This Tauri 2 shell calls the same Rust core as the CLI. It provides real folder indexing, native folder selection, filename/content search, folder/extension/size/date filters, keyboard navigation, escaped text previews, and native open/reveal actions. There are no mocked results or embeddings. Semantic retrieval, a global shortcut, watchers, and release installers remain roadmap work.

Develop

Install Node.js LTS, Rust stable, and the platform prerequisites documented at https://v2.tauri.app/start/prerequisites/. Windows requires MSVC build tools and WebView2; Linux requires WebKitGTK and system development packages; macOS requires Xcode command line tools.

cd apps/desktop
npm ci
npm run build
npm run tauri dev

npm run dev previews layout in a browser but cannot index or search files. The app reports this limitation explicitly. Press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on macOS) to focus search; arrow keys navigate results. Choose a folder through the native dialog or enter an absolute path. Open/reveal commands canonicalize the path, verify it is a current file, and require exact membership in the index. The webview has no general opener or filesystem capability. Page/paragraph source locations are displayed when supplied by the core; opening at that exact location is future work.

The desktop index is stored in the platform app-data directory under dev.searchi.desktop. Search opens independent core connections while indexing runs on a blocking worker; a guard limits this shell to one indexing job at a time. All model testing on the Windows VM must remain CPU only. This shell configures no GPU provider.

For Windows VM UI testing, disable WebView2 GPU rendering as well, before starting Tauri in PowerShell:

$env:WEBVIEW2_ADDITIONAL_BROWSER_ARGUMENTS = '--disable-gpu'
npm.cmd run tauri dev

Verification and packaging

npm run build checks strict TypeScript and creates production frontend assets. npm run tauri build -- --no-bundle compiles the native shell when platform prerequisites are installed. Installer bundling is intentionally disabled until release icons, signing and native platform checks are complete. Native Windows, macOS, and Linux checks must be recorded separately; a frontend build does not prove the native shell works.