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worktale university
foundations daily practice ai sessions advanced cli desktop cloud mastery reference ← worktale.org

university / course 05

Advanced 6 lessons · ~45 min

Desktop App.

Worktale Desktop is a native Tauri + React app that reads the same local SQLite database as the CLI. Eight views, a command palette, a full-featured markdown editor, and theme + font-scale accessibility controls.

Lesson 5.1

Install the desktop app.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

Download and install Worktale Desktop. Understand how it connects to your existing CLI data.

Download

Windows installer is live at worktale.org. macOS and Linux coming soon; until then, build from source (github.com/worktale/worktale-cli).

Prereq: the CLI must be installed first. The desktop app does not ship the data layer — it reads ~/.worktale/data.db. If the DB doesn't exist yet, run worktale init in any repo to create it.

What it installs

  • A ~3 MB Windows executable (Tauri + Rust backend + compiled React frontend).
  • A Start Menu entry named “Worktale”.
  • Nothing else — no services, no drivers, no registry autostart.

First launch

On first launch the app reads ~/.worktale/data.db, lists your tracked repos in the sidebar, and lands you on the Overview of the most recently active one. If you have no repos yet, you'll see an onboarding card with the worktale init command to copy.

GOTCHA

Windows SmartScreen may warn on the first download because the installer isn't code-signed yet. Click More info → Run anyway. The binary is open-source; you can audit or rebuild it from desktop/src-tauri/ in the repo.

Lesson 5.2

The eight views.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

What each sidebar view is for and how they relate to the CLI commands you already know.

1. Overview — streaks, week chart, commit timeline, AI cost card, 52-week heatmap. Mirrors the TUI Overview.

2. Daily Log — calendar + day detail pane, with per-day stats, notes editor, and commit list.

3. History — all-time stats, top modules, hourly activity heatmap, milestones from git tags.

4. Digest — CodeMirror markdown editor for drafting, editing, and publishing digests. Covered in 5.3.

5. AI — AI session stats with interactive charts: cost over time, tokens, breakdown by agent/model/provider/tool/MCP.

6. Cloud — login, published digests list, profile preview. Covered in Course 06.

7. Repos — tracked repo list with quick switch, rename, remove, and add.

8. Settings — AI provider, git email filters, display, appearance (theme + font scale). Every CLI config key has a GUI here.

Jump to any view with Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+8 (Cmd on macOS). Sidebar is collapsible.

Lesson 5.3

The digest editor.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

Draft, edit, and publish a digest inside the app with a full-featured markdown editor.

Workflow

  1. Press Ctrl+4 to open the Digest view.
  2. Pick a date from the date picker (defaults to today).
  3. Click Generate from commits to seed the editor with a template digest (or Ollama-narrated if configured).
  4. Edit freely. Markdown, live preview side-by-side.
  5. Click Save to persist locally, or Publish to push to Worktale Cloud.

Editor features

  • CodeMirror 6 with markdown syntax highlighting.
  • Vim keybindings (toggle in Settings).
  • Tab indents, Shift+Tab dedents.
  • Headers, lists, code fences auto-formatted.
  • Live word count & read time at the bottom.
  • Font size follows the app's fontScale setting (Lesson 5.6).

Drafts vs published

A digest has three states: empty (no row), draft (ai_draft populated, published = 0), and published (published = 1, optional published_at timestamp). The editor lets you save a draft without publishing; publishing is a separate explicit action.

Lesson 5.4

Command palette.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

Hit Ctrl+K (Cmd+K) from anywhere to fuzzy-search every action in the app.

The command palette is the fastest way to do anything that doesn't have a dedicated shortcut. Type a few characters, arrow to the action, enter.

Examples

# Type “digest today” → Generate today's digest

# Type “publish” → Publish current day to cloud

# Type a repo name → Switch active repo

# Type “theme” → Toggle dark/light

# Type “font” → Change font scale

The palette is context-aware — it knows which view you're on and surfaces relevant actions first.

Lesson 5.5

Keyboard shortcuts.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

Every keyboard shortcut in the desktop app.

SHORTCUTACTION
Ctrl+KOpen command palette
Ctrl+1…8Switch to view 1—8
Ctrl+NNew note for today
Ctrl+DGenerate today's digest
Ctrl+SSave draft (in Digest view)
Ctrl+Shift+PPublish current digest
Ctrl+RRefresh data from DB
Ctrl+BToggle sidebar
← →Prev / next day (in Daily Log)
EscClose dialogs / clear focus

On macOS, substitute Cmd for Ctrl.

Lesson 5.6

Theme and font scale.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

Switch between dark and light themes, and scale fonts for readability.

Both settings live at Settings → Appearance. They persist to ~/.worktale/config.json and apply on the next config load.

Theme

  • Dark (default) — slate-on-near-black with neon accents.
  • Light — slate-on-near-white with deeper greens for contrast. Heatmap, borders, and scrollbar adjust automatically.

Font size

Scales all text (including the CodeMirror digest editor):

  • Small — 0.9× — dense layouts
  • Default — 1× — 14px base
  • Large — 1.15× — better for long-form editing
  • Extra Large — 1.3× — accessibility-first

KEY INSIGHT

Theme and font scale are stored in the shared config file, so they also take effect if you later switch to the CLI-adjacent tools. Settings you set in the app respect the same appearance.* keys you could set via worktale config set appearance.theme light.

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