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Desktop Tauri v2 Plugins

Last updated: 2026-06-03

The desktop app is built on Tauri v2. The Rust backend is kept thin — system-level glue only — while all business logic stays in TypeScript in the WebView. Every system capability the app needs is provided by a first-class Tauri v2 plugin, which is the decisive reason Tauri was chosen over Electron and Wails (see decision 0001).

Plugin set

flowchart LR
  WV["React WebView<br/>(TypeScript)"] -->|invoke / Channel / event| RUST["Tauri Rust backend"]
  RUST --> FS["plugin-fs"]
  RUST --> SHELL["plugin-shell"]
  RUST --> SQL["plugin-sql"]
  RUST --> KEY["plugin-keychain"]
  RUST --> TRAY["plugin-tray"]
  RUST --> GS["plugin-global-shortcut"]
  RUST --> NOTIF["plugin-notification"]
  RUST --> DIALOG["plugin-dialog"]
  RUST --> HTTP["plugin-http"]
  RUST --> CLIP["plugin-clipboard"]
Loading
Plugin Enables Used by
tauri-plugin-fs Scoped filesystem read/write. Path access is validated against a configured scope before any syscall. Loading/saving .relavium.yaml & .agent.yaml; the read_file / write_file / list_directory built-in tools
tauri-plugin-shell Spawning OS child processes from an explicit allowlist. The run_command / git_status / git_commit built-in tools; stdio MCP server processes
tauri-plugin-sql SQLite access, with the SQLCipher feature for encryption at rest. The desktop history.db (SQLCipher-encrypted at rest); the per-project runs.db is intentionally unencrypted (git-committed metadata) — see database-schema.md
tauri-plugin-keychain OS-native secret storage (macOS Keychain / Windows Credential Manager / Linux libsecret). API-key and DB-passphrase storage — see keychain-and-secrets.md
tauri-plugin-tray System tray icon, menu, and badge. Active-run monitor, awaiting-gate badge, "New Run" quick menu
tauri-plugin-global-shortcut OS-level global hotkeys. Command-palette hotkey (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+A) and "run on selection" (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+R)
tauri-plugin-notification Native desktop notifications with action buttons. Run completed / failed / human-gate-waiting alerts
tauri-plugin-dialog Native file pickers (NSOpenPanel / IFileOpenDialog / GTK FileChooserDialog). File-typed workflow input nodes; tool path parameters
tauri-plugin-http Outbound HTTP/HTTPS with streaming, per-workflow domain allowlist. The http_request / web_search built-in tools
tauri-plugin-clipboard Read clipboard contents. The read_clipboard built-in tool; "run on current selection"

The built-in tools referenced above are specified in ../shared-core/built-in-tools.md.

Where plugins back desktop UX features

Desktop feature Plugin(s)
Global-hotkey command palette global-shortcut + a frameless always-on-top WebView window
System-tray run monitor (idle / active / attention) tray + notification
Native file picker for file input nodes dialog + fs (scope validation)
Drag-and-drop files onto the canvas Tauri window drag-drop events + fs
Completion / failure / gate notifications notification

These features are surfaced across the app screens documented in routes-and-screens.md.

IPC primitives (not plugins, but core to the backend)

Tauri v2's three IPC primitives carry data between the Rust backend and the React frontend. They are documented in full in ../contracts/ipc-contract.md; summarized here for context:

  • Commands (tauri::command) — request/response: load workflows, save files, start/cancel runs, query run history.
  • Channels (tauri::ipc::Channel) — ordered, backpressure-aware, high-throughput streams: token chunks, node-status changes, cost updates (the RunEvent stream). Channels are preferred over events for streaming because they avoid string-serialization overhead and naturally throttle when the frontend renders slowly.
  • Events (window.emit / listen) — broadcast notifications for loosely-coupled UI: active-run count (tray badge), update availability, MCP server health.

The VS Code extension does not use Tauri IPC; in hybrid mode it connects over a loopback HTTP server (axum) the backend runs inside the same tokio runtime — see ../contracts/ipc-contract.md.

Operational notes

  • Capabilities are mandatory. Tauri v2 replaces v1's allowlist with a capabilities manifest in src-tauri/capabilities/. Every plugin API the frontend can call must be explicitly declared, or the call fails silently at runtime as "not allowed." Add capabilities incrementally and test each plugin surface during development.
  • WebView2 on Windows. tauri-plugin-sql and the WebView require the WebView2 Runtime. The NSIS/WiX installer bootstraps it automatically, but the app will not launch on Windows 10 machines without it (pre-installed on Windows 11). Validate the installer on a clean Windows 10 VM before shipping.
  • SQLCipher passphrase ordering. The passphrase must be derived and set in the Rust setup() hook before plugin-sql initializes — see keychain-and-secrets.md.
  • Loopback-only HTTP + token perms. The axum server for VS Code connectivity must bind to 127.0.0.1 only (never 0.0.0.0), and the auth token file must be 0600. On macOS, declare com.apple.security.network.server in the entitlements plist or the binding is silently blocked by the sandbox.
  • reqwest keepalive. LLM streaming calls from Rust set a request timeout (~120s) and TCP keepalive (~30s); without keepalive, idle streaming connections on macOS are dropped by the OS TCP stack after ~60s.

Phase 2 note

The cloud surfaces (apps/api, apps/portal) are not Tauri apps and use none of these plugins — they run on Node/Bun with PostgreSQL, Redis, and BullMQ. See ../../architecture/cloud-phase-2.md.