THE_ROOM

Public alpha. Windows-first. Local-first. Built for technical operators. Expect sharp edges.

THE_ROOM is a local-first Electron + React desktop app for running codebase-scoped multi-model collaboration rooms. It is built for a single operator who wants persistent rooms, breakouts, durable artifacts, and guest participation from hosted models or local CLI/MCP guests without giving the app repo mutation powers.

Current Scope

• Windows-first packaged desktop workflow
• Persistent Codebase > Room > Session > Breakout > Artifact model
• Hosted provider configuration for OpenAI, Anthropic, and OpenRouter
• Guest invite shims for Codex, Claude, and the generic CLI/MCP room-packet bridge
• Read-only collaboration boundary: inspect context, post messages, run breakouts, publish/pin artifacts
• Local-first persistence with SQLite for structured state and filesystem-backed artifact bodies
• Diagnostics, settings vault abstraction, bridge tests, and packaged-app smoke coverage

Stack

• Electron
• React 19
• TypeScript
• Vite
• Electron Forge
• better-sqlite3
• Vitest
• Playwright

Quick Start

npm install
npm run dev

Useful commands:

npm run typecheck
npm test
npm run build
npm run make:win
npm run test:e2e

npm run build produces a packaged Windows app in out\THE_ROOM-win32-x64\. npm run make:win produces Squirrel.Windows update artifacts in out\make\squirrel.windows\x64\. npm run make:msi produces a manual Windows .msi installer and bootstraps a portable WiX v3 toolchain into .tools\ on first run. npm run release:patch bumps package.json, updates package-lock.json, and creates the matching git tag for the release workflow.

Distribution note: this desktop app is not published to npm. The "private": true package flag is intentional to prevent accidental package publishing; public distribution is through GitHub source and Windows release artifacts.

Product Shape

• Attach a local repo as a Codebase
• Create one or more durable Rooms under that codebase
• Work in the default macro Session or open focused Breakouts
• Invite hosted or guest participants into a session
• Promote durable truth into Artifacts
• Pin, unpin, repin, archive, restore, and review artifacts in the right rail

Safety Boundary

THE_ROOM is intentionally read-only in the current milestone. Guests and hosted participants can inspect scoped context, contribute messages, and publish artifacts, but they cannot mutate the attached repository or execute reviewed commands.

Docs

• Operator Guide
• Architecture
• Protocol
• Troubleshooting
• UAT Checklist
• Public Alpha Notes

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.

For vulnerability reports, follow SECURITY.md.

Local State

By default, THE_ROOM stores state in:

%USERPROFILE%\.the-room

You can override that with the THE_ROOM_HOME environment variable.

Testing Baseline

• Service and integration tests live under src/test
• The generic guest bridge is covered by an end-to-end CLI integration test
• Packaged Electron flow coverage lives in e2e/uat-flow.spec.ts
• CI runs typecheck, unit/integration tests, and packaged build smoke on Windows

License

Licensed under Apache-2.0.