cinch send

cinch send reads from stdin, encrypts the content end-to-end, and broadcasts it to every device on your account through the relay. Unlike cinch copy (local-only), send contacts the relay.

Encryption is always on: the clip is encrypted with your AES-256 key on this machine before it leaves, so the relay only ever stores ciphertext.

Usage

<command> | cinch send [flags]

send is stdin-only and broadcast-only — it has no --to / --target flag and no positional clip reference. Every send goes to your whole fleet; pick a specific machine on the read side with cinch pull --from <device>.

Examples

# Send text
echo "meeting notes" | cinch send

# Send file contents
cat report.csv | cinch send

# Send a git diff
git diff HEAD~1 | cinch send

# Send a label-tagged clip (visible in desktop history)
cat error.log | cinch send --label "build error"

# CI: send using env vars instead of stored credentials
echo "artifact url" | cinch send  # needs CINCH_TOKEN + CINCH_RELAY_URL + the encryption key

On success it prints (to stderr):

✓ Sent to your fleet (E2EE)

If the relay is unreachable, the clip is written to the local queue and retried on the next cinch command:

⚠ Queued offline — will retry on next cinch command (id=…)

Encryption key required

cinch send needs the AES master key on this machine — a token alone is not enough. The key arrives when you cinch auth login (or is shared from a paired device). On a headless box, provision it with cinch auth recovery restore or a pre-seeded ~/.cinch/config.json.

If the key is missing, send fails fast (exit 5) rather than silently queuing a never-encrypted clip. If you signed in but a paired device hasn’t shared the key yet, it exits 6 — run cinch auth retry-key.

Flags

Flag	Short	Type	Default	Description
--label	-l	string	—	Label for this clip (shown in desktop history).
--silent	-s	bool	false	Suppress the success line. A queued-offline warning still prints.
--type		string	—	Force content type. Accepts image or any image/* MIME to override the image-vs-text decision. Text subtypes (text / url / code) are derived automatically and cannot be forced.
--text		bool	false	Force text mode, skip image auto-detection.
--require-online		bool	false	Treat an offline-queued clip as a failure (exit 3) instead of exit 0. Use in CI where a queued-but-unsent clip means the box died with the clip still local.
--token		string	—	Override auth token (for CI/automation; prefer CINCH_TOKEN env var).
--relay		string	—	Override relay URL (prefer CINCH_RELAY_URL env var).

Content types

Every clip is tagged with one of four canonical content_type values, derived on the client by client_core::classify::detect:

Value	When emitted
image	PNG / JPEG / GIF / WebP magic bytes, or --type image/*.
url	The whole stdin payload parses as a single URL.
code	Matches a shebang, JSON shape, or code heuristic.
text	Default for any non-image text payload.

There are no MIME-style strings (text/plain, image/png) on the wire — they would create skew with the relay’s canonical 4-string vocabulary. See Relay Protocol → Content types.

Environment variables

Variable	Description
CINCH_TOKEN	Auth token. Overrides stored credentials — useful in CI without touching disk.
CINCH_RELAY_URL	Relay URL. Overrides the value in ~/.cinch/config.json.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Success (sent, or queued offline without --require-online).
1	Generic error — empty stdin, oversize (> 20 MB), or unsupported media.
2	Authentication failure — run cinch auth login.
3	Network error — relay unreachable (also returned for a queued clip when --require-online is set).
4	Relay error — server-side failure.
5	Encryption key missing — run cinch auth login, or provision the key on headless boxes.
6	Encryption key pending from a paired device — run cinch auth retry-key.