Orange Tree (@orangeworks/orangetree)

Branching session-tree work-tracking tool. Local-first desktop app: break work into a DAG of nodes, run each node as an isolated Claude session, sync results graph-locally, and track progress on a canvas.

Runs on the user's PC against their own claude CLI (zero inference cost). The reference implementation is the JS-based orange-tree; this repo is the all-TypeScript rebuild (canonical: otree-docs/docs).

Status: 0.2.0 — core feature set in place. A draggable canvas of branching Claude sessions (fork, lifecycle, live streaming); projects with read-only/read-write folders, per-project instructions and context files; a document explorer + viewer; light/dark/system theming; and the 120-COLLAB collaboration engine — graph-local context sync, result return-flow, code-change propagation, and isolated git worktrees with auto-merge + AI conflict resolution. Design canon lives in otree-docs/docs/20-design.

Requirements

• Node.js >= 20
• A working claude CLI on PATH (or set OTREE_CLAUDE_BIN)

Develop

pnpm install
git config core.hooksPath .githooks   # enable the commit gate (integrity + tsc --noEmit)

pnpm dev        # esbuild-watch the frontend + node --watch the server
pnpm build      # one-shot build -> dist/
pnpm start      # run the built server (dist/server.js)
pnpm typecheck  # tsc --noEmit (also runs in the pre-commit hook)

The app serves its UI on 127.0.0.1 (loopback only) and opens a browser.

Runtime state (git-excluded)

All per-project runtime state lives in app-data, outside any repo (DES-PLATFORM-002):

<OTREE_DATA>/                 # default ~/.orangetree (env OTREE_DATA wins) — a DIRECTORY
  global.json                 # project registry + projectless nodes + settings
  scratch/                    # cwd for folderless sessions
  projects/<projectId>/
    tree.json                 # this project's node graph
    decisions.md              # audit log (append-only)

Environment

| Var | Meaning | |---|---| | OTREE_DATA | app-data root directory (default ~/.orangetree) | | OTREE_CLAUDE_BIN | explicit path to the claude executable | | OTREE_PORT | preferred port (default 4100, scans upward if taken) | | OTREE_OPEN | set 0 to not auto-open the browser |