zidane-gui

Standalone Electron app — a Claude Code-style chat shell using zidane.

Install

npm install -g zidane-gui

A global install also registers a launcher app — ~/Applications/Zidane.app on macOS (Spotlight, Raycast, Launchpad), a .desktop entry on Linux — via postinstall. If you installed with --ignore-scripts or as root, run zidane-gui install-app as your regular user. Plain zidane-gui launches the GUI from a terminal.

Uninstalling: npm ≥ 7 does not run preuninstall scripts, so remove the launcher app before removing the package — otherwise it lingers in your launcher pointing at a deleted install:

zidane-gui uninstall-app
npm uninstall -g zidane-gui

Dev

bun install            # from the monorepo root — gui is a workspace member
bun --cwd=gui run dev

Renderer runs on http://localhost:21200 (loaded into the Electron window automatically).

Scripts

Run from gui/ (or via bun --cwd=gui run <script> from the root).

• bun run dev — electron-vite dev server with HMR
• bun run build — bundle main / preload / renderer into out/
• bun run start — preview a built bundle (electron-vite preview)
• bun run typecheck — tsc --noEmit on both node and web projects
• bun run test — vitest unit suite (pure logic — pairing, collapse, rehydrator, attachment ingest)
• bun run test:watch — vitest in watch mode
• bun run test:e2e — Playwright end-to-end (runs build first)
• bun run test:visual — Playwright visual regression suite

Stack

• Electron 41 + electron-vite 5 (Vite 7 under the hood)
• React 19 renderer, UnoCSS for styling
• TipTap 3 for the chatbox editor
• Shiki 4 for syntax highlighting
• react-markdown 10 + remark-gfm for transcript rendering
• Radix @radix-ui/react-tooltip for tooltips
• TypeScript 6
• SQLite via Electron's built-in node:sqlite (no native modules) at app.getPath('userData')/zidane-gui.db
• Numbered SQL migrations in migrations/ applied at startup
• Vitest 4 for unit tests on pure logic (no Electron / no React mount)

Notes

• vite is held at v7 (latest v8 isn't yet supported by electron-vite).
• @vitejs/plugin-react is held at v5 for the same reason — v6 requires Vite 8.
• This package lives in the zidane monorepo as the gui/ bun workspace and consumes the in-repo zidane via file:.. (build it with bun run build at the root first if dist/ is stale).
• No native modules — SQLite is Electron's built-in node:sqlite, so there is no ABI rebuild step. trustedDependencies (electron, esbuild) lets bun run their build scripts.

v1 scope

• Per-chat working folder (chosen before first send, remembered across launches)
• Flat sidebar of chats sorted by updated_at DESC, rename + delete inline
• Chatbox in the center; chat result rendering is intentionally deferred