How Swarmnero actually works — the P2P model, accounts, the wallet, and the tradeoffs.
**The peer-to-peer model**
*Do I need to be online to see posts?*
You can always see posts you've already replicated to your device — if you've followed someone and their feed has synced in the past, those posts stay local. You don't need the original author online to read them.
But new posts only arrive when either you and the author are both online at the same time, or a peer who already has their posts (a friend-of-friend who follows them, or the optional feed backup server) is online. So for a new follow who's offline, you may not see anything until the first time you're both online together or a mutual peer relays the data.
*Why can't I see an account's posts after I paste their Swarm ID?*
Following someone only tells your app who you're interested in — it doesn't instantly pull their data. You have to connect to a peer that has their feed (often the author themselves, or someone who follows them). If everyone involved is offline, you'll see their follow appear in your list but no posts until replication happens. Stay online for a minute after following and their content should start to arrive.
*What's a Swarm ID?*
It's a 64-character hex string that uniquely identifies your social feed. Share it with someone and they can follow you. It's a public identifier — it reveals no secret information and can be pasted freely.
*How does Swarmnero find people if there's no server?*
Three mechanisms:
Live Now — users who opt into discovery join a shared DHT topic; you see who's currently online and can click through to their profile.
Friends-of-Friends — when you follow someone, your app asks them for a sample of the people they follow and recent tagged posts from those people.
Hashtag search — posts tagged with #tags are searchable across your network (own feed + follows + FoF cache).
If a post has no hashtag, it stays visible only to your direct followers. That's intentional — it's the privacy floor.
**Accounts & identity**
What happens if I lose my Secret Key?
The account is unrecoverable. There is no central authority to reset it. Export your Secret Key from Accounts → Export Secret Key and store it somewhere safe (password manager, paper backup). If the account has a password, you'll need that too.
*Can I sign into the same account on two devices?*
Not simultaneously — yet. Each account's feed is a single-writer Hypercore, and two devices writing to it at the same time corrupts the feed. Swarmnero shows a warning banner and disables posting when it detects a duplicate instance. For now, sign out on one device before using the other. Real multi-device simultaneous posting requires a different underlying structure (Autobase) and is on the roadmap.
*Does importing a Secret Key on a new device copy all my data?*
Content you've signed (posts, follows, profile, DMs) replicates in as peers come online. The follower list and DM conversation list rebuild over time as those peers reconnect. The wallet is separate — it has its own 25-word seed you restore independently via the "Restore Wallet" flow.
