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Design System

All UI work — layout, color, typography, spacing, component selection, UX behavior — must follow docs/STYLEGUIDE.md. Most of it is linted: pnpm run check:code-quality:changed fails on new restyles of a components/ui/ primitive, raw palette colors, and computed className strings; pnpm lint fails on any class Tailwind cannot generate. See the Enforcement section of the style guide before suppressing either. Use the tokens defined in src/renderer/src/assets/main.css (the canonical source) and the shadcn primitives in src/renderer/src/components/ui/. Don't invent new color values, font sizes, or shadow tiers when a documented one already covers the role. When STYLEGUIDE.md is silent, follow the resolution order in its final section. In components/native-chat/, the "Chat type scale" and "Chat text colour, hover and focus" sections are binding, and pnpm lint fails on arbitrary font sizes, softened text-foreground, and weakened focus rings there.

Electron UI Validation

Always run tests and agent-launched apps in the background with ORCA_BACKGROUND_LAUNCH=1. Never steal monitor focus or reveal test windows: no show(), showInactive(), bringToFront(), app.focus(), or OS activation. Use CDP screenshots of hidden renderers. Keep native-focus and visible-window tests paused on the user's desktop; run them on an isolated display or CI. Rebuild modified launch-policy code before running an app; stale build wrappers are not safe.

Use the $electron skill and Playwright CDP for rendered Orca UI checks. Do not use computer-use for Orca UI validation.

Style

Reuse Before Reimplementing

Before writing new logic at any scale — a function, component, IPC channel, state store, or whole subsystem/flow — check whether an existing implementation already does the job (or nearly does). Extend or generalize it instead of building a parallel version; only write from scratch when nothing fits. Keep the check proportionate: a quick search for trivial code, a real one before building anything substantial.

Concise/Brief Non-obvious Comments ONLY

  • DO NOT: be verbose, explain the obvious, walk through the code ("WHY not HOW")
  • BE CONCISE. 1 LINE if possible

Lint Rules: Do Not Disable Max Lines

NEVER add a max-lines disable (eslint-disable max-lines, oxlint-disable max-lines, or line-specific variants), and never add a per-file max-lines bump in mobile/.oxlintrc.json.

File and Module Naming

Never use vague names like helpers, utils, common, misc, or shared-stuff for files, folders, or modules. They carry zero info and tend to become dumping grounds. Name files after what they actually contain — prefer the concrete domain concept (e.g. tab-group-state.ts, terminal-orphan-cleanup.ts) over the generic role (tabs-helpers.ts, terminal-utils.ts). If you find yourself reaching for helpers, the file probably has more than one responsibility and should be split, or there's a better name hiding in the code that describes what the functions operate on.

Type Declarations: Prefer .ts Over .d.ts

Type Assertions: Prefer Checked Types

Avoid type assertions except as const. Unavoidable casts need a line-specific SAFETY: explanation:

// oxlint-disable-next-line typescript/consistent-type-assertions -- SAFETY: Explain the verified invariant here.

Verifying Changes

  • Typecheck: pnpm tc (or tc:node / tc:cli / tc:web)
  • Test: pnpm test [path/to/file.test.ts]
  • Lint: oxlint, or pnpm run check:code-quality:changed for changed files (full pnpm lint is slow); format with pnpm format
  • Design system: pnpm run lint:design-system for the full renderer report (not a gate); the changed-lines gate above is what CI enforces
  • Real Claude CLI: when you change Claude structured-session code (src/main/claude/claude-structured-*), run ORCA_REAL_CLAUDE_CLI_TEST=1 pnpm test src/main/claude/claude-structured-real-cli.test.ts src/main/claude/claude-structured-real-cli-fold.test.ts; it uses your real Claude login

Writing Pull Requests

Fill in .github/pull_request_template.md, written for a reviewer who has never seen this code:

  • No jargon — plain language, no internal shorthand.
  • The before and after as the user experiences it.
  • The mechanism you changed, not just the symptom.
  • Why this approach over the alternatives you considered.

Cover all four concisely. Don't pad or walk the diff.

Merging Pull Requests

Before merging, verify that the required checks and aggregate gate in the full PR workflow have passed for the exact current PR commit. For GitHub, identify the .github/workflows/pr.yml run and its aggregate PR checks passed (job ID verify); Mobile Checks is separate and never substitutes for it. Check workflow identity as well as the displayed job name. If the head changes, repeat the check for the new head.

Pending, failed, cancelled, or missing required checks block agent merges even when repository settings allow them. gh pr merge --auto is not proof that CI passed: GitHub may merge immediately when checks are optional. Never use --admin or disable protection to bypass a failed check. An explicit user instruction to make an emergency exception overrides this default; otherwise fix the failure or wait. Use --match-head-commit to prevent merging a different commit after validation.

CI changes must exercise the affected checks in the PR. Required check names must be unique across workflows, and workflow changes must preserve the full aggregate's failure handling and conditional job requirements.

Considerations

Worktree Safety

Always use the primary working directory (the worktree) for all file reads and edits. Never follow absolute paths from subagent results that point to the main repo.

Cross-Platform Support

Orca targets macOS, Linux, and Windows. Keep all platform-dependent behavior behind runtime checks:

  • Keyboard shortcuts: Never hardcode e.metaKey. Use a platform check (navigator.userAgent.includes('Mac')) to pick metaKey on Mac and ctrlKey on Linux/Windows. Electron menu accelerators should use CmdOrCtrl.
  • Shortcut labels in UI: Display ⌘ / ⇧ on Mac and Ctrl+ / Shift+ on other platforms.
  • File paths: Use path.join or Electron/Node path utilities — never assume / or \.
  • Windows terminal shells: --shell picks the shell a terminal is; --command is typed into whatever shell the host spawned, so a shell choice routed through command silently becomes a child process.
  • Windows setup scripts: the setup/issue-command runner is a .cmd batch file unless the script starts with a #! line — never derive that from the user's terminal-shell preference, and never launch a .cmd runner with a bare cmd.exe /c from a Git Bash pane (MSYS rewrites the /c).
  • Windows child processes: start them through runProcess/spawnProcess from @orca/process-host — never child_process directly. It pins windowsHide, refuses shell: true, and encodes .cmd/.bat arguments so neither CommandLineToArgvW nor cmd.exe mangles them. Recognised npm/pnpm .cmd shims are resolved to their real target so the spawn skips cmd.exe entirely.
  • Ripgrep: Orca bundles rg for every platform, WSL, and SSH remotes. Spawn it through spawnBundledRipgrep (main) or resolveRelayRipgrepCommand (relay), never a bare 'rg' — Windows resolves a bare name in the spawn cwd before PATH. Don't add git/readdir fallbacks locally; the relay's chain exists only for hosts an upload never reached.
  • Windows process enumeration: read the table through src/main/windows/windows-process-table.ts, never by forking powershell.exe.
  • Windows MSYS/Git Bash panes: their children break away from the per-PTY job unless it is created without JOB_OBJECT_LIMIT_BREAKAWAY_OK, and a conpty.node built before that fix passes every existing gate.
  • Windows daemon-host relocation: the terminal daemon runs from a copy of the app runtime under %LOCALAPPDATA%, which is what survives an auto-update.
  • macOS daemon launch: packaged macOS runs the terminal daemon from a copy of the signed terminal host helper through launchd, so an update cannot sever its privacy grants. Before touching that copy, its cleanup, or the fork fallback, read docs/reference/macos-daemon-tcc-attribution.md.
  • Windows EDR signal: don't add -ExecutionPolicy Bypass, -EncodedCommand, cmd.exe /c with escaped free text, per-operation interpreter spawning, or runtime Add-Type compilation without reviewing the EDR impact first — behavioural EDR scores each of those, and being signed does not clear them.
  • WSL commands: build argv with buildWslExecArgs (always --exec — under --, wsl.exe expands $name in every argument and silently rewrites the script), and fence anything whose stdout you parse with buildWslCapturedLoginShellCommand, because the interactive login shell prints the distro banner to stdout.
  • Linux native modules: keep the glibc floor at Ubuntu 20.04 / glibc 2.31. A module compiled from source on a newer runner can reference symbol versions absent on the floor and crash the app on startup. Packaging fails if a bundled native binary needs newer glibc.

Native Dependency Installs

Ordinary pnpm install covers the host OS and CPU only. Before packaging for another architecture — including pnpm build:mac, which builds x64 and arm64 by default — run pnpm install:release. electron-builder only warns on a missing extraResources source, so the beforePack guard is what turns a thin install into a build failure instead of a silently broken artifact.

SSH Use Case

All changes must consider the SSH use case. Don't assume local-only execution. Before changing anything that reports on, stops, or lists remote work, the execution host owns everything that touches execution, and loss of contact is never evidence of process death — the verdict vocabulary is live / unverifiable / exited, with no synonyms.

Folder Workspace Use Case

All changes must consider folder workspaces as well as git worktrees. Don't assume every workspace is a git worktree.

Agent Status

The execution host owns agent status in one store, the hook server's, and every reader (sidebar, worktree ps, mobile, dashboard) subscribes to it. New producers write into that store, and readers keep only presentation policy.

Agent Terminal Screens

A rule that reads what an agent CLI paints on a terminal — readiness, blocked prompts, idle — must be written against a captured transcript, not a remembered screen. Use config/scripts/capture-agent-pty-transcript.mjs to keep escapes and wrapping intact and scrub account identifiers before they reach git.

Remote Wire Compatibility

Clients and remote Orca servers update independently, so mixed versions are the normal state. Before changing anything a paired client and host exchange — RPC params, stream frames, or the content either side publishes over them — preserve compatibility with older peers. A new optional field is safe; a new stream opcode must be capability-negotiated because decoders drop unknown opcodes silently; and changing what the host publishes reaches old clients even with no wire change.

Git Binary Compatibility

Orca runs the user's Git binary on native, WSL, and SSH hosts, which may all have different versions. Treat Git 2.25 as the core-workflow baseline.

When adding or changing a Git command:

  • Check when every subcommand and option was introduced. For newer behavior, keep a baseline-compatible fallback or degrade safely.
  • Use GitCapabilityCache with a narrow unsupported-error predicate so recurring operations do not retry a known-invalid command. Do not rely only on git --version; wrappers such as simple-git do not remove host-version differences.
  • Scope capability state to the host that executes Git: native, WSL distro, SSH provider, or relay connection. Cover the first fallback, later cached calls, concurrent probes, and relevant host isolation in tests.
  • Keep the real-binary compatibility contract in PR CI current. When adopting a newer Git feature, add its version boundary so the preferred command and fallback both run against representative Git releases.
  • Preserve commands that begin with global Git options such as -c before the subcommand, including auto-maintenance suppression used by worktree-create fetches.

Git Scan Safety

  • Never enumerate every ref and then run git ls-tree -r or git show once per ref. That ref × tree fan-out can retain gigabytes of output before a downstream sort -u or search can make progress.
  • Prefer rg over the checked-out files for source searches. For history or refs, use a named ref, an explicit namespace/path, --max-count, and a bounded output; do not use an unqualified --all scan as a first diagnostic.
  • Keep repository-wide commands targeted to the current repository and worktree. If an unbounded scan is genuinely required, measure the ref count first, explain the cost, and get confirmation before running it.

Git Provider Compatibility

Source-control and review changes must consider GitLab and other supported git providers, not only GitHub. Keep provider-specific behavior behind explicit checks, and avoid GitHub-only naming for generic review concepts.

GitHub CLI Usage

Be mindful of the user's gh CLI API rate limit — batch requests where possible and avoid unnecessary calls. All code, commands, and scripts must be compatible with macOS, Linux, and Windows.