A controller that reaches the host by USB passthrough — VirtualHere and friends, or simply a pad plugged into the host — arrived there twice: once as the real device, once as the virtual pad this client built from the same hands. Games read both, so a stick drifts against the centred second pad and menus take every input twice. New per-client setting, "Forward controllers", default on (today's behaviour). It is tier-P, so a profile can decline what another profile forwards. On Linux and Windows it is deliberately stronger than "send nothing". Opening a controller is what CLAIMS it — SDL's HIDAPI drivers take the device node — and a claimed device is one a passthrough tool cannot bind, so with this off the session opens no slot at all and never enables the Valve HIDAPI drivers. Menu navigation is untouched: the launcher still opens the active pad, and a session supersedes menu mode whether it forwards or not, so the pad is free for the whole time a stream is up. The consequence, documented at both the setting and the chord: the controller escape chord is read off forwarded pads, so it is unavailable there. The Apple and Android input stacks claim nothing, so those clients keep their slots and their chords and only gate the wire sends — losing tvOS's only controller way out of a stream would have been the worse bug. Android does stop its DualSense and Steam Controller 2 USB captures, which do claim the device. Surfaces: GTK, WinUI, the console settings screen, Apple's touch and gamepad settings, the Android touch and gamepad settings, and Decky (which also hides the rows that now have nothing to act on). Everywhere the "which pad" and "pad type" rows grey out while it is off. Verified: cargo clippy --all-targets -D warnings + 79 tests on pf-client-core, pf-console-ui, punktfunk-client-session and punktfunk-client-linux (linux/amd64 container, gate proven non-vacuous with a planted error); swift build for the Apple clients; gradle compile + 49 unit tests for Android (likewise proven); tsc for Decky. clients/windows is UNCOMPILED — both Windows boxes were offline; its edits were reviewed against the helper signatures by hand. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
punktfunk-session
The Vulkan session binary: one stream per invocation in an SDL3 window — no UI toolkit,
no widgets, terminal stats. The power-user / gamescope stream client, and the stage-2
presenter of the Linux client re-architecture (punktfunk-planning:
linux-client-rearchitecture.md).
This binary is deliberately dumb: a renderer the front-ends call INTO — the GTK shell
(punktfunk-client), the WinUI shell, and the punktfunk CLI all spawn it through the
same brain (pf_client_core::orchestrate), which resolves policy (profiles, settings,
wake) and hands the result down, normally as a --resolved-spec file. It reads the
shared stores only as the compat fallback for a bare hand-launched invocation.
punktfunk-session --connect host[:port] [--fp HEX] [--launch id] [--fullscreen] [--stats]
punktfunk-session --browse host[:port] [--mgmt PORT] [--fullscreen]
--browse opens the console game library (the Skia coverflow over the animated aurora)
instead of connecting: A launches the focused title as a stream in the same window,
session end returns to the library, B quits (Gaming Mode returns). Paired hosts only —
pairing is the desktop client / Decky plugin's job. PUNKTFUNK_FAKE_LIBRARY=<file.json>
feeds canned entries with no host (portrait paths starting with / load from disk).
Reads the same identity / known-hosts / settings stores as the desktop client
(punktfunk-client), so enrolling on either side makes the other work; this binary never
connects to a host it has no pinned fingerprint for (--fp HEX overrides the store).
Pairing is punktfunk pair <host> — the CLI, which ships alongside this binary in every
package and needs no window and no toolkit either. punktfunk-session --pair still works
for one release (someone's provisioning script calls it today) but prints a deprecation
notice: pairing is a trust ceremony and belongs to the brain, not a renderer.
Stdout is the machine interface: {"ready":true} after the first presented frame,
stats: … once per second while the overlay tier isn't Off (always the full detailed
text, whatever the OSD shows; --stats forces the overlay on), one
{"error"|"ended": …} JSON line on the way out. Logs go to stderr. Exit codes: 0
clean end, 2 connect failed, 3 trust rejected / pairing required, 4 presenter
init failed.
In-stream keys match the desktop client: click captures input (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Q releases), Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D disconnects, F11 toggles fullscreen; the controller escape chord (L1+R1+Start+Select, hold to disconnect) works the same.
The default build carries the Skia console UI (ui feature): the stats OSD and capture
hint render in-window. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S cycles the OSD tier live — Off → Compact (one
line: fps · latency · Mb/s) → Normal (mode + end-to-end percentiles) → Detailed (decoder
path + per-stage latency equation); any tier but Off also emits the stdout mirror.
--no-default-features is the ~5 MB power-user build — same streaming, stats on stdout
only, no Skia anywhere in the dependency tree.
Decode follows the Settings preference (auto: Vulkan Video → VAAPI → software on Linux,
Vulkan Video → D3D11VA → software on Windows): FFmpeg's Vulkan Video decoder runs on the
presenter's own device where the stack supports it (every vendor, zero copy); VAAPI
dmabufs import per-plane elsewhere (D3D11VA textures on Windows); software is the
universal fallback. 10-bit Main10 and HDR10 are advertised
(VIDEO_CAP_10BIT|HDR): P010 decodes through all three paths, and PQ streams present
on an HDR10/ST.2084 swapchain when the desktop offers one (KDE HDR, gamescope) or
tone-map in-shader to SDR when it doesn't (PUNKTFUNK_TONEMAP_PEAK tunes the rolloff,
default ≈1000 nits). The host still gates the upgrade behind its PUNKTFUNK_10BIT
policy.
Debug/bisect knobs: PUNKTFUNK_DECODER=vulkan|vaapi|d3d11va|software, PUNKTFUNK_PRESENT_MODE= mailbox|fifo|immediate|fifo_relaxed (default MAILBOX, FIFO where the surface offers no
MAILBOX — AMD on Windows), PUNKTFUNK_VK_DEVICE=<index> (multi-GPU), and
PUNKTFUNK_HW_FAULT=import (fault every VAAPI dmabuf import — proves the three-strike
demotion to software on healthy hardware).