iii-desktop

Native desktop shell for the iii chat surface. Tauri 2 in Rust, React renderer on iii-browser-sdk, runs against the canonical iii harness graph.

Two halves:

• src-tauri/ — Rust shell. Owns the window, native menu, deep links, file dialogs. Registers a small desktop::* worker on the engine (ws://127.0.0.1:49134 by default).
• web/ — Vite + React renderer. Connects to the browser RBAC port (ws://127.0.0.1:49135) via iii-browser-sdk and drives the chat graph through harness::call.

The renderer never speaks REST. Every action is iii.trigger(...) against either the harness or the desktop worker.

Status

0.x. Stays sub-1.0 until the shell is in real production use against a running engine + harness.

Prerequisites

• Rust stable (rustup toolchain install stable)

• Node 20 + pnpm 9 (corepack enable && corepack prepare pnpm@9 --activate)

• A running iii engine with the harness worker installed:

  curl -fsSL https://install.iii.dev/iii/main/install.sh | sh
  iii worker add harness
  iii                  # runs the engine in the foreground

  Engine subcommands: iii trigger, iii worker, iii console, iii sandbox, iii cloud. Bare iii is the long-running engine process.

  Provider API keys: auth-credentials reads them from the environment of the process that spawns the workers, so export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY / OPENAI_API_KEY etc before running iii.

Dev

# install renderer deps
pnpm --dir web install

# start Tauri + Vite together
cargo tauri dev

cargo tauri dev is the canonical entry. It runs pnpm --dir web dev in the background, watches src-tauri/, and rebuilds the shell on change.

If cargo tauri is missing, install it once:

cargo install tauri-cli --version "^2"

Build

pnpm --dir web build
cargo tauri build

Output bundles land in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

Configuration

Environment variables read at launch:

Var	Default	Meaning
III_URL	ws://127.0.0.1:49134	Backend engine port (for the desktop worker).
VITE_III_BROWSER_URL	unset	Override the browser worker WS. Skips harness::info round-trip.
III_HARNESS_HTTP	http://127.0.0.1:39134	HTTP base for the harness::call proxy used by Vite in dev.

Wire shape

The renderer is itself an iii worker. On boot it:

1. Fetches harness::info over HTTP to discover the browser WS endpoint (skipped if VITE_III_BROWSER_URL is set).
2. Connects via iii-browser-sdk::registerWorker.
3. Mints a stable browser_id for the page and registers ui::session::event::<browser_id> for live agent::events.
4. Calls ui::subscribe { browser_id, session_id } so the harness fanout knows which sessions to forward.
5. Sends turns via harness::call { function_id: "run::start", payload }.

The desktop worker registers two functions on the backend port:

• desktop::status — version + name liveness probe
• desktop::window::focus — bring the desktop window to the front (useful for cross-app deep links and approval prompts)

Layout

.
├── src-tauri/             Rust shell
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── main.rs        thin bin entry
│   │   ├── lib.rs         tauri::Builder + plugin wiring
│   │   ├── worker.rs      iii-sdk worker registration
│   │   ├── menu.rs        native menu
│   │   └── functions/     Tauri IPC commands
│   ├── capabilities/      Tauri 2 capability scopes
│   └── tauri.conf.json
├── web/                   Vite + React renderer
│   └── src/
│       ├── App.tsx
│       ├── components/
│       ├── lib/
│       │   ├── iii-client.ts      iii-browser-sdk wrapper
│       │   ├── useAgentStream.ts  agent::events subscription
│       │   ├── tauri.ts           Tauri IPC + menu event helpers
│       │   └── types.ts
│       └── styles/        vendored iii console design tokens
└── .github/workflows/     ci + release

License

Apache-2.0