Focale

Focale is a small desktop/CLI bootstrap for Focale users that:

• logs in with the user's Arcsecond account
• creates and stores a local Hub agent identity
• enrolls that identity with Arcsecond when needed
• mints a short-lived Hub JWT
• connects to the Arcsecond Hub using the signed Ed25519 challenge flow

Focale owns its own local state and uses Arcsecond password login to obtain a short-lived bearer JWT plus a refresh token.

User install

Python / terminal

pip install focale

Then:

focale login
focale context list
focale context use personal
focale connect --hub-url wss://hub.arcsecond.io/ws/agent

Desktop GUI

python -m focale launches the PySide6 desktop app when no CLI arguments are given. The existing focale console script remains available for terminal-driven workflows.

Windows installer

This repository includes a bootstrap for building a Windows installer from CI. The installer packages the PySide6 desktop app as focale.exe.

See:

• .github/workflows/windows-installer.yml
• packaging/windows/focale.iss
• scripts/build_windows.ps1

Commands

focale login
focale status
focale context show
focale context list
focale context use personal
focale context use my-observatory
focale doctor --hub-url wss://hub.arcsecond.io/ws/agent
focale doctor --hub-url wss://hub.arcsecond.io/ws/agent --json
focale connect --hub-url wss://hub.arcsecond.io/ws/agent
focale --api-server https://api.arcsecond.dev connect --hub-url wss://hub.arcsecond.dev/ws/agent --once
focale connect --organisation my-observatory --hub-url wss://hub.arcsecond.io/ws/agent
focale platesolver status
focale platesolver solve --peaks-file ./peaks.json

focale connect will automatically:

1. refresh the Arcsecond access JWT when needed
2. create a local Ed25519 keypair if needed
3. enroll a personal or organisation-scoped agent installation if needed
4. mint a Hub JWT
5. discover local ASCOM Remote (Alpaca) servers and register new ones in the selected context
6. complete the Hub challenge-response handshake

You can set the default context once and keep connect/doctor simple:

focale context use personal
# or
focale context use my-observatory

Plate solving

Plate solving is included with pip install focale — arcsecond-astrometry is a mandatory dependency and ships native binaries for Windows, macOS, and Linux with no Docker or external tooling required.

focale platesolver status
focale platesolver solve --peaks-file ./peaks.json --scales 6

You can also target a remote service:

focale platesolver status --service-url http://127.0.0.1:8900
focale platesolver solve --service-url http://127.0.0.1:8900 --peaks-file ./peaks.json

Development

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .[dev]
pytest -q

Publishing

This repo includes:

• a PEP 621 pyproject.toml
• a CI workflow for tests
• a PyPI publish workflow on tags such as v0.2.0
• a Windows installer workflow that builds a PyInstaller bundle and wraps it with Inno Setup