A fresh sidebar showed the Pinned and Recent chats headers with floating empty-state copy underneath. Drop both sections (and the now-orphan SidebarEmptySessionState) when there are no sessions yet — they reappear after the first chat. Skeletons during initial load are unchanged.
Onboarding overlay subsumes the boot card now that it mounts from frame 1 and renders boot progress inline. The standalone DesktopBootOverlay is unreachable in every flow (yields whenever onboarding has not confirmed configured, dismisses once it has).
The "Start a chat to build your history." empty state used a min-h-35 grid place-items-center container, which floated the text in a tall dead zone. Render it as a flat paragraph that sits right under the section header like the empty pinned state does.
Default onboarding.configured to null (unknown until the runtime check resolves) and have the onboarding overlay render whenever it's not yet confirmed true. The boot overlay now yields to it, so the very first paint is the Welcome card with a "While we get you set up..." progress strip instead of a flash of the chat shell between boot dismiss and onboarding mount.
The picker swaps in cleanly once the gateway opens and the runtime check confirms the user is not configured. Already-configured users see the same prep card briefly while their existing runtime warms up, then the overlay dismisses without touching the chat shell.
Drop the dead isOnboardingBusy/BUSY set, factor the catch-fallback dance into safeReq, and share a single reloadAndConnect helper between PKCE submit, device-code success, external recheck, and api-key save.
In the overlay, extract Step / CodeBlock / FlowFooter / CancelBtn / DocsLink atoms so the four sign-in panels share the same chrome instead of repeating it inline. Net effect: fewer literal divs, one place to touch the spacing, and the code-block + footer rows are reusable across future flows.
Replace the Sign in / API key tab pair with an "I have an API key" footer link under the OAuth provider list, with a "Back to sign in" affordance inside the API key form. Group the device-code "Waiting for you to authorize..." status next to the Cancel button so the alignment matches the action.
External-CLI providers (Claude Code, Qwen Code) now open an in-overlay panel with the CLI command, copy button, and an "I've signed in" recheck instead of firing an invisible toast. Center the Sign in / API key tab control so it sits under the heading instead of hugging the left edge.
Move the OAuth state machine, runtime check, copy-to-clipboard, and api-key save into store/onboarding.ts (matching the boot.ts pattern), leaving the overlay as a presentation layer that subscribes via useStore. Tabs are now table-driven, child panels read flow from the store instead of prop-drilling, and the polling/PKCE/error/success branches share a small Status atom.
Reorder OAuth providers so Nous Portal is first, give the segmented Sign in / API key control equal column widths, and replace the engineer-flavored backend names like "Anthropic (Claude API)" / "MiniMax (OAuth)" with friendlier in-app titles. External-CLI providers now show a softer subtitle and an external-link icon instead of a chevron.
Replace the engineer-flavored API key form with a Sign-in-first onboarding overlay that uses the dashboard's existing /api/providers/oauth catalog and PKCE/device-code endpoints (Anthropic, Nous, OpenAI Codex, etc.). API key entry is now a fallback tab with friendly provider names instead of env var prefixes, and the loud raw resolver error is gone in favor of a one-line welcome message.
setup.status returned True whenever any provider auth state was discoverable, including indirect fallbacks like a gh-CLI Copilot token. That made desktop think the user was set up while the agent's actual resolve_runtime_provider call still raised AuthError, leaving the user with a useless toast and no onboarding.
Add a setup.runtime_check gateway method that runs the same resolver the agent uses on session creation, and switch the desktop onboarding overlay and prompt precheck to use it.
The "No inference provider configured" auth error reaches the renderer through gateway error events, not the prompt.submit promise; the previous patch only caught the latter, so the error toast still surfaced and onboarding never opened.
Also strip credential-shaped env vars from the test:desktop:fresh sandbox so the packaged backend can't see provider keys leaking from the launching shell.
Propagate credential warnings through session runtime info and open desktop onboarding whenever a session reports no usable provider, so unconfigured installs cannot fall through to prompt errors.
Show the desktop provider onboarding flow before prompt submission when no inference provider is configured, preventing fresh installs from falling through to backend credential errors.
Solid foreground-on-background send/voice-conversation circle (black-on-white
in light, white-on-black in dark) anchors the right edge as the primary CTA
instead of the orange theme primary. Bumps the primary control to 2.125rem so
it visually outranks the ghost mic/plus controls. Opens up the surface padding
(0.625rem x / 0.5rem y) so the input row breathes around its controls, and
nudges the corner radius from 20 to 24px for a slightly pill-ier silhouette.
LiquidGlass distortion is preserved.
Promote closeRightRailTab/closeActiveRightRailTab as the single
public entry point. Drops the activeTabRef + handleCloseDocument
indirection in ChatPreviewRail, the unused $rightRailHasContent
atom, and the legacy dismissFilePreviewTarget alias. -70 LOC.
Add HERMES_DESKTOP_REMOTE_URL and HERMES_DESKTOP_REMOTE_TOKEN env
vars that, when set, short-circuit the local-child spawn in
startHermes() and connect the Electron renderer to an already-
running 'hermes dashboard' server reachable over the network.
Motivating use case: WSL2 users who want to run the Hermes core
(agent loop, tools, filesystem access) inside their WSL
distribution while rendering the Electron GUI on native Windows.
Before this change, the desktop app always spawned a local Python
child on the same host as the renderer, which doesn't cross the
WSL/Windows boundary.
The remote path reuses waitForHermes() as a liveness probe
(/api/status is in the backend's public endpoint allowlist), so
the connection is only returned once the backend is actually
ready. WebSocket URL derivation picks ws:// or wss:// based on
the input scheme. URL validation rejects non-http(s) schemes and
requires both env vars together to avoid a half-configured
connection that would silently fall through to the spawn path.
No behaviour change when the env vars are unset — the default
local-spawn flow is untouched.
Typical usage:
# in WSL2
hermes dashboard --tui --no-open --host 0.0.0.0 --port 9119 --insecure
# on Windows
set HERMES_DESKTOP_REMOTE_URL=http://localhost:9119
set HERMES_DESKTOP_REMOTE_TOKEN=<session token>
set HERMES_DESKTOP_IGNORE_EXISTING=1
(launch Hermes desktop)
The sync-assets prebuild step shelled out to 'cp -r
node_modules/@nous-research/ui/dist/fonts ...' with a path relative
to apps/dashboard/. That works only when the dep is installed
locally in the dashboard workspace, but 'npm install' at the repo
root (the documented setup — see apps/desktop/README.md) hoists
shared deps to the root node_modules under npm workspaces. The
relative cp then fails with 'No such file or directory', sync-assets
exits 1, the Vite build aborts, and 'hermes dashboard' surfaces a
generic 'Web UI build failed' message.
Replace the shell one-liner with scripts/sync-assets.cjs, which
walks up from the dashboard directory looking for node_modules/
@nous-research/ui — working in both the hoisted (workspaces) and
co-located (standalone) layouts. Also guards against a missing
dist/fonts or dist/assets with a clearer error pointing at a
rebuild of the UI package rather than silently copying nothing.
Introduce the Electron desktop app with a split app/chat/settings structure and shared nanostore state so UI areas own their state instead of routing it through the root.
Brooklyn Nicholson