Docs › Support

Support

Sparehand is made and supported by one person. Write, and the answer comes from the person who wrote the code.

Where to write

E-mail: [email protected] (the address is also on your order receipt).
From the app: the ⋯ menu in the Sparehand panel (also the app's Help menu) → Contact support… opens a new mail with the diagnostics below already pasted in.
Security problems: the same address, privately, with "security" in the subject; see Reporting a vulnerability below.

There is no chat, phone line or ticket system, and no account to log in to: an e-mail is the whole process.

What to put in the message

The one thing that saves a round trip is the app's diagnostics:

Open the Sparehand menu → Settings → Advanced, and under Maintenance click Copy next to Diagnostics. It copies the app's and the engine's versions, the state of every machine (sparehand status) and the end of the dashboard's log to the clipboard.
Paste that into the mail. Addresses, e-mail addresses and your home folder's name are taken out before it reaches the clipboard; no keys, tokens or passwords are ever in it.
Say what you tried, what you expected, and what happened instead. The exact text of an error, or a screenshot of it, helps most.

Also useful, depending on the problem:

The dashboard's log: ~/Library/Logs/Sparehand/dashboard.log.
The engine's activity log: ~/.local/state/sparehand/log, where every job, fallback and switch is recorded, and jobs.tsv next to it.
A machine that won't connect: the output of sparehand doctor NAME (or Check on its card in the dashboard), which tests the connection, the key, the tools and a file sent there and back.
Studio or Crew: the production's or task's own log, shown on its page in the dashboard.

Before you write, Getting started covers the first-day questions (the unverified-app warning, the Keychain prompt, the first machine), and the dashboard's Help button answers questions about the app in plain words.

Reporting a security problem

Sparehand runs commands on your machines over SSH, so security reports are very welcome. Please report them privately by e-mail, never in public, with what an attacker needs (network position, access to the hub, a worker or the app), the steps and the impact. You get an answer within a week, and fixes go into the latest release. The security model explains what Sparehand protects against and what it doesn't; for example, a worker is trusted to run whatever the hub sends it, by design. Vulnerabilities in SSH, Tailscale, noVNC or your operating system belong with their own projects.

Licence questions

Buying is handled by Lemon Squeezy, the reseller and merchant of record: receipts, refunds and card questions are answered through the link on your receipt. A licence key, a Mac that won't activate, or moving to a new Mac (Settings → Licence → Use the licence on another Mac…): e-mail support, with the order's e-mail address.

Beta features

Crew, Studio, members, cloud machines and the cloud AI providers are in beta. Problems with them are welcome too; say which feature and, for Studio, attach the storyboard's page or the production's log rather than the video.