Browser-First Era Archive
This document marks the architectural pivot from browser-first (Muse Alpha v0.2) to board-first (RefStudio v1.0).
What was the browser-first approach?
- Main workspace was a web browser with tabs
- Sidebar navigation between Home/Browser/Library/Board/Settings views
- Board was a secondary view accessed from the sidebar
- Image hover overlay injected into browser tabs for saving references
- Ad-blocking engine for browsing comfort
Why the pivot?
The core use case is reference organization, not web browsing. Artists need:
- An infinite canvas as the PRIMARY workspace (like PureRef)
- Browser as a TOOL (embedded panel) to find references, not the main UI
- Zero-friction image capture from browser → canvas
- Always-on-top mode for overlaying references while working in art apps
- Click-through transparency for tracing
What's preserved from browser-first era?
- Rust adblock engine (
adblock/module) - Tauri child webview architecture for embedded browser
- Image download + library persistence (
library.rs,persistence.rs) - Board item CRUD (
board.rs) - SQLite migrations
- Credentials/stronghold setup
New architecture (board-first / RefStudio)
- Infinite canvas is the main and only workspace
- Browser panel slides in from the right as a capture tool
- Library panel slides in from the left for asset management
- Three.js GPU-accelerated image rendering with shaders
- Annotations (freehand drawing) directly on canvas
- Text notes with rich formatting
- Image cropping, flipping, grouping, desaturate
- Minimap for navigation
- StarterHub for project management
- Always-on-top + click-through + opacity control
Files archived
The previous artifacts/musealpha-production.zip contains the browser-first build.
The ui-prototype/ directory contains the browser-first prototype.
The source in src/ and src-tauri/ is now being replaced with the board-first architecture from uiprototype2/.