Introducing Commlink — your first ultrasonic data exchange in 5 minutes

We just shipped Commlink, the entry quest for the Beeping platform. In about five minutes, anyone with a laptop and a phone can run their first ultrasonic data exchange — no installs, no Bluetooth pairing, no WiFi. The browser does everything.

What is Beeping, in one sentence

Beeping is an open-source set of SDKs that lets nearby devices exchange short payloads over inaudible sound. Think of it as Bluetooth's older, simpler cousin: any device with a speaker can transmit, any device with a microphone can receive, and there is nothing to pair beforehand.

What you actually do in Commlink

The quest is five steps, all in the browser:

1. Open the page on a laptop, accept the mic permission on a phone.
2. Type a short payload ("a1b2c", a contact card, a discount code).
3. Press play — the laptop emits a 0.4-second chirp in the 18-22 kHz range. You don't hear it. The phone does.
4. Watch the decode appear on the phone in real time, character by character.
5. Earn the Commlink Operator badge — your first proof you can ship something with Beeping.

The whole thing runs on @beeping/web, our WASM-built browser core. No server round-trip, no account required to play through the demo.

Why we built it as a quest

Beeping is a primitive — a thin layer over audio APIs that almost nobody has worked with before. Documentation alone tends to send developers away ("interesting, but where do I start?"). A guided quest with checkpoints, a badge at the end and a short payload that demonstrably travels between two devices answers the same question visually.

If you want the deeper version, the Holonet track (coming next) walks you through cloning beeping-core, building it on macOS / Linux / Windows, and decoding the same payload from the CLI.

What's next

Right now Commlink is the only track live. Over the coming weeks we'll flip these on, one cascade at a time:

• 🌌 Holonet quest — build from source, CLI decode
• 🛰️ Transponder — pair two devices and play one of four ultrasound mini-games
• 🔑 API keys + GitHub linking — for developers ready to call the hosted beepbox server from their own apps

Each one ships with its own announcement and a clear "this is what you can build on top".

For now, give Commlink a try. It's the shortest path from "never heard of ultrasonic data" to "I just sent a string over sound".