Desktop app

Skillmaker Studio also ships as a desktop app — a Tauri v2 shell that wraps the compiled skillmaker binary as a sidecar, so the same viewer-plus-server product runs as a .app with no terminal, no bun/Node runtime, and no CLI knowledge required on the target machine. It’s the same board and the same journal underneath; the app is a launcher and a window, nothing more.

Built from source, macOS only

There’s no downloadable installer yet — build it yourself from a checkout (below). Only macOS is supported today; the Rust side has some #[cfg(unix)]/#[cfg(windows)] seams in place, but nothing has been built or tested on Windows or Linux.

Building it

In addition to the prerequisites for installing from source, you’ll need the Rust toolchain (for cargo tauri build). From a repo checkout:

bun install
bun run build:desktop

build:desktop chains three steps: bun run build:dist (compiles the skillmaker binary + the static viewer), a script that stages both into Tauri’s sidecar layout, and finally cargo tauri build, which produces the .app (and .dmg) bundle under packages/desktop/src-tauri/target/.

What the shell does

1. On launch, it shows a small loading page immediately, then picks (or asks you to pick, via a native folder dialog) a workspace directory — any directory skillmaker init has set up.
2. It checks whether a skillmaker start server is already running for that workspace (the same claim file the CLI itself reads/writes). If so, it just points the window at that server’s existing port and spawns nothing of its own. If not, it spawns the bundled skillmaker binary itself (skillmaker start --port 0 --no-open) and navigates the window to it once it’s bound.
3. File → Workspace → Switch Workspace… re-runs that picking/checking step for a different folder.
4. On quit, if the app spawned its own server, it stops it; if it merely attached to a server someone else started, quitting the app leaves that server running untouched.

Known limitation: a dead attached server leaves a stale board

When the app attaches to a server it didn’t spawn (step 2 above — e.g. one left running in a terminal via skillmaker start), it doesn’t monitor that process. If the external server dies while the app’s window is open, the window is left pointing at a port nothing is listening on anymore: the board goes stale (no more SSE updates, no more API responses), with no in-app signal that the underlying server is gone. Recovering means quitting and relaunching, or using Switch Workspace to force the app to spawn its own server for that workspace.

The macOS-only scope and the closed-window behavior (the app stays running with no window when you close it, same as normal macOS apps) are the other two known gaps for this phase — see packages/desktop/README.md in the repo for the full list.

See also

Install from source for the CLI/bun prerequisites this builds on, and the Roadmap for what’s planned beyond this first pass (Windows/Linux, a signed/downloadable build, an in-app reconnect for the limitation above).