Argus for Mac (beta)

Argus for Mac is a native SwiftUI app that will replace the Electron desktop app. It runs the same host core — sessions, worktrees, agents, terminals, simulators — so your projects and sessions carry over, and it reads and writes the same ~/.argus.

It is a beta. The Electron app keeps shipping and stays the recommended desktop until the Mac app reaches parity; the checklist that gates the switch lives in the repository (plan/swiftui-parity.md).

What works today

• The three-panel window: projects and their sessions, live from the host.
• Creating and deleting sessions, with setup progress.
• Agents in a session as tabs, with their transcript.
• A home for each session: its setup progress (or why it failed), the agents working in it, and committing, pushing and merging its branch.
• Agents and Runtimes in the sidebar: every agent, and every run command's process, across all your sessions.
• Terminals under each session (⇧⌘T): tabs, the project's run commands in the toolbar, find (⌘F), and links that open on this Mac. A terminal you reopen replays what it printed so far.
• Banners for agents that finish or need you, with Approve/Deny buttons on permission prompts.
• The runtime panel: each session's simulator, emulator or browser, live, to tap, type, scroll and rotate; Simulate, Inspect (the iOS UI inspector) and Logs modes; devices in their own floating windows. DevTools for the session's browser open in a window of their own.
• The Devices screen: every simulator and emulator, with boot, shut down, a live grid, and each device's details with a live picture.
• Git for each session (the Git tab): the working copy with file, hunk and line staging, discard and commit (with amend); the history as a commit graph, with each commit's changes and actions (cherry-pick, revert, reset, reword, squash, drop, interactive rebase); branches, tags, remotes and worktrees; stashes, the reflog, blame, file history, comparing two refs, conflict resolution for merges, rebases and cherry-picks, branches review, submodules, bisect, hooks and git settings. Fetch, pull, push, new branch, stash and tag are in the toolbar, with undo for the last git action. Commit templates, gitmoji, saved identities, Git LFS tracking, creating and applying patches and an All Files list are in the working copy; when a git command fails, its banner offers the fix (pull then push, a lease-protected force push, publishing the branch, resolving conflicts, …).
• Pull Requests in the sidebar: the pull requests that need you across your projects, each with its conversation, checks and changes, and opening a new one for a session's branch.

The app reads your repositories directly with Grove's git engine, so the git views stay current as agents change files and commit — no refresh needed. Merging a session into its base branch, pull requests and anything that follows your project's rules (protected branches, session branch names) still go through the host, exactly as in the Electron app.

• A first-run walkthrough (welcome, privacy, checking your Mac, a first project), a Home screen with cards that fix what's missing, and Add Project… (⌘O), which can write the project's .argus.json for you.
• Settings (⌘,): appearance, Claude accounts, agents and automation defaults, LLM runners including custom ones, MCP servers, tools, git defaults and commit signing, the update channel, and remote access — pairing a phone, its grants, push and tunnels.
• Project Settings from a project's menu in the sidebar: every .argus.json field, plus your own branch prefix and worktree locations.
• Automations, Quick Run, the Inbox and its proposals, and Notifications, the warnings and errors list.
• Hosting a huddle from a session, with guest approval and side chat.
• The command palette (⇧⌘P), and Handoff of the session on screen to your phone.

Other hosts

Argus for Mac can drive other machines running Argus — another Mac, a headless Argus server, or argus-host — as well as its own:

• Settings → Hosts pairs with one: paste the pairing code from that machine's Remote screen, compare the 6-digit code, and approve it there with Admin ticked. Paired hosts can be renamed, attached, detached, shown or forgotten.
• Attached hosts' projects sit in the sidebar beside this Mac's, each marked with its machine and whether it's connected. The machines menu at the top of the sidebar narrows it to one machine and shows that machine on the screens that aren't about one session (Home, Devices, Automations, Inbox, Settings).
• Window tabs keep machines apart: Open in New Tab from the machines menu or a session's menu (⌥⌘T for a new tab, ⌃Tab to cycle). Each tab has its own back and forward, and the tabs come back when the app restarts.
• Add Project… and Browse… for worktree locations pick a folder on the machine you're looking at, browsing that machine's disk.
• Files dropped on a remote session's chat are sent to its machine first (up to 8 MB each).
• Sessions, agents, terminals and the runtime panel of a remote project run on its host; the connection is end-to-end encrypted. Links still open on this Mac; Reveal in Finder and Open in editor aren't available for files on another machine.
• The git views work on a remote session too: git runs on its host, and the views refresh when the host reports a change.
• If a host drops, its agents keep running there. Its projects stay in the sidebar marked offline, and the app reconnects and catches up on its own. The app remembers each host's last projects and sessions, so one that is down when the app starts still shows them, offline.
• Two machines holding a repository at the same path show as two projects, each under its own machine.

The keys for paired hosts are kept in a file in the app's state folder that only your user can read.

How it relates to the Electron app

Both apps run the Argus host on the same ~/.argus, and only one may run at a time: two hosts on the same state would fight over the same worktrees and agents. Whichever starts first holds the lock (~/.argus/host.lock).

• Open Argus for Mac while the Electron app is running and it says so, with a button to quit the Electron app and take over.
• Open the Electron app while Argus for Mac is running and it offers the same in reverse.

Your phone keeps working with either: the Mac app runs the same remote access gateway, with the same paired devices.

Under the hood

The app bundles its own Node runtime and the host (Argus.app/Contents/Resources/host/) and supervises it: it starts the host on launch, restarts it if it crashes, and stops it — after letting running agents stop cleanly — when you quit. The host's log is at ~/.argus/logs/host.log.

The app talks to its host over a Unix socket in ~/.argus that only your user can open, rather than over the network.

Building it

open clients/apple/ArgusRemote.xcodeproj   # scheme: ArgusDesktop

A build phase stages the Node host into the app (pnpm build:mac-host --out <dir>). Debug builds are called Argus Dev and never default to ~/.argus — they use ~/.argus-mac-dev unless ARGUS_HOME says otherwise — so a dev build can't collide with the app you use. They are signed with your Apple Development identity: macOS refuses notifications to an ad-hoc signed app, and to one run from /tmp.