nsmpl

Local audio sample tool with Nostr publishing — companion to the smpl.fizx.uk sample-sharing site.

Stack: Tauri 2 desktop binary + React 19 + TypeScript + Tailwind v3. Frontend is bun/npm-friendly Vite. Native filesystem access goes through Rust commands. Choice rationale: web tech matches the smpl.fizx.uk site so Nostr/audio code is reusable, while Tauri ships the result as a real Linux desktop app that fits the rest of the suite.

Features

• Browse a local samples folder — type a path and see every audio file in it, or drill a folder tree (list_audio_files / list_audio_files_deep / list_leaf_folders).
• Two-deck playback — two WaveSurfer players plus a master strip with a shared play/pause, transport, cue and click-to-seek.
• Loop regions — drag-select an in/out region per deck; playback wraps the loop.
• Edits (ffmpeg via Rust) — trim, prune, fade in/out, gain, and pad start/end. A two-track mix bounce (render_mix) renders the decks to a single WAV.
• BPM — aubio auto-detect (detect_bpm) plus a manual bars-based calculator, written to the suite-shared bpm.json store (reused by bpm-tapper / nplay).
• Suite integration — resolves a clip back to its source release via ~/.config/ndisc-suite/roots.json (resolve_source), and scopes to the releases ndisc has published (released_rels, clips_root).
• Clip-coverage bars — browsing a clip folder shows each clip's length as a fraction of its resolved source track (probed live on open via folder_coverage), with a folder rollup. Matches ntree's Library bar and handles variable clip lengths natively.
• Nostr identity — generate / import / forget an nsec, held in the OS keyring (never in localStorage).
• Publish a sample to Nostr — NIP-96 HTTP upload (default nostr.build) with NIP-98 auth, then a NIP-94 kind:1063 file-metadata event over a relay, so it surfaces on smpl.fizx.uk rather than reimplementing the reader.

Still to come

• A dedicated normalize edit and general format conversion on export (the bounce currently renders WAV PCM only).
• Reading the shared feed (feed.v1, kind:31239) and reacting to other users' samples — today the app only publishes; there is no inbound-feed UI yet (lib/rating.ts exists but nothing consumes a feed).
• Whole-tree coverage at a glance — coverage bars are currently probed per open folder. A suite-shared duration index written by ntree (the scanner) would let the release list show rollups without opening each folder; deferred as the heavier, coordinated option.

Install dependencies (Debian / Ubuntu)

Tauri's Linux prerequisites:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install \
  libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev \
  libgtk-3-dev \
  libayatana-appindicator3-dev \
  librsvg2-dev \
  libssl-dev \
  build-essential \
  curl wget file

Plus a Node toolchain and a Rust toolchain:

# Node 18+ (for Vite 7 / React 19)
sudo apt install nodejs npm

# Rust (rustup is the recommended installer)
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

bun works as a drop-in alternative to npm — the lockfile would just regenerate.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/xjmzx/smpl-tool.git
cd smpl-tool

make deps      # npm install + cargo fetch
make dev       # opens the Tauri window with hot reload

Build / install / deploy

The repo ships a Makefile that builds a release binary and places it under PREFIX/bin, the icon under PREFIX/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps, and a .desktop entry under PREFIX/share/applications (so the app appears in GNOME / KDE / XFCE app menus).

# user-level install (no sudo) — default PREFIX is $HOME/.local
make install

# system-wide
sudo make install PREFIX=/usr/local

# remove
make uninstall                     # or: sudo make uninstall PREFIX=/usr/local

Other targets:

make help     # list everything
make check    # tsc + vite build + cargo check (no full Tauri build)
make build    # release build only
make clean    # remove dist/ and src-tauri/target/

The desktop entry is generated from smpl-tool.desktop.in with the install paths substituted in, so it works regardless of PREFIX.

Layout

smpl-tool/
├── src/                   # React + TS frontend
│   ├── App.tsx           # main layout: file browser + player + edit + publish
│   ├── components/        # FileBrowser, Player, EditPanel, NostrPanel, Section
│   ├── lib/cn.ts          # clsx + tailwind-merge helper
│   └── lib/tauri.ts       # typed wrappers around invoke()
├── src-tauri/             # Rust crate (Tauri shell)
│   ├── src/lib.rs         # commands: list_audio_files
│   ├── Cargo.toml
│   └── tauri.conf.json    # window config, bundle config
├── icon.svg                       # suite-style 128px tile
├── smpl-tool.desktop.in           # .desktop template (placeholders)
└── Makefile                       # deps / dev / build / install / uninstall

Companion apps in the suite

• bpm-tapper
• audio-flac-quality-check
• disco-vault

Related upstream

• smpl.fizx.uk — live web client that consumes the kind 1063 (NIP-94) events this app publishes.