst ~/.local/bin/furst

furst --init      # writes ~/.config/furst/rules.toml, probes for a light browser
furst --install   # registers furst as the system default browser

--install writes ~/.local/share/applications/furst.desktop and points xdg-settings at it, so every link click in every application routes here.

Use

furst <url>              # match a rule and exec its command
furst --explain <url>    # show what would run, and why; run nothing
furst --list             # show the loaded rules

--explain is the one you want when a URL goes somewhere surprising:

$ furst --explain https://youtu.be/abc123
scheme  https
host    youtu.be
path    /abc123

-> [video] mpv --ytdl-format=bestvideo[vcodec^=avc1][height<=?720]+... https://youtu.be/abc123
   [default] surf https://youtu.be/abc123

Rules

~/.config/furst/rules.toml. First matching rule wins. If its command is missing from $PATH, furst falls through to the next matching rule, and finally to default — which is what lets you name tools you have not written yet and have the config stay working today.

default = ["surf", "{url}"]

[[rule]]
name = "video"
hosts = ["youtube.com", "youtu.be"]
run = ["mpv", "--ytdl-format=bestvideo[vcodec^=avc1][height<=?720]+bestaudio/best", "{url}"]

[[rule]]
name = "hn"
hosts = ["news.ycombinator.com"]
terminal = true                      # wrap in $TERMINAL -e
run = ["furst-hn", "{url}"]

A rule matches when every criterion it states is satisfied; a criterion is satisfied by any one of its patterns. A rule that states nothing matches everything.

Key Matches against
schemes https, mailto, magnet, …
hosts example.com = apex and every subdomain; *.example.com = same; =example.com = that host exactly; * = any
paths path component only, glob with *, case-insensitive
contains substring of the whole raw URL
Placeholder
{url} {url_enc} the URL, raw or percent-encoded
{host} {path} {scheme} parsed components

If no argument mentions {url} or {url_enc}, the URL is appended last.

Notes for old hardware

  • Force H.264 for video. A Core2 handles 720p avc1 in software but stalls on VP9/AV1, which is what YouTube serves by default. That format string is doing more work than the resolution cap.
  • Host matching strips userinfo with rfind('@'), so https://bank.example@evil.example/ routes on evil.example.
  • furst execs the handler rather than forking, so it leaves no process behind.

Companion tools

  • furst-read — fetch a page, extract the article, and render it as minimal HTML with no scripts, stylesheets, or webfonts. The reader rule in the starter config points at it.

License

MIT