Ananya Gupta

Posted on Sep 7

DevLink: The Peer-to-Peer Toolkit for Frictionless Development

#p2p #devtools #go #hackathon

The Collaboration Tax: A Developer's Nightmare

Imagine this,You're Implementing a new feature,finally in the zone and you see yourself making progress and everything is clicking,when suddenly..

Slack messages pops up from your teammate:
"yooo, can u pls pull my branch and check this weird bug? i'll send you the DB dump"

( maybe your workflow is not that complex,but you get the idea :>)

Every one of those steps is a context switch.
Each switch costs time and cognitive load. Industry research(1)(2)and many dev teams show that recovering flow after a switch costs minutes (often 15–30 min for deep work).
In practice, three small interruptions like that in a day mean you’ve lost large chunks of your most productive time.This is the collaboration tax, We pay it every single day, and its killing our momentum.

Problems we are trying to solve

Modern tools are great at two ends of the spectrum:

1)Local development → fast, personal, productive.
2)Production deployments → reliable, standardized, scalable

But in between where collaboration actually happens,the tools break down.

devlink's mission

removing the cause of those context switches. Let people collaborate directly on local code, services, databases and even Docker images (ephemeral, secure, and instant)so teams spend time building, not configuring.

Meet Devlink

DevLink is a peer-to-peer CLI toolkit that eliminates staging friction.
Instead of staging servers, cloud costs, or insecure hacks, DevLink gives you direct, ephemeral, encrypted connections between developers, from their terminals.

Think of it as instant context sharing for developers

Architecture

high level components

CLI (devlink) : single binary (Go) users run locally. Lightweight, cross-compiled for Linux/macOS/Windows.
Peer-to-Peer Token Exchange (Out-of-Band) Instead of a central control plane, session tokens and connection metadata are exchanged out-of-band (OOB) via any secure channel The CLI itself acts as the token authority for ephemeral sessions.
P2P Overlay (OpenZiti) : DevLink uses OpenZiti as the secure overlay. OpenZiti provides built-in identity-based zero trust networking, NAT traversal, and encrypted overlay transport. It ensures that once peers connect, all traffic is end-to-end encrypted with no need for a central relay in normal cases.
Ephemeral Relay Gateways : When strict NAT/firewalls block direct connectivity, peers fall back to OpenZiti’s relay/edge routers. These relays only forward encrypted bytes, never holding session keys.
Multiplexer (session layer) : Once a P2P tunnel is established, DevLink runs a multiplexed session over it. This allows multiple logical substreams (e.g., Git, DB proxy, HTTP, file transfer) to run over one secure channel, with access control enforced by session tokens.

The Impact (the measureable and the human)

Why this matters (metrics & context switching)

Per-integration event saved time. In our prototyping runs & hackathon sprints we measured typical integration/setup time drop from ~30–60 minutes to 30–120 seconds that’s ~30× speedup for a single integration cycle.
Context switch reduction. If a dev experiences 2–4 integration interruptions per day, and each avoided interruption saves the developer ~20 minutes of flow loss, DevLink can reclaim 40–80 minutes/day of focused time per developer.
Fewer WIP pushes, cleaner history. Teams stop pushing incomplete branches to unblock teammates; that reduces noisy CI runs and merge conflicts downstream.
Security gain. Secrets never sit in Slack or cloud storage. One-time encrypted transfer eliminates a large attack surface.
Cost savings. Remove or reduce dependence on long-lived staging servers and registry bandwidth/fees.

Back-of-envelope: For a team of 6 doing 3 integrations/day, saving 30 minutes per integration translates to ~9 dev-hours/day , multiply by engineer hourly cost and sprint days = meaningful ROI.

Qualitative Wins

Rapid feedback loop: bug → fix → verify in minutes, not hours.
Emotion: less frustration, fewer "let me reconfigure for 2hrs" moments.
Hiring/sales: demoing live features to stakeholders becomes frictionless.

(These numbers are empirical from prototype tests + conservative extrapolations, when you adopt DevLink in production, measure on your team to customize baselines.)

Feature Internals

`devlink hive` Ephemeral Staging Environments

What it does
Creates a shared test environment across multiple developers’ machines by federating local services. Think “temporary staging server,” but without cloud infra.

How it works

Each contributor binds a local service (--service <name> --port <port>).
DevLink maintains an in-memory DNS-like map (api.hive, db.hive, etc.).
Requests are routed over the P2P tunnel to the right peer substream.
ACLs in the session token control access (e.g., who can hit db vs api).
No data persists, when the hive ends, it’s gone.

Usage

devlink hive create feature-x
devlink hive contribute --service api --port 5000
devlink hive connect hx_abc123

`devlink env` Secure Env & Secret Sharing

What it does
Transfers .env files or secrets via one-time, encrypted codes.

How it works

Files are streamed directly peer-to-peer with AEAD encryption.
Codes are short-lived, single-use, and tied to a session.
Optional flags:
- --ask: require receiver confirmation.
- --passphrase: add preshared encryption for extra safety.

Usage

devlink env send .env.local
devlink env receive 7-blue-river .env.local

`devlink git` Peer-to-Peer Git

What it does
Share your repo without pushing WIP to a remote. Great for ad-hoc review or quick testing.

How it works

CLI spins up a temporary Git server over a P2P substream.
Serving side advertises refs; fetching side pulls packfiles.
Access is scoped by session tokens (optional read-only mode).

Usage

devlink git serve
git clone devlink://git_abc123 my-feature

`devlink db` Live Database Access

What it does
Lets peers query your local database instantly no exports or imports needed.

How it works

CLI proxies a DB wire protocol (Postgres/MySQL/etc.) into a secure substream.
Default mode is read-only for safety.
Advanced options: enforce isolation (snapshots, roles), or share filtered exports.

Usage

devlink db share --type postgres --port 5432
devlink db connect db_abc123

`devlink pair` Localhost Streaming

What it does
Expose a local web app over HTTPS for demos or pair programming.

How it works

Generates ephemeral TLS certs validated by session trust.
Supports WebSocket/SSE passthrough for live reloads.
Browsers can trust via short-lived CA or relay proxy.

Usage

devlink pair --port 3000

`devlink registry` P2P Docker Image Transfer

What it does
Share Docker images directly, without pushing to Docker Hub.

How it works

Enumerates image layers (sha256 hashes).
Only missing layers are streamed, with resume + dedupe.
Works like docker pull, but fully P2P.

Usage

devlink registry send myapp:latest
devlink registry receive 12-green-comet

Current failure modes and cavets

Strict corporate firewalls: Some environments block UDP and outbound traffic; multi-hop relays and TCP fallback mitigate but can degrade performance.
Bandwidth limits: Streaming Docker images or DB traffic over low-bandwidth networks is slow, use filters/compression.
Local resource exposure: Exposing a DB or service still requires discipline, prefer read-only snapshots for sensitive data. -Trust model: DevLink reduces friction but does not replace security policy. Teams should combine DevLink with IAM, secrets management, and internal governance.

Roadmap: Building the Future of Developer Collaboration

We’re not stopping here. The hackathon may have ended without a win, but it sparked something bigger: DevLink is evolving into the definitive platform for frictionless, secure, peer-to-peer developer workflows.

Post-Hackathon Roadmap

Harden NAT traversal with multi-hop relays and TURN support.
Build Homebrew / apt packages and CI artifacts for easy installation.
Add secure read-only DB snapshots & redaction helpers.
VS Code & JetBrains extensions for one-click hive creation and in-editor sharing.
📊 GUI dashboard to visualize hives, active peers, and quick-access links.

DevLink as an Ecosystem

DevLink isn’t just a CLI, it’s an ecosystem layer between local development and production tooling.

Hackathon Origin Story: From Prototype to Passion

We built DevLink during a 24-hour hackathon(Recurzive v2) because we were frustrated with the same recurring pain: slow staging, leaked secrets, and blocked integrations.

In just one day, we prototyped hive,git,db env, and registry,pair, and demonstrated a live session across three laptops -> frontend, backend, QA: completing an entire end-to-end bug fix cycle in under five minutes.

While we didn’t win the hackathon, the experience validated one thing: DevLink solves a real problem that every developer faces.

Why This Matters

Even without the prize, we saw the potential impact:

Teams could spin up shared environments instantly.
Secrets could be exchanged securely with minimal friction.
Local development could directly integrate with peers without cloud dependencies.

We’re taking that momentum forward. DevLink is no longer just a hackathon prototype it’s the foundation of a developer-first ecosystem built for speed, security, and collaboration.

Join Us on This Journey

DevLink is just getting started, and we want developers like you to help shape its future. Whether it’s testing features, building plugins, or sharing workflow patterns, your contributions can make DevLink stronger, faster, and more versatile.

We’re building a community of collaborators, not just a tool, join us, experiment, and let’s redefine how developers work together.

👉 Contribute on GitHub

The team that made this happen

Ananya Gupta - Backend Developer
Rishi Chirchi - Backend Developer
Kshitij NK - Frontend Developer

also the fellow hackathon participants who helped us brainstorm, and test out our ideas, their feedback and insights helped shape devlink into a tool that it is<3.