Why is hearth keyless — and what about Last.fm?

[e2sy]

Lyrics, metadata, search all work with zero accounts. Is scrobbling the same story?

[e2sy]

The guardrail is deliberate: lyrics and metadata stay keyless, and opt-in bridges never gate core playback. That's why the app works fully offline-account: synced lyrics come from LRCLIB, metadata from the guest catalogue, no login anywhere.

Last.fm scrobbling is the one feature that cannot be keyless (Last.fm requires your own API key + session). hearth/scrobble.py ships the honest groundwork: the eligibility rule (should_scrobble — half the track or 4 minutes), a capped ScrobbleQueue (200) with JSON persistence, the token-flow URL builder, the documented md5 sign() helper and build_scrobble_payload(). Wiring it into playback waits for account onboarding — it's opt-in by design, never a gate in front of the player.