Learn more¶
Friendlier companion to ../technical/references.md
— what this thing is actually built with, and where to read more about each
piece, without needing to already know the jargon.
The building blocks¶
| What it's called | What it actually is | Read more |
|---|---|---|
| .NET / ASP.NET Core | The framework the backend server is written in (a Microsoft-made toolkit for building web servers in C#) | What is ASP.NET Core? |
| SignalR | The technology that lets the backend "push" updates to your screen instead of your screen having to keep asking | SignalR, explained |
| Angular | The framework the screen (frontend) is built with — a Google-made toolkit for building interactive web pages | angular.dev |
| TypeScript | The programming language the screen is written in — like JavaScript, but with extra safety checks built in | What is TypeScript? |
| Progressive Web App (PWA) | The reason you can "install" this cockpit like a real app instead of only ever opening it as a browser tab | web.dev: What are PWAs? |
| OpenAPI | A machine-readable description of every backend endpoint, which is how the screen's code gets generated automatically instead of hand-typed (and why it can never quietly drift out of sync) | What is OpenAPI? |
| Jira | The ticket-tracking tool this cockpit reads the fleet's board from | Atlassian: What is Jira? |
| Tailscale | The private network technology that lets fleet computers see each other securely without exposing anything to the open internet | How Tailscale works |
The ideas behind the design¶
"Push, don't poll." Instead of your screen repeatedly asking "anything new? anything new? anything new?", the backend keeps a connection open and only speaks up when something actually changes. This is the same idea behind a phone's push notifications instead of you refreshing an app over and over.
A signature instead of a password, for machine-to-machine trust. When the cockpit hands a job to a fleet computer, it doesn't send a password over the network — it attaches a cryptographic stamp that only the fleet's own shared secret could have produced. Read: How digital signatures work, in plain terms.
Jobs as files in a shared folder, not phone calls. Rather than one computer directly calling another over the network (which means trusting whatever address it's told to call), a job is simply written as a file into a shared folder, and the target computer picks it up on its own schedule. It's the digital equivalent of leaving a signed note in someone's mailbox instead of knocking on their door — nothing to intercept in transit, and the note just waits if they're not home.
A picture, not a paragraph, for how a system is built. The technical diagrams in this repo follow the "C4 model" — a standard, widely-used way of drawing software systems at a few fixed zoom levels (who uses it, what are the big pieces, how do the pieces talk). Read: c4model.com, especially its own "abstractions" page, which is written for a general audience.