Catalyst Code Desktop

Desktop app for Catalyst Code — an AI coding agent with local (Ollama) and Claude API support.

Built with Electron, React, and Tailwind CSS. Spawns the Catalyst web server for your project and wraps it in a Claude Code–style desktop experience.

Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• Ollama (for local models) or an Anthropic API key (for Claude)

Setup

npm install

Development

npm run dev

Build & Package

npm run build
npm run package:win   # Windows installer
npm run package:mac   # macOS DMG
npm run package:linux # Linux AppImage

Usage

1. Launch the app
2. Configure provider/model in Settings (Ollama is the default)
3. Open Project Folder to start a Catalyst session
4. Chat, run slash commands (/help, /test, /fix, …), and approve file writes or shell commands when prompted

Settings are stored in the Electron user data directory and apply when a new server session starts.

Architecture

• Main process — folder picker, settings persistence, Catalyst server lifecycle, approval bridge
• Preload — secure IPC bridge to the renderer
• Renderer — React chat UI with SSE streaming
• catalyst-bridge.js — starts CatalystWebServer and forwards approval requests to the desktop UI

The app depends on the catalyst-code npm package; it does not reimplement the agent.