Waku

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

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](crates/waku-core), behind the authenticated, versioned WebSocket contract in [waku-protocol](crates/waku-protocol). Waku Desktop depends on [waku-client](crates/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](apps/web) and uses the generated browser transport in [packages/waku-client](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//. The daemon moves workspaces created by the older ~/.waku// 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.