rousseau signal

Overview

rousseau signal runs the Signal bridge by shelling out to a locally installed signal-cli (https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli) in jsonRpc mode. The daemon pumps JSON-RPC messages between the account and the agent loop. This is the most privacy-preserving transport in the tree because Signal is end-to-end encrypted and does not require any provider-hosted infrastructure.

Source: internal/cli/signal.go. Transport: internal/transport/signal/.

Synopsis

rousseau signal [--account <e164>] [--binary <path>] [--allow <e164>...] [--config <path>]

Flags

Config keys respected

internal/config/config.go SignalConfig:

Key	Type	Default	Effect
signal.binary	string	signal-cli	Executable name/path.
signal.account	string	empty	E.164 the daemon runs as. Required.
signal.extra_args	[]string	empty	Inserted between -a <account> and jsonRpc.
signal.reply_header	string	empty	Prefix prepended to every outbound message.
signal.allowlist	[]string	empty	E.164 numbers permitted to send inbound messages.

Allowlist syntax

Every entry is an E.164 phone number with the leading +:

signal:
  account: "+447900123456"
  allowlist:
    - "+447900123456"
    - "+447900222222"

The router matches inbound sender numbers exactly against the list. Empty allowlist allows every sender — do not use this posture in production.

Environment variables

Variable	Effect
ROUSSEAU_SIGNAL_ACCOUNT	Overrides signal.account.
ROUSSEAU_SIGNAL_BINARY	Overrides signal.binary.
PATH	Used to locate signal-cli when signal.binary is unset.

Startup sequence

1. Resolve and validate the account (either flag, env, or config).
2. Default claudecli.permission_mode to bypassPermissions because signal-cli JSON-RPC is unattended.
3. Open the session store.
4. signal.New — spawn signal-cli -a <account> [extra_args] jsonRpc as a subprocess.
5. Pump JSON-RPC over the subprocess stdio.
6. wiring.startCron — wire cron delivery through Signal.
7. Block on client.Start until context cancellation.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Clean context cancellation.
1	Missing --account, subprocess spawn failure, provider/store setup failure.
130	SIGINT.

If signal-cli itself dies, the wrapper returns a non-zero code that surfaces as 1.

Worked examples

# Basic
rousseau signal --account +447900123456 --allow +447900222222

# Custom signal-cli path (e.g. flatpak install)
rousseau signal \
  --binary /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/org.asamk.signal.SignalCli \
  --account +447900123456

# Multiple allowlist entries from config
cat > ~/.config/rousseau/config.yaml <<'EOF'
signal:
  account: "+447900123456"
  allowlist:
    - "+447900123456"
    - "+447900222222"
EOF
rousseau signal

Common failure modes

• exec: "signal-cli": executable file not found — install signal-cli or set signal.binary.
• Failed to send message: RateLimit — Signal rate-limits new accounts. Wait, then retry.
• Invalid recipient — E.164 must include the leading +.
• Silent inbound drops — sender not on the allowlist. Grep for router.transport.rejected.

Related pages

• Transports: Signal
• Best Practices: Secret management
• Reference: Commands: cron
• Reference: Logs