The dev server's first line on a fresh clone was a warning that rudder-engine is
not built, with a go build command and no word that it is optional or needs Go.
A backend can now carry an optional note, printed as information instead; Rudder's
says it is desktop voice-to-text, fine to skip for the maps, needs Go 1.22+, and
points at the desktop HOWTO.
The first run downloads the pinned PocketBase (the cloud container's version) for this platform, checks its
SHA-256 and extracts it in-process into backend/bin (gitignored). It serves .pb/dev (gitignored) with the
migrations in git and hooks off, as in the cloud. DX_PB_URL proxies /api/pb to a shared PocketBase instead;
DX_PB_PORT moves the local one, and a port already in use is reported once instead of crash-looping.
A server where Rudder is laptop-only (RUDDER_ENGINE=0) no longer starts a
leftover engine binary. If an engine that records its own machine's microphone
is reached from another machine anyway, Rudder shows the laptop notice and
disables Record instead of recording the server.
The dev backend answers /status with the same offline status as /events, and
Rudder reads it on mount and whenever the event stream drops, so a proxy that
buffers the stream no longer leaves it saying "Runs on your computer" on a
server that should run the engine. The local-microphone notice no longer shows
off this computer. The legend progress bar paints its grey band as a rounded
strip and rounds the first and last segment, which the 24px touch targets had
squared off.
The dev backend reports expected=true while an engine the server is set up to
run is down (RUDDER_ENGINE=1 or RUDDER_AUDIO=browser). Rudder then reads "Not
running yet" and says the engine is starting or failed to set up; "Runs on
your computer" remains for a server with no engine at all.
With RUDDER_AUDIO=browser the engine records no local microphone. The page
captures the reader's mic, converts it to 16 kHz mono PCM in an AudioWorklet,
and streams it over a WebSocket at /api/rudder/stream into the same speech
session a local recorder feeds. The words come back on that socket to that
reader only, never on the shared event stream. One session at a time; a second
reader is told the engine is busy. The engine honours RUDDER_HOME, accepts the
public host named in RUDDER_ALLOW_HOST, and refuses a socket from another
origin. The dev proxy now carries WebSockets to backends.
Two gaps found while checking the corner widget (1775f5ac: "Needs eyes: open, HMR, collapse" — all
three verified in Firefox against the running Plugin Studio: opens, keeps the SAME element across a
Studio hot update, collapses).
- LIVE MIC WHEN COLLAPSED: rudder-voice emits `recording` (true/false); the Studio's corner button
turns red with "● " while it listens, so closing the panel never hides that the mic is on.
- DEV BACKENDS SURVIVE VITE RESTARTS: Vite restarts itself when vite.config.js or anything it imports
changes. The backend was stopped on every restart and a new one started at once; the old process
still held the port, the new one died "address already in use", and Rudder showed "engine offline"
until `bun run dev` was restarted by hand (measured twice). Backends now live in a process-wide
registry: reused across restarts, stopped only when the dev process exits, restarted if they crash.
The "engine not running, quietly" answers (89ff2238) are unchanged and read the same registry.
dx-shepherd (R500): with no rudder-engine process the dev proxy returned 500 ECONNREFUSED for
/api/rudder/{devices,events}, which showed as console errors. While a backend is down, backendDevPlugin now
answers its routes itself: /events streams one status event (engine offline, 'The desktop engine is not
running.'), which Rudder renders as its own state, and other routes return an empty JSON list. Running
engines are proxied as before.
Rudder is the first plugin that isn't a map: it shows that one plugin-designs/ folder, developed live
in the Plugin Studio, can ship as a desktop app with its own local backend.
- plugin-designs/rudder-voice: <rudder-voice> element. Words stream into the end of a text area while
you type/paste anywhere (typing holds the stream; nothing duplicated or lost). Mic picker with
hot-plug, 3-second mic test, plain-language errors, info panel, privacy-safe debug report.
meta.json declares "targets": ["desktop"].
- backend/rudder-engine (Go): supervises NVIDIA NeMo-Speech.cpp (ggml, CPU) with the Nemotron 3.5 ASR
Streaming GGUF over a loopback WebSocket; records with parec/pw-record only while recording; recovers
dead Bluetooth mic links (reopen -> CVSD voice profile -> optional RUDDER_BT_RESET) and starts
headsets on CVSD. No telemetry: traced with strace, zero sockets/DNS while transcribing.
- Privacy: log lines redact MAC addresses and the home folder, transcripts are never logged, Host check
against DNS rebinding, CORS only for the desktop webview, random API key for the speech server.
- internal/backend-dev-plugin.mjs + vite.config.js: `bun run dev` starts built plugin backends and
proxies /api/<name> same-origin, so a plugin calls the same API in the studio and on desktop.
- backend/rudder-engine/setup-runtime.sh: fetches the runtime and model pinned by SHA-256.
Not yet: the Tauri desktop build (sidecar) and the PocketBase word-correction table.
