Desktop (apps/desktop)

The Clone Desktop tray app. Its job is to capture computer-use events (screen, keyboard, mouse, app focus, browser URL) into MCAP/MKV files on disk and stream them to the Recording layer over a slab-append upload protocol. It is recorder + uploader only — the AI pipelines that previously lived on the desktop (digest summarizer, suggestion popup, on-device LLM) moved off the device.

Stack

• Python 3.11+ (3.13 in the production Nuitka build env)
• Vendored ocap CLI (GStreamer + hardware H.265) for capture
• pystray (Windows) / rumps (macOS) tray
• customtkinter Settings window
• httpx + keyring (DPAPI / Keychain) for auth + uploads
• truststore for corporate MITM proxy compatibility
• Nuitka standalone build → Inno Setup (Windows) / signed + notarized DMG (macOS)

Surface split

Surface	Concern
Desktop	Record + upload. Tray-only — no main window. Tail recording into the Clone server with crash-recovery semantics.
Web	Browse, edit, analyze, manage. Memory + Predictions UIs, account settings, billing.

The desktop client deliberately holds no business state beyond the upload queue (stream_uploads in SQLite) and OS-keychain refresh token; everything else is the server's view.

Run it locally

cd apps/desktop
git submodule update --init --recursive
uv venv --python 3.13 && uv pip install -e ".[windows]"   # or .[macos]
uv run python -m desktop                                   # tray loads
uv run python -m pytest tests/                             # unit + loopback

Build a frozen binary

# Windows
scripts\build_nuitka.bat        # → dist\Clone Desktop\CloneDesktop.exe
                                # → dist\CloneDesktop-Setup-0.1.0.exe

# macOS
bash scripts/build_nuitka.sh    # → dist/Clone Desktop.app + DMG
                                #   (signed + notarized when a Developer ID
                                #    is in the keychain)

Frozen-build self-tests

"CloneDesktop.exe" --selftest=keyring_backend       # OS keychain round-trip
"CloneDesktop.exe" --selftest=truststore_inject     # MITM-proxy CA path
"CloneDesktop.exe" --selftest=upload_loopback       # 5 MB byte-equal smoke
"CloneDesktop.exe" --selftest=gst_init              # Nuitka×D3D11 bisect tool