Catalyst Guard

A native desktop AI harness with a Rust backend (Tauri v2) and a Svelte 5 + Tailwind frontend. Catalyst Guard provides an integrated workspace for running AI agents, managing tasks, taking notes, chatting with multiple providers, and transcribing audio — all from a single offline-capable application.

Features

Screen	Description
Home	Dashboard and quick navigation
Todos	Kanban board for task tracking with native HTML5 drag-and-drop
Agents	Define and configure AI agents with per-agent tool access and artifact directories
Notes	Markdown vault with wiki-link support, file tree, and server-rendered preview
Chat	Multi-provider streaming chat with native function-calling, branching history, and image attachments
File Explorer	3-pane Finder-style explorer scoped to agent artifact directories
Transcriptions	Audio recording and transcription via cloud APIs or on-device whisper.cpp
Settings	Provider credentials, model selection, and transcription configuration

Supported AI Providers

• Anthropic (Claude)
• OpenAI (GPT / Whisper)
• Lemonade (local LLM server)
• Ollama (local model runner)

Agent Tools

Agents can be granted access to:

• Filesystem — sandboxed read/write within the agent's artifact directory
• FilesystemBroad — broader filesystem access (with deny-list sandbox)
• OfficeFiles — generate .xlsx and .docx files from markdown
• WebSearch, CodeExecution, Terminal — planned

Building & Running

Requirements

• Rust toolchain (stable, 1.75+)
• Node.js 18+ and pnpm (corepack enable will provide it)
• Tauri v2 system dependencies for your platform — see tauri.app/start/prerequisites. On Debian/Ubuntu these are libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev, libgtk-3-dev, libayatana-appindicator3-dev, librsvg2-dev, plus build-essential and pkg-config.
• C++ compiler and cmake (required only for the local-whisper feature)

First-time setup

From the repository root:

pnpm install

This installs every workspace package, including the frontend's dependencies (the Tauri CLI lives in frontend/node_modules).

Run the app (development, hot reload)

pnpm dev

Wraps tauri dev: Vite serves the Svelte frontend on http://localhost:5173, Cargo builds the Rust backend, and the desktop window opens. Frontend edits hot-reload; Rust edits trigger a rebuild and a window restart.

Build a release bundle

pnpm build

Wraps tauri build. Produces a release binary plus .deb and .AppImage packages under src-tauri/target/release/bundle/ (configurable in src-tauri/tauri.conf.json).

On-device transcription (whisper.cpp)

Enable the local-whisper Cargo feature by forwarding flags to cargo through the Tauri CLI:

# Development
frontend/node_modules/.bin/tauri dev -- --features local-whisper

# Release
frontend/node_modules/.bin/tauri build -- --features local-whisper

Everything after -- is passed to cargo for the Rust build.

GPU acceleration

Add to the same feature list:

Backend	Feature flag	Requires
NVIDIA CUDA	local-whisper,cuda	CUDA toolkit
Vulkan	local-whisper,vulkan	Vulkan SDK + compatible driver
Apple Metal	local-whisper (automatic on Apple Silicon)	macOS

Example:

frontend/node_modules/.bin/tauri build -- --features local-whisper,cuda

Faster iteration helpers

• Frontend only (no desktop window): pnpm -C frontend dev. The page loads at localhost:5173 but invoke calls fail since there is no Tauri runtime — useful for pure CSS / layout tweaks.
• Type-check the frontend: pnpm frontend:check (wraps svelte-check).
• Rust-only check: cargo check --manifest-path src-tauri/Cargo.toml (add --features local-whisper to also check that path).

Data Locations

Platform	Config	Database
Linux / macOS	~/.config/catalyst-guard/config.toml	~/.local/share/catalyst-guard/db/app.db
Windows	%APPDATA%\catalyst-guard\config.toml	%LOCALAPPDATA%\catalyst-guard\db\app.db

The config file is created automatically on first run with sensible defaults. Existing data from previous versions is read in place — no migration step is required.

Whisper Models

When using on-device transcription, models are downloaded through Settings → Transcription. Models are stored in the application data directory and are not bundled with the binary.