Fleshed out the self-update story with grounded constraints, a blocking
prerequisite, decisions, and a phased breakdown:
- D-64 ("no auto-update checks without user action") is stricter than the
original "opt-in or gated" wording → the check must be explicitly
user-initiated every time (palette / About button), not a startup poll.
- POLICY.md grudging-allowance criteria apply to the explicit fetch.
- Hard prereq: no release channel exists (2 stale tags, no CI, no signed
artifacts) → recommended splitting a "release channel" sibling under T-46.
- Phases P0 prereq → P1 check+notify → P2 download+verify → P3 apply+relaunch
(tmux sessions survive, D-41) → P4 macOS/deltas.
Moved back to backlog pending the release-channel prerequisite.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
clide
An IDE for Claude Code CLI. Native rendering, terminal-first interaction, pql-powered queries, canvas and graph surfaces. Linux and macOS.
Architecture
Single Flutter package at the repo root. The app hosts everything in-process: IPC server, subsystem handlers (pane, files, editor, git, pql), and the extension framework. tmux owns Claude session persistence (D-41).
lib/— all Dart code. Core subsystems (lib/src/), kernel services (lib/kernel/), UI widgets (lib/widgets/), built-in extensions (lib/builtin/), the extension framework (lib/extension/).- PTY —
lib/src/pty/spawns child processes via Dart FFIposix_openpt()+posix_spawn()directly; no external helper binary. native/— vendored native libraries (libtree-sitter.sowith wasmtime embedded). Linux only today.- pql — external supporter tool. Clide wraps it for every query surface; never re-implements it.
Claude drives the UI through a clide CLI surface (Bash, not MCP). Every CLI subcommand has a UI affordance and every UI action has a CLI equivalent (D-6).
Built-in extensions
canvas, claude, claude_control, decisions, diff, editor, extensions_ui, files, git, graph, grammars_core, ipc_status, keybindings_ui, markdown, pql, problems, settings_ui, terminal, theme_picker, tickets, todos, welcome.
Building
Requires Flutter (stable channel) and pql
on the host. pql is a hard dependency — the pre-push gate runs pql decisions validate and the governance + ticket workflow is built on it (see its repo for
install). One-time setup:
make hooks && flutter pub get
pql init # once, in the repo root — wires up the pql skill + perms
Then:
make run # launch the desktop app
make test # fast suite: analyze + format + unit + widget + golden
make test-core # core subsystem tests (IPC, PTY, git, pane registry)
make test-a11y # accessibility contract tests
make test-integration # real app boot integration tests
make build-linux # flutter build linux
make build-macos # flutter build macos
make push-check # pre-push gate: decisions + core + fast + a11y + coverage + changelog
Status
Pre-v2.0 (2.0.0-dev). Interaction model and panel system landed. The Python Textual v1.2.0 predecessor is archived under legacy/.
Documentation
docs/architecture.md— current architecture (read this first).CONTRIBUTING.md— how to clone, build, test, file tickets, and write D-records.docs/initial-plan.md— historical design doc; preserved as a snapshot of the 2026-04 plan, much of it now superseded.governance/decisions/— confirmed decisions (D-NNN), open questions (Q-NNN), rejected alternatives (R-NNN).CLAUDE.md— Claude-addressed working notes (guardrails, repo layout).
License
MIT. See LICENSE.