Waku

Waku is a fast, native desktop app for working with local coding agents. It is built in Rust with GPUI and keeps projects, sessions, transcripts on your machine.

Install

On macOS, download the signed .dmg. It updates itself.

On Linux:

curl -fsSL https://waku.sh/install.sh | sh

The script installs into ~/.local without root. See docs/linux.md for requirements, manual installation, and uninstalling.

On Windows, run Waku-<version>-<arch>-Setup.exe from the latest release. It installs per-user and updates itself. A portable .zip is published alongside it. See docs/windows.md for requirements and what is not available there yet.

Supported agents

Waku works with:

• Amp
• Claude Code
• Codex CLI
• Cursor CLI
• Fx
• Grok Build
• Kimi Code
• OpenCode
• Pi

Install and authenticate at least one supported agent CLI before starting Waku. Waku detects available CLIs automatically and uses each provider's native structured protocol and session continuity.

Highlights

• Keep projects and independent agent sessions in one native app.
• Switch models, reasoning effort, and access modes from a shared interface.
• Queue or steer follow-up messages while an agent is working.
• Rewind Git-backed tasks with conversation-aware checkpoints.
• Store app state locally, with no Waku account or remote service required.

Architecture

The native desktop is an RPC client of the standalone waku-daemon process. Provider sessions run in waku-core, behind the authenticated, versioned WebSocket contract in waku-protocol. Waku Desktop depends on waku-client, not on the daemon implementation. The daemon owns task SQLite data, uploaded attachments, provider-native session forks, and all workspace filesystem and Git operations; paths returned by it always refer to the daemon host. The desktop retains only presentation state and a disposable preview cache.

The browser client lives at apps/web and uses the generated browser transport in packages/waku-client. Its checked-in types are generated directly from the Rust protocol, while its WebSocket client implements the same handshake, request IDs, subscriptions, sequence deduplication, and replay cursors as the Rust client. Run bun run protocol:generate after changing a wire type and bun run protocol:check to verify that generated files are current.

Projectless task workspaces live on the daemon host under ~/.waku/projects/<date>/<slug>. The daemon moves workspaces created by the older ~/.waku/<date>/<slug> layout on first load.

Configuration ownership is separate too: the Release desktop writes ~/.waku/app.json, while Debug stays isolated at temp/app.json. Daemon provider and Computer Use settings live in ~/.waku/settings.json. The desktop's Settings → Daemon page can explicitly expose the child daemon on a fixed port, configure exact browser origins, and copy its stable authentication token. It remains loopback-only by default.

When connected to a daemon managed outside the desktop process, Waku never interprets daemon paths on the client machine. The local folder picker and PTY are therefore unavailable until the protocol gains daemon-host picker and terminal-stream endpoints; files, diffs, Git, skills, usage, task state, and attachments already use daemon RPC.

Release apps bundle and sign waku-daemon. Development keeps the daemon at target/debug/waku-debug-daemon, allowing provider-only edits to rebuild and replace the daemon without relaunching Waku Debug.

Development

Development is supported on macOS, Linux, and Windows and requires Rust 1.96 or newer and Bun. Linux supports both Wayland and X11, and Windows needs the MSVC toolchain; install the native build prerequisites listed in CONTRIBUTING.md first.

bun install
bun run dev

The embedded browser and experimental computer-use integration currently remain macOS-only. Agent sessions, projects, transcripts, skills, usage, diffs, file editing, and the terminal run natively on Linux and Windows.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the development workflow and checks. Release maintainers should also read RELEASING.md.

Sponsorship

You can support the project development via GitHub Sponsors.

License

Waku is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 only.