Universal IPC daemon and CLI for Wayland compositors
_{C rewrite — 33× smaller, 6× leaner, starts in 1 ms}

---

Why axctl.c?

A line-by-line C port of axctl (Go), rebuilt for zero-overhead deployment on embedded and low-resource systems.

	Go	axctl.c
Binary	~6 MB	~180 KB
RAM (daemon idle)	~20-30 MB	~3-5 MB
Startup	~50-100 ms	~1 ms
Threads (idle)	8-12	3-5
Dependencies	none (static)	libjson-c, libwayland-client
Hot-reload	poll	inotify (instant)
Config output	.conf	.conf + .lua
Keybinds	ambxst JSON	ambxst + TOML (hot-reload)

---

Install

# Arch
sudo pacman -S json-c wayland
# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install libjson-c-dev libwayland-dev pkg-config
# Fedora
sudo dnf install json-c-devel wayland-devel pkg-config

git clone https://github.com/Leriart/axctl.c.git
cd axctl.c && make && sudo make install

---

Usage

axctl daemon                  # auto-detects Hyprland / Niri / Mango
axctl subscribe               # real-time event stream

axctl window focus-dir l      # focus left
axctl workspace switch 3      # jump to workspace 3
axctl config apply "$json"    # push config from Ambxst / NothingLess

The daemon listens on /tmp/axctl-<uid>.sock. TOML config at ~/.config/axctl/config.toml is loaded on start and hot-reloaded on save via inotify — no restart needed.

---

What it does

• 3 compositor backends — Hyprland (socket + Lua dispatch), Niri (JSON-RPC), Mango (Wayland)
• 60+ RPC methods — windows, workspaces, monitors, layout, keybinds, idle, system
• Config generation — single TOML source → .conf + .lua files per compositor
• Idle protocols — ext_idle_notify_v1, zwp_idle_inhibit_v1, systemd-inhibit
• Thread-safe state cache — pthread_rwlock, push-based event broadcast to subscribers
• Keybind pipeline — parses Ambxst JSON + TOML keybinds, generates compositor-native bind syntax with full modifier, flag, and Lua support

---

Credits

Leriart — C port · Axenide — original Ambxst & axctl · outfoxxed — Quickshell

---

axctl.c — AGPLv3 · See LICENSE