tiletopia/README.md

# tiletopia

A Windows desktop app for running and arranging many WSL terminals at once. Built primarily for managing multiple `claude` sessions across projects in parallel; works for any multi-shell workflow.

- Tiling layout — recursive splits, draggable dividers, preset layouts (single / 2-col / 3-col / 2-row / 2×2)
- Per-pane distro + cwd + label, persisted across restarts
- Broadcast input to a group of panes (per-pane 📡 chip, or global toggle in the titlebar)
- Idle-detection toasts when a pane goes quiet
- Ctrl+K palette to fuzzy-jump between panes

## Install

1. Download the latest `tiletopia_<version>_x64-setup.exe` from the [releases page](https://git.rdx4.com/megaproxy/tiletopia/releases).
2. Run it. Windows SmartScreen will warn "unrecognized publisher" — it's not code-signed. **More info → Run anyway**.
3. Launch *tiletopia* from the Start menu. A window opens with one terminal pane bound to your default WSL distro.

### Requirements

- **Windows 10/11** with [WebView2 Runtime](https://developer.microsoft.com/microsoft-edge/webview2/) (preinstalled on Win11).
- At least one WSL distro registered (`wsl -l -v`).

## Using it

### Shortcuts and tips

<!-- SHORTCUTS:START -->

#### Keyboard shortcuts

**Layout**

| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| `Ctrl+Shift+E` | Split active pane to the right |
| `Ctrl+Shift+O` | Split active pane downward |
| `Ctrl+Shift+W` | Close active pane |
| `Ctrl+Shift+P` | Promote active pane out one level (turns a nested pane into a full row/column; self-inverse) |

**Navigation**

| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| `Ctrl+K` | Open jump-to-pane palette |
| `Ctrl+Shift+← / → / ↑ / ↓` | Focus neighbour pane in that direction |

**Broadcast**

| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| `Ctrl+Shift+B` | Toggle broadcast on active pane |
| `Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B` | Toggle broadcast on ALL panes (same as titlebar 📡) |

**Font size**

| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| `Ctrl+= / Ctrl+- / Ctrl+0` | Zoom active pane in / out / reset |
| `Ctrl+Shift+= / Ctrl+Shift+- / Ctrl+Shift+0` | Same, applied to every pane |

**Terminal**

| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| `Ctrl+Shift+C / Ctrl+Shift+V` | Copy selection / paste in terminal |

**Help**

| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| `F1` | Show this help overlay |

#### Tips

- **Per-pane shell picker** — Click the distro chip in any pane's toolbar to switch between WSL distros, PowerShell, or a saved SSH host. The pane respawns with the new shell.
- **SSH host manager** — Titlebar 🔑 SSH hosts opens the manager. Add hostname / user / port / identity file / jump host / extra ssh args. Saved hosts appear in every pane's dropdown.
- **Saved passwords** — Optionally save a host's password — stored in Windows Credential Manager (DPAPI-encrypted), never written to hosts.json. When ssh prompts on connect it's typed automatically. Hosts with a saved password show 🔒 in the list.
- **Clickable links** — http and https URLs in terminal output get underlined and open in your default browser on click.
- **Drag pane headers to swap** — Grab a pane's title bar and drag it onto another pane to swap their tree positions. Useful for reorganizing without keyboard.
- **Workspace persistence** — Layout, labels, distro choices, and SSH hosts auto-save to %APPDATA%/com.megaproxy.tiletopia (debounced 500ms). Closed panes don't come back — only the structure is restored, shells spawn fresh on next launch.
- **MCP server (let Claude drive the workspace)** — Titlebar 🤖 opens the MCP control panel — start the server and paste the snippet into your Claude Code .mcp.json. The snippet uses npx mcp-remote as a stdio shim because Claude Code's HTTP-MCP client ignores static bearer auth and tries OAuth instead; the shim proxies the HTTP endpoint with the bearer baked in. URL + token persist across restarts; Regenerate the token in the panel if it leaks. Default-deny per pane: toggle 🤖 on each pane's toolbar to expose it to MCP. Read-only in v1 (no spawn or write yet).

<!-- SHORTCUTS:END -->

Shortcuts work while a terminal is focused — we capture the key before xterm.js sees it. They don't fire while you're typing into a label edit or the palette input, so those still work normally. `Ctrl` and `⌘` (Cmd) are interchangeable.

Font size persists per pane in `workspace.json`, so a zoomed pane stays zoomed across restarts.

> The shortcut tables and tips above are generated from `src/lib/shortcuts.ts` (the single source of truth shared with the in-app help overlay). To change them, edit that file and run `pnpm gen:readme`.

### Mouse + toolbar

- **Split panes** — `⇥` in the pane toolbar splits right, `⇣` splits down. The new pane inherits the parent's distro; the cwd defaults to `~` in the WSL distro.
- **Close pane** — `×`. The sibling expands to fill.
- **Rename pane** — click the label in the toolbar, type, `Enter` (`Esc` to cancel).
- **Change distro** — click the small `Ubuntu ▾` chip; pick a distro from the popover. The pane respawns (old shell is killed).
- **Swap panes** — click-and-drag a pane's toolbar onto another pane. The two leaves trade tree slots; both shells stay alive, both scrollbacks intact.
- **Active pane** — click any pane → blue border + keyboard focus.
- **Resize** — drag the gutter between two panes. A 180 px minimum is enforced on both sides.

### Broadcast, idle, presets

- **Broadcast** — toggle `📡` on two or more panes (orange border). Typing in any of them mirrors to the rest. The titlebar `📡 all off` / `📡 all on` / `📡 N/M` button flips the whole group at once.
- **Idle indicator** — when a pane goes quiet for 5 s, its border turns red and its "alive" toolbar tag swaps to red "idle". The titlebar also shows an `N idle` count. Clears the moment new output arrives. Active + broadcasting borders take precedence so the focus indicator isn't masked.
- **Preset layouts** — titlebar buttons `1` / `2H` / `3H` / `2V` / `2×2`. Existing panes are spliced into the new shape in order (ids, shells, scrollback preserved); extra slots spawn fresh shells. Only prompts if the preset has fewer slots than you currently have panes (those overflow shells get killed).

Layout + per-pane settings auto-save to `%APPDATA%\com.megaproxy.tiletopia\workspace.json` (debounced 500 ms).

### MCP server (Claude can drive the workspace)

The titlebar 🤖 button opens a small panel that starts an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. A Claude session — running anywhere reachable from the host, including inside one of tiletopia's own panes — can connect to it, read scrollback, wait for commands to settle, and inspect the layout. v1 is **read-only**: no spawning, no keystroke injection, no host editing.

- **Off by default.** Click the button, hit **Server: ON** to start. The panel shows the URL + bearer token and a ready-to-paste Claude config snippet. Both port and token persist across restarts (saved to `%APPDATA%\com.megaproxy.tiletopia\mcp.json`); use **Regenerate** in the panel if the token leaks.
- **Default-deny per pane.** Toggle the 🤖 chip in any pane's toolbar to allow MCP to see it. Panes without the chip on are invisible to the server.
- **Saved SSH passwords are never exposed** through the MCP surface.
- **Bound to all interfaces** (`0.0.0.0`). The bearer token is the only auth — don't enable the server on an untrusted network.

#### Claude Desktop setup (one-click via `.mcpb` bundle — recommended)

The MCP panel has a **Download .mcpb** button that fetches a packaged Claude Desktop extension (an `.mcpb` file). Drag it into Claude Desktop's *Settings → Extensions* pane and Claude will auto-discover tiletopia — no config editing, no copy-pasting tokens.

The bundle ships a tiny wrapper that reads your per-install bearer token straight from `%APPDATA%\com.megaproxy.tiletopia\mcp.json` at launch, so:

- It carries **no secrets** — the same file works for every tiletopia install.
- **Token regeneration** in the panel keeps working transparently; the next time Claude Desktop launches the extension, it'll pick up the new token.
- Requires `npx` (Node 18+) on PATH because the wrapper still talks to tiletopia through `mcp-remote` (same reason as the manual recipe below).

You can also rebuild the bundle from source:

```sh
pnpm run build:mcpb     # writes dist-mcpb/tiletopia.mcpb
```

#### Claude Code setup (via `mcp-remote` stdio shim — fallback / manual recipe)

Claude Code (the terminal CLI) doesn't accept `.mcpb` bundles yet, and its HTTP-MCP client currently tries OAuth discovery and ignores static `headers` auth (Anthropic [#17152](https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/17152), [#46879](https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/46879)). The [`mcp-remote`](https://www.npmjs.com/package/mcp-remote) stdio shim transparently proxies the HTTP endpoint with the bearer header attached, sidestepping the OAuth flow.

The panel's config snippet uses this shim by default — paste it into your project's `.mcp.json`:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tiletopia": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y", "mcp-remote",
        "http://127.0.0.1:47821/mcp",
        "--allow-http",
        "--header", "Authorization: Bearer <token-from-panel>"
      ]
    }
  }
}
```

Requires `npx` (Node 18+) on the client side. Other MCP clients that handle static bearer auth correctly can skip the shim and connect directly to the URL + token shown in the panel.

#### WSL connectivity

When Claude runs inside WSL, swap `127.0.0.1` for the WSL gateway IP (`ip route show default | awk '{print $3}'` inside WSL — note that this changes after each WSL restart) **or** enable mirrored networking (`networkingMode=mirrored` in `%UserProfile%\.wslconfig` then `wsl --shutdown`; Win 11 22H2+). Allow the port through Windows Defender Firewall once — elevated PowerShell:

```powershell
New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "tiletopia MCP" -Direction Inbound `
  -Action Allow -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 47821 -Profile Any
```

## Stack

- **Tauri 2** (Rust backend, WebView2 frontend) — small bundle, native NSIS installer.
- **React 18** + TypeScript + Vite + pnpm. (The v0.1.0 release was Svelte 5; v0.2.0+ is React after a ground-up rewrite of the frontend. Same data model, same backend, more reliable reactivity through the recursive Pane chain. The Svelte version is preserved on the `svelte-archive` branch.)
- **xterm.js** + `@xterm/addon-fit` for terminal rendering.
- **`portable-pty`** (Rust) spawning `wsl.exe -d <distro>` PTYs.

## Build from source

This targets Windows; the Rust toolchain runs on the Windows host. Prereqs per [Tauri docs](https://v2.tauri.app/start/prerequisites/#windows): MSVC ("C++ build tools" workload), Rust, Node 20+, pnpm (`corepack use pnpm@latest`), at least one WSL distro.

```powershell
git clone https://git.rdx4.com/megaproxy/tiletopia.git
cd tiletopia
pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev          # iterate
pnpm tauri build        # NSIS installer at src-tauri\target\release\bundle\nsis\
```

**Keep the source on a Windows-native drive** (e.g. `C:\` or `D:\`). Running pnpm against a `\\wsl.localhost\...` UNC path crashes pnpm 11.x inside `isDriveExFat` (with a misleading error from the crashing hint formatter).

### Run the tests

```sh
pnpm test          # vitest, 43 cases on the layout tree
pnpm test:watch
pnpm check         # tsc --noEmit (strict TypeScript pass)
pnpm build         # tsc -b && vite build — full production frontend bundle
```

The test suite covers the pure helpers in `src/lib/layout/tree.ts`. UI behavior, broadcast routing, and Tauri integration are manually tested.

## Architecture

- **Backend** (`src-tauri/src/pty.rs`): `PtyManager` holding `Mutex<HashMap<PaneId, PaneHandle>>` of `portable-pty` children. Each spawned pane gets a background reader thread that emits `pane://{id}/data` events (base64 byte chunks). Counterparts: `write_to_pane` / `resize_pane` / `kill_pane`. Workspace persistence via `save_workspace` / `load_workspace` writes to `app.path().app_config_dir()` with atomic tmp + rename.
- **Layout** (`src/lib/layout/tree.ts`): binary tree of splits. `HSplit | VSplit` internal nodes with a ratio, `Leaf` at the bottom — same model as i3 / tmux / Zellij. Adaptive resize falls out of mutating one parent ratio. Pure helpers (`splitLeaf`, `closeLeaf`, `changeDistro`, `setAllBroadcast`, etc.) live in `tree.ts` with 43 vitest cases; the rendering chain (`Pane.tsx` → `SplitNode.tsx` / `LeafPane.tsx`) is thin.
- **Orchestration** — broadcast routing, idle detection, palette, active-pane focus all live in `App.tsx`. Shared state and operations reach descendants through a React Context (`src/lib/layout/orchestration.tsx`), so each LeafPane reads `activeLeafId`, `distros`, and the tree-mutation methods directly via `useOrchestration()` — no prop drilling through the recursive Pane chain.

## License

No formal license yet. Public for inspection and personal use; if you want to redistribute, open an issue and ask.