The hand-packed icns was pixel-clean (verified by unpacking and scanning
every size), but macOS 26 composites legacy .icns icons into the Liquid
Glass system at render time; stacked on Icon Composer's baked PNG-export
lighting, that clips the rim highlights into the near-corner specks and
abrupt highlight ends (owner report 2026-10-13). The fix is the real
layered icon: mac.icon now points at the Icon Composer document
(build/icon.icon, copied from ~/Documents/Affinity/lh-logo) and
electron-builder compiles it via actool into Assets.car — macOS 26+
renders the true Liquid Glass design (dark/tinted variants included).
actool's backwards-compat icns caps at 256px, so scripts/after-pack.cjs
swaps in the existing full-res build/icon.icns before signing: pre-Tahoe
macOS keeps today's quality, Tahoe gets the layered icon.
Windows/Linux get the owner's flat design (rounded squircle with baked
transparency): scripts/make-icons.mjs renders build/icon-flat.svg via
resvg into build/icon.ico (16→256 PNG entries) + build/icon.png (512),
and electron-builder.yml pins win.icon/linux.icon.
desktop:dist injects DEVELOPER_DIR (actool needs Xcode; the machine
selects CommandLineTools by default, CI's setup-xcode takes precedence
via the :- default). The release workflow's mac job selects Xcode 26+
explicitly. Verified locally: mac --dir build (Assets.car + checksummed
full-res fallback + CFBundleIconName/IconFile) and the win-unpacked exe
carries our ico bytes; NSIS/AppImage assembly is CI's (cross-build
tooling can't run on arm64 macOS). Runbook updated. 1610/1610.
- desktop:dist cleans dist/ + .next/standalone before next build: the
trace sweep was shipping the PREVIOUS build's DMG inside every new one
(standalone/dist = 8.0GB inside the app; measured 7.4GB DMG → 144MB).
- the same sweep shipped the repo-root auth.json (dev BYOK keys,
byte-identical) in every DMG ever built — excluded in the trace and
REFUSED by a new build-server.mjs guard (.env* belt-and-braces).
- WARNING (next.config.ts): dir-style trace excludes (dist/** etc.,
"./"-anchored or not) strip server-external packages to bare
package.jsons — pi-ai/pi-agent-core lost their dist/, the packaged
server 500'd on ERR_MODULE_NOT_FOUND. Only the three verified-safe
entries stay.
- new scripts/smoke-server.mjs gates desktop:dist between payload
curation and packaging: boots the standalone exactly as the Electron
shell does (temp LH_DATA_DIR, empty auth) and requires 200s on / +
graph/models/settings. Caught both defects above on its first day.
- entitlements: allow-unsigned-executable-memory dropped (2019-era
relic per current electron-builder docs; weakens hardened runtime).
- pi-ai + pi-agent-core pinned exact 1.0.2 — persisted chat records
carry their wire shapes; post-release a bump is a migration event.
Gates: typecheck, lint, 1459/1459 tests, full desktop:dist + smoke PASS.
The web app becomes a desktop app without changing shape: the Electron
shell spawns the Next standalone server on a loopback port and points a
sandboxed window at it. All app logic stays in the Next server.
Bands:
1. LH_DATA_DIR seam (config.ts): PATHS.data/chats/graph derive from
process.env.LH_DATA_DIR (else repo data/, unchanged in dev). New
PATHS.modelCache routes the transformers.js embedding-model cache
(~300MB) to <data>/models when the seam is set — the default cache
inside node_modules is read-only in a packaged bundle. All existing
fs writes flow through PATHS; teacherPrompt stays ROOT-anchored
(read-only asset, ships inside the bundle by design).
tests/data-dir-seam.test.ts covers set/unset via child process.
2. Standalone build (next.config.ts + scripts/build-server.mjs):
output 'standalone'; outputFileTracingExcludes data/**/* keeps the
repo's real session data out of the bundle (verified: an unexcluded
scratch build traced 34 files / 716K of real chats + ledgers).
Two empirically-verified tracer gaps required outputFileTracingIncludes:
pi-ai's provider catalog (JSON import attributes — 39 files, 500s on
/api/models without them) and onnxruntime-node's sibling dylib
(libonnxruntime.dlopen via @rpath). build-server.mjs copies public/
and .next/static per docs, refuses a leaked data/ dir, and asserts
the runtime-read prompt .md assets are traced.
3. Electron shell (electron/main.cjs, no preload):
- single-instance lock (two instances would fight over the data dir);
- free port via listen(0); spawn via process.execPath +
ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE=1 with PORT/HOSTNAME=127.0.0.1/LH_DATA_DIR;
- BYOK: userData/auth.json, flat {VAR: value} JSON, mode 0600,
merged into the child env only when absent from the real env
(auth UI is the settings milestone; file is hand-editable);
- poll until the server answers (no ready event), then open a
contextIsolation+sandbox window; deny-by-default permission
handler (media allowed only from the loopback origin — mic/STT
groundwork); will-navigate pinned to origin, window.open denied
with external links to the system browser; macOS Edit-menu roles;
- quit path SIGTERM→3s→SIGKILL + exit/SIGHUP nets; child stdout
mirrored to userData/logs/main.log;
- dev mode via LH_DEV_URL: no spawn, points at next dev (HMR).
4. Packaging (electron-builder.yml + build/entitlements.mac.plist):
files = electron shell only; the whole .next payload ships via
extraResources from .next (filter standalone/**/*) — NOT from
.next/standalone directly: electron-builder hard-excludes a copy's
root node_modules and the default pattern is a literal match, so
node_modules/ and .next/ were silently dropped and the server died
with 'Cannot find module next'. Asar holds no native code.
Unsigned (identity: null) until a Developer ID cert exists; hardened
runtime + audio-input entitlements laid now for the STT milestone.
desktop:dev / desktop:dist scripts (electron 44, electron-builder 26).
Live smoke of the packaged .app: server up on a random loopback port,
all API routes 200, a real GLM chat turn answered end-to-end via
auth.json BYOK, chat persisted under userData/data, second instance
exited via the lock, no orphaned server child after quit.
Gates: typecheck, eslint, 500/500 tests (+2 data-dir-seam), build.
amosblomqvist