Skip to content

desktop

Directory actions

More options

Directory actions

More options

Latest commit

 

History

History
 
 

desktop

README.md

Manhattan Mission Control — Electron Desktop App

The richest, most powerful way to run Mission Control on the desktop: a native Electron shell wrapping the self-contained mission_control_v2 SPA. No Streamlit, no Python runtime required for the core app — the SPA talks to Socrata, OpenAI, and Gemini directly. This produces a true standalone installer (.exe / .dmg / AppImage) with native menus, system tray, persisted window state, and auto-update.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Electron main process (main.js)              │
│  • secure BrowserWindow (contextIsolation)   │
│  • native menu + system tray                 │
│  • auto-updater (GitHub releases)            │
│  • optional Python FastAPI sidecar           │
│      └─ renderer/index.html  ← the SPA       │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Why this over the Streamlit wrappers?

Streamlit + pywebview This (Electron)
Python required to run ✅ yes ❌ no (SPA is client-side)
Native menus / tray / notifications limited ✅ full
Auto-update none ✅ electron-updater
Signed cross-platform installers basic ✅ electron-builder
Self-contained .exe hard (heavy deps) ✅ clean

Prerequisites

  • Node.js 18+ and npm — nodejs.org
  • (Optional) icons in build/ — see build/README.md

Develop

cd desktop
npm install
npm start          # copies the SPA, launches Electron in dev

In dev the app loads the canonical SPA directly from ../app/static/mission_control_v2.html, so edits there show up on reload (View → Reload).

Build installers

npm run dist          # current OS
npm run dist:win      # Windows NSIS installer (.exe)
npm run dist:mac      # macOS .dmg
npm run dist:linux    # Linux AppImage

Output lands in desktop/dist/. The predist hook copies the SPA into renderer/index.html (single source of truth — never edit that file directly).

Auto-update

electron-updater is wired to GitHub releases (ryudkiss-hue/nyc_data). Publish a release with the built artifacts and installed clients will update automatically on next launch. To publish from CI:

GH_TOKEN=… npm run dist -- --publish always

Optional Python sidecar (advanced)

The SPA is fully client-side, but if you want the heavy Python analytics (PyMC Bayesian, Prophet) exposed to a future SPA panel, the main process can spawn the FastAPI backend (socrata_toolkit.api:app) as a sidecar:

MMC_SIDECAR=1 MMC_PYTHON=python npm start

This requires the Python deps installed (pip install -e ".[mission]") and is off by default — the desktop app runs fully without it.

Security

  • contextIsolation: true, nodeIntegration: false, sandbox: true
  • The renderer reaches the OS only through the audited window.missionControl bridge in preload.js
  • All external links open in the system browser, never in-app