Snow Devil

A desktop GitHub workbench for current work, history, CI, diffs, and repository investigation.

Snow Devil brings GitHub account and repository data into one local desktop app. It is built for checking what needs attention, following work through review and CI, browsing repository history, and opening the evidence behind a signal without moving through several GitHub pages.

GitHub access is read-only. When GitHub does not provide enough data, Snow Devil shows the result as partial, stale, inferred, unsupported, or unavailable instead of filling in the gaps.

Main features

• Home current work, completed work, attention items, recent repositories, recent merges, and quick links.
• Flow issues, coding work, pull requests, review, checks, ready, merged, released, and deployed stages with filters and saved views.
• CI Activity, Delivery Risks, and Flow Analytics failed checks, aging branches, blocked work, review waits, throughput, lead time, and delivery status.
• Account History and Repository History choose a date and inspect what was active, completed, or known at that point.
• Repository Explorer browse branches and files, preview text, Markdown, and common image formats, and search inside files.
• Pull request diff viewer changed-file navigation, unified and split views, additions and deletions, filters, and GitHub fallback.
• Commit graph branch topology, commit details, changed files, patch previews, CI state, commit comparison, and links into Flow, History, CI, Architecture, and the repository explorer.
• Architecture context inspect repository components, dependencies, ownership, impact, and supporting evidence.
• Sketch Board paste screenshots from the clipboard, move and resize them, draw, add text, erase items, undo and redo, and keep the board locally.
• Personal Focus and notifications review requests, failed checks, work in progress, aging work, and a native unread inbox.
• Command palette open app pages, repositories, files, issues, pull requests, and cached items from one search box.
• Region capture hold the right mouse button, drag over part of the app, and copy that area to the clipboard for the Sketch Board or another tool.
• Native tabs and GitHub tabs keep multiple work items open, restore tabs after restart, and reuse an existing tab instead of opening duplicates.
• Demo Mode run the main app against deterministic local fixtures without connecting a GitHub account.

App tour

Onboarding	Home
Flow	CI Activity
Pull request diff	Architecture context
Repository explorer	Commit graph and diff

Stack

Part	Used here
Desktop shell	Tauri 2
Frontend	React 19, TypeScript, Vite
Client state	Zustand
Server state	TanStack Query
Native code	Rust
GitHub data	OAuth device flow, GraphQL, REST
Local data	SQLite, IndexedDB, local preferences
Credentials	Operating-system credential store
Tests	Vitest, Testing Library, Playwright, Rust tests

Run locally

Requirements

• Node.js 24
• pnpm 11
• Rust toolchain
• Tauri 2 prerequisites for your operating system
• WebView2 and Microsoft C++ Build Tools on Windows
• Optional GitHub OAuth App client ID with Device Flow enabled

Install and run

pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev

Use Demo Mode to run without a GitHub account.

For browser-only frontend work:

pnpm dev

The browser build cannot use Tauri commands, SQLite, the credential store, native window behavior, or embedded GitHub webviews.

Development commands

Command	What it does
pnpm dev	Start the Vite frontend
pnpm tauri dev	Start the desktop app
pnpm build	Type-check and build the frontend
pnpm lint	Run ESLint
pnpm test	Run frontend tests
pnpm test:watch	Run frontend tests in watch mode
pnpm test:e2e	Run Playwright tests
cargo test --manifest-path src-tauri/Cargo.toml	Run Rust tests

CI runs frontend checks, Rust checks, Playwright tests, and a Windows Tauri build on pushes and pull requests to main.

GitHub access and local data

• GitHub integration is read-only. Snow Devil does not merge pull requests, submit reviews, edit issues, rerun workflows, or publish releases.
• OAuth tokens are stored in the operating-system credential store.
• Normalized GitHub data is cached locally in SQLite.
• Sketch Board content is stored locally in IndexedDB.
• Demo Mode uses source-controlled fixtures and does not write demo records into the live account cache.

Current limits

• Available history depends on GitHub permissions, pagination, retention, and API coverage.
• The native diff viewer does not replace GitHub's full review UI.
• Repository tree filtering is not full GitHub code search.
• Release builds are currently unsigned.
• Team workspaces, cloud sync, role-based access, and multi-account support are not implemented.

Releases

Releases are triggered by pushing a version tag such as v0.2.0 to the repository. The available installers are:

• Windows x64: The .exe setup is the normal interactive installer, and the .msi package is available for managed or manual installation.
• Linux x64: The .AppImage package is the portable option, and the .deb package is for Debian-based distributions.
• macOS: Separate Apple Silicon .dmg (for M-series Macs) and Intel .dmg (for Intel Macs) downloads are provided.

All release builds are currently unsigned. Please verify your downloads using the SHA-256 checksums file attached to each release.

License

Snow Devil is released under the GNU General Public License v3.0.