The shell is a windows_subsystem binary and spawns punktfunk-session with
CREATE_NO_WINDOW + inherited stderr: a normal GUI/MSIX launch has no
console, so every log line — the shell's and the session's whole
receive/decode/present forensic trail — evaporated exactly when a user
hit something worth reporting. The 2026-07 PyroWave latency-sawtooth
report had to be triaged from host logs alone; the deciding evidence
(clock re-sync vs backlog-flush lines) lives client-side.
- New logfile module: %LOCALAPPDATA%\punktfunk\logs\client.log,
the host's rotation convention (10 MB cap -> .old at next start, one
generation), best-effort (no dir -> plain stderr, never a startup
failure).
- The tracing subscriber tees to stderr AND the file (ANSI off — the
file is what users send); startup logs the path.
- The spawned session's stderr is piped through the same tee,
line-buffered — dev-terminal runs keep their interleaved output,
GUI runs finally keep anything at all.
- The --console path and the punktfunk-console.exe MSIX shim forward
the same way (a couch launch has no console either).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two problems, one feature. The gamepad/couch UI existed but you had to
already know it was there:
- On the hosts page its card only rendered when a controller was CONNECTED,
so with no pad plugged in there was no visible entry point at all -- the
only other door being a per-host overflow menu behind a "..." nobody
opens. The card now always shows, with copy that adapts to whether a pad
is present, so the feature is findable before you own the hardware.
- There was no way to start it directly. An HTPC or TV box wants the couch
interface as its first screen, not the desktop shell. "punktfunk-client
--console" now hands straight off to it (fullscreen unless --windowed),
which covers shortcuts, Steam entries, autostart and Task Scheduler.
The Start-menu tile needs its own executable: an MSIX <Application> cannot
pass arguments to a full-trust exe, so "punktfunk-client.exe --console" is
not expressible there. punktfunk-console.exe is a ~20-line hand-off to the
session binary's browse mode, staged into the package and given its own
tile ("Punktfunk Console").
Nothing new is implemented behind either door: a bare "--browse" was
already a complete standalone client (host list, discovery, PIN pairing,
settings, Wake-on-LAN, library). It just had no front door.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
enricobuehlerandClaude Fable 5