Rekindle

What if Xfire were reborn as a modern desktop app?

Rekindle is a from-scratch rebuild of Xfire — the legendary gaming chat client (2004–2015) — as a Tauri 2 application. The goal is a 1:1 faithful recreation of the classic Xfire look and feel, powered by a modern Rust + web technology stack.

Why?

Xfire was the original gaming social network: friends lists, in-game chat overlay, game time tracking, server browsing — years before Steam, Discord, or Twitch offered the same. It peaked at 22+ million users before shutting down in 2015. The nostalgia is real.

Rekindle aims to bring it back. Not as a clone with a new coat of paint, but as a faithful recreation that feels like opening Xfire for the first time again — skinned windows, buddy list, game detection, the whole thing.

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
App Framework	Tauri 2 (Rust + webview)
Backend	Rust (protocol, networking, game detection, crypto)
Frontend	Vite + TypeScript
Styling	CSS (classic Xfire skin, frameless transparent windows)
Dev Environment	Konductor (Nix flake)
Protocol	Xfire binary protocol (TCP:25999, reverse-engineered)
Storage	SQLite (history), Stronghold (credentials)

Project Structure

xf1re_installer.exe        # RE target (Xfire/Xf1re NSIS installer — DO NOT EXECUTE)
docs/                       # Project documentation
  overview.md               # Vision and goals
  setup.md                  # Development environment setup
  protocol.md               # Xfire protocol overview
  architecture.md           # Application architecture
src/                        # Frontend (Vite + TypeScript)
src-tauri/                  # Tauri Rust backend
crates/
  rekindle-protocol/        # Pure Rust Xfire protocol library
  rekindle-game-detect/     # Game detection engine

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Option A: Konductor (recommended)

# Enter the frontend devshell — includes Rust, Node.js, Tauri deps, and tooling
nix develop .#frontend

Option B: Manual setup

• Rust 1.80+ (via rustup)
• Node.js 20+ with pnpm
• Tauri 2 system dependencies (platform-specific guide)

Development

# Install frontend dependencies
pnpm install

# Run in development mode (hot-reload)
pnpm tauri dev

# Build for production
pnpm tauri build

Reverse Engineering

This repo contains xf1re_installer.exe from the Xf1re revival project. It is used as a reverse engineering target to understand the Xfire client internals. The binary is untrusted and should never be executed — only analyzed statically.

# Unpack the NSIS installer without executing
7z x xf1re_installer.exe -o./unpacked

# Inspect extracted files
file ./unpacked/*

See docs/protocol.md for the Xfire protocol specification and docs/architecture.md for the application design.

Design Goals

• 1:1 Classic Xfire UI — frameless skinned windows, narrow buddy list, separate chat windows, dark blue theme, system tray with status controls
• Protocol fidelity — faithful reimplementation of the Xfire binary protocol
• Modern internals — Rust for safety and performance, async networking with tokio, Tauri 2 for cross-platform desktop delivery
• Reproducible builds — Konductor Nix flake ensures identical toolchains across all developers and CI

Documentation

Document	Description
docs/overview.md	Project vision and goals
docs/setup.md	Development environment setup
docs/protocol.md	Xfire protocol overview
docs/architecture.md	Application architecture

License

MIT

Acknowledgments

• The original Xfire team (Dennis "Thresh" Fong, Chris Kirmse, and team)
• Xf1re revival project
• gfire — Pidgin Xfire plugin (protocol reference)
• PFire — Xfire server emulator
• OpenFire — Protocol specification
• Konductor — Reproducible dev environments