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Installation

The Desktop SDK is the client half of a two-part system. The daemon — a privileged system service that ships as part of the SDK — owns the VPN tunnel, firewall rules, and platform drivers. Your application references the Kape.PlatformSdk library, which connects to the running daemon over IPC (a Named Pipe on Windows, a Unix socket on macOS and Linux) and exposes its state and controls as async C# APIs.

Installing the SDK therefore means two things: adding the library to your project, and making sure the daemon is present on the user's machine. See the overview for the full architecture.

Requirements​

  • .NET 10 or later
  • The Kape daemon installed and running on the user's machine
warning

The library talks to the daemon — it does not replace it. Without a running daemon there is nothing to connect to. The daemon ships as part of the SDK; how it is packaged and installed is still being finalised and will be documented here once ready.

Package​

The library is not yet published. It will ship as the Kape.PlatformSdk NuGet package; distribution details will be provided once available.

Connecting to the Daemon​

KapeSdkHandle.CreateAsync() auto-detects the platform and uses the daemon endpoint configured for your brand — a Named Pipe on Windows, a Unix socket on macOS and Linux. No configuration is required.

To connect to an explicit endpoint instead, pass it in: a socket path on macOS and Linux, a pipe name on Windows.

await using var handle = await KapeSdkHandle.CreateAsync("/opt/acmevpn/var/daemon.sock");  // macOS / Linux
await using var handle = await KapeSdkHandle.CreateAsync("AcmeVpnService");                // Windows

The KAPE_DAEMON_SOCKET environment variable overrides the default without a code change, which is handy during development.

Next Steps​