AIDE Desktop Shell Plan

The production desktop target is a lightweight native shell around the existing web workbench and the local daemon.

Boundary

UI: editor, panels, community views, model lanes, and user approvals.
Daemon: filesystem, Git, terminal/task broker, model process lifecycle, workspace trust, audit log, and encrypted-sync adapters.
Model runtimes: separate localhost processes using the AIDE model contract.
Community transports: optional direct peers or user-selected relays; disabled by default.

Tauri is the intended shell because it can provide a smaller offline desktop package than an Electron-only implementation. This environment does not currently have Rust/Tauri installed, so the daemon is the runnable first boundary. Do not label a Tauri binary available until it is compiled and smoke-tested on each target platform.

The Tauri CLI is now pinned in the root package and the Rust project lives in desktop/. desktop/prepare.mjs stages only approved frontend assets, avoiding node_modules and build artifacts. Use npm run desktop:dev after installing platform prerequisites, or npm run desktop:build for a release build. A compiled binary is not claimed until that command succeeds on the target platform.

Shell Acceptance Gates

Launches without network access.
Restores workspace and unsaved editor state.
Shows workspace trust before enabling tools.
Starts and stops local model runtimes.
Routes filesystem and Git operations through the daemon.
Requires approval for writes, commands, sync, and publishing.
Recovers from daemon/model crashes without losing local edits.