mesh-catalog/modules/dunst

dunst

The notifier as a module (novox/hq ADR 0208, research 026/05).

• Installs dunst, libnotify for notify-send, the client every program and these tools use, and rofi, the context menu its dunstrc calls.
• Claims the mesh's node-notifier seat and serves its verbs send and history.
• Owns ~/.config/dunst/dunstrc and the directory ~/.config/dunst/dunstrc.d/. Another module's rule is that module's own file in the directory (ADR 0208 §4). dunst reads the directory after dunstrc, so a drop-in outranks it.
• Starts nothing. The package registers dunst with D-Bus, which starts it on the first notification, inside the account's service manager. There is no autostart line and no session-start contribution. The package's own dunst.service is declared without a state, in the account's manager (scope: user, ADR 0177), only so the node-engine can reload it: when the mesh rewrites dunstrc, a running dunst is told to read it again (reload-on, the unit's ExecReload=dunstctl reload). A dunst that is not running is left alone and reads the file when the bus starts it (ADR 0117).
• Requires no display of its own. dunst speaks both X11 and Wayland and picks the one the session has, so it serves an X session and a later sway one alike.

Answers from a notification

send with actions runs notify-send --wait with one --action per answer, answers the id at once and waits in this bundle for the operator's choice. A tap (left click) on the notification chooses: with one action it runs it, with several it opens rofi's menu of them, and without any it closes the notification (dunst's do_action, close_current; a notification with no action but one link opens the link). An Escape in the menu leaves the notification shown. The middle click does the same, and Super+N (dunstctl context, this module's line in i3's configuration) opens the menu of every notification on screen from the keyboard. The token default is refused, because dunst runs an action of that name at a tap without offering the others. The token chosen is said as this module's event action-chosen; it becomes the node-notifier seat's event once seats publish events of their own (novox/hq to-be 46 phase 3). Nothing is said for a notification closed, expired or replaced without an answer, and a wait ends after seven days. A notification that offers answers stays until dismissed (expire_ms 0). A restart of this bundle ends the waits it held; it says started {machine} once it serves, and the operator channel shows the open answers there again (novox/hq ADR 0258). notify-send prints the id before it waits, also into a pipe (checked on the laptop on 2026-10-08: the id at once, and "Wait timeout expired" when it expired).

What is shown once, and whether it would be seen

• A secret notification (send with secret: a link's code) is sent transient and in the category mesh.secret, whatever category was named. The dunstrc's rules keep it, and every transient one, out of dunst's history (history_ignore), and history leaves out any that got there anyway, counting them as withheld: the history is served to every caller of the mesh's verbs, agents among them.
• Whether notifications are paused is said as this module's event paused {paused, machine}: at start, on every change, and every two minutes, read from dunst itself so a pause set by a key counts too. The desk shows a link's code only on a machine it heard is not paused lately.

Tools

Every tool goes over the account's session bus. None needs the screen, and each answers clearly when the account is not logged in.

tool	does
node-notifier.send	a notification: title, body, urgency, sender, icon, how long, and the answers it offers (actions: token and label); answers its id, and says the chosen answer later as the event action-chosen {id, token, machine}
node-notifier.history	what was shown, newest first, with how long ago
dunst_pause / dunst_resume	do not disturb: notifications are held back, not lost
dunst_close_all	clear the screen; the history keeps them
dunst_rules	the rules the running notifier holds, and the files they come from
dunst_count	shown, waiting, in history, and whether paused
dunst_reload	read the configuration again now, keeping what is shown; answers the files read and the font, font size and width they set, with the file each came from (dunst does not say its settings over the bus, so these are read from the same files)

Settings

Two preferences have defaults in the definition (novox/hq ADR 0262). The mesh's layer, then a machine's, overrides them, and the file is written with the value, never with a variable dunst reads.

setting	default	what it is
font-size	10	the points of font = Inter <size>; 10 reads well on a screen of about 100 DPI, which is the workstations
width	250	the notification's width in pixels; a larger font needs a wider notification

A machine with a denser screen sets both for itself, and the next push writes them:

mesh-controller.settings {module: "dunst", node: "<machine>", values: '{"font-size": 16, "width": 400}'}

mesh-controller.settings {module: "dunst", node: "<machine>"} shows each value and where it came from: the default, the mesh, or the machine. When the push rewrites dunstrc, the node-engine reloads the running dunst, so the next notification is drawn at the new size, without a login. A reload keeps the notifications on screen and in the history; a restart would drop them, which is why this is a reload.

What it chose, and what it improves

The workstations' files differed: one had the notifications bottom-right, 15 % transparent and with rounded corners; the other top-right, opaque and square. This module takes the second, because the rest of the desktop is square and opaque, and the top-right corner sits under the bar that shows the count. The file keeps only the settings that differ from dunst's defaults.

• The context menu works. It called /usr/bin/dmenu, installed on neither machine, and then dmenu, the node-launcher's command in ~/.local/bin, which dunst did not find on the laptop (2026-10-10): it runs in the account's service manager, whose PATH does not hold that directory. It now calls rofi -dmenu, a package this module installs.
• A tap chooses an answer. The answers were on the middle click only, which the laptop's and the workstation's touchpads cannot give (novox/hq issue 360).
• The face is the interface one, Inter (research 026/04), instead of a monospace Nerd font.
• icon_path, which named two directories of an icon theme that is not installed, is gone. The icon theme is looked up recursively.

What it leaves as found

• ~/.config/dunst/dunstrc.d/50-slack.conf, the Slack rule. It becomes the Slack module's own drop-in when there is one, and until then it is the operator's file in a directory this module owns.

Migration (ADR 0182)

• The first push keeps the found dunstrc once, then writes the module's.
• The desktop runs two notification daemons because its session began before the session bus fix (research 026/01). That ends at the next login, and nothing here starts a second one. dunst_count after logging in again shows the one daemon's counts.

Blockers

• node-notifier is ADR 0208's seat. Until the controller knows it, mctl reads the claim as unknown.
• dunst_rules and the counts ask the running notifier. When none runs, the bus starts one, which needs a session to draw on.