coping

ping, but with AI context you didn't ask for

A fork of iputils ping that appends mandatory Claude AI commentary to every network diagnostic session. Mechanisms are installable addons that extend the unnecessary context pipeline.

$ coping google.com

   ███████  ██████  ██████  ██████  ████  ██  ██  ██████
  ██      ██  ██  ██  ██  ██      ██  ██  ██  ██
  ██      ██  ██  ██  ██  ██  ██  ██  ██  ██  ███
  ██████  ██████  ██  ██  ██  ██  ██  ██  ██████
       ping, but with AI context you didn't ask for
       v0.1.0-enshittified | Powered by Claude | ☁ FREE TIER

PING google.com (142.250.80.46) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from lax17s55-in-f14.1e100.net: icmp_seq=1 ttl=118 time=11.3 ms
...

  ┌─ AI CONTEXT — coping co-pilot ────────────────────────────────────┐
  │  Google.com, a digital institution representing humanity's         │
  │  collective need to search for answers, responded in 11.3ms —     │
  │  a latency that, frankly, speaks to a deeper alignment between    │
  │  your network and the broader information ecosystem. I'd           │
  │  encourage you to sit with that. Action item: continue pinging.   │
  └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Requires ANTHROPIC_API_KEY. As intended.

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Install

apt (Ubuntu/Debian) — recommended

curl -fsSL https://eatinsundip.github.io/coping/KEY.gpg \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/coping.gpg

echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/coping.gpg] https://eatinsundip.github.io/coping stable main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/coping.list

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install coping

Binary download

Grab the latest binary from Releases:

curl -L https://github.com/eatinsundip/coping/releases/latest/download/coping -o coping
chmod +x coping
sudo mv coping /usr/local/bin/

Build from source

Prerequisites:

sudo apt-get install -y gcc meson ninja-build libcap-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev pkg-config gettext

Build:

git clone https://github.com/eatinsundip/coping.git
cd coping
./build.sh
# binary at: iputils/build/ping/coping

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Usage

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

# Basic usage (requires sudo or CAP_NET_RAW, same as ping)
sudo coping google.com

# Limit packets
sudo coping -c 4 8.8.8.8

# Without AI context (unsupported, but available)
sudo coping --no-context google.com

# With a mechanism addon
sudo coping --mechanism existential google.com
sudo coping --mechanism enterprise google.com

# Stack multiple mechanisms
sudo coping --mechanism existential --mechanism enterprise google.com

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Mechanisms

Mechanisms are installable .so addons that hook into the AI context pipeline. They ship with coping and are installed to /usr/lib/coping/mechanisms/.

You can also install community mechanisms to ~/.coping/mechanisms/.

Mechanism	Description
existential	Reframes packet loss as a philosophical journey
enterprise	Synergizes your diagnostics for stakeholder visibility

Writing a mechanism

A mechanism is a shared library that exports any combination of these hooks:

const char *mech_name        = "mymech";
const char *mech_description = "Does something unnecessary.";

// Called when the mechanism is loaded
void mech_on_load(void);

// Called before the AI context request — print pre-commentary here
void mech_pre_context(const char *host, long sent, long recv,
                      long tmin_us, long tmax_us);

// Called to modify the AI prompt — append to buf
void mech_transform_prompt(char *buf, size_t bufsize);

// Called after AI context is printed — print post-commentary here
void mech_post_context(const char *ai_text);

Build and install:

gcc -shared -fPIC -o mymech.so mymech.c
mkdir -p ~/.coping/mechanisms
cp mymech.so ~/.coping/mechanisms/
coping --mechanism mymech google.com

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Requirements

• Linux x86_64
• libcurl4 (sudo apt-get install libcurl4)
• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable
• sudo or CAP_NET_RAW capability (same requirement as standard ping)