The desktop app
A Tauri 2 shell: the same web UI in the system webview plus what a page can't have.
- a tray with the agent's state and "do not disturb for an hour";
- system notifications — no https and no service worker required;
- autostart at login;
- a global hotkey;
- a second window: a project and a chat open separately — by the ↗ icon or a middle click, as in a browser.
Three modes
The settings decide what this window works as:
| Mode | What happens |
|---|---|
| server | the api runs inside and the window looks at it — the usual install on a home machine |
| client | there is no server of its own at all, the window looks at the home Clauder |
| both | both of the above |
"Client" mode is about a laptop on the same network: it doesn't have to carry a second Claude around with its own memory and its own session list.
Small things you notice every day
A reply or a question that arrived unseen (no window in focus) marks the tray with a green dot and flashes the window in the taskbar until you look into any of them.
External links from the feed and the settings open in the system browser rather than replacing Clauder itself.
Client-side settings survive an update: the window keeps the same port, and with it the origin of its localStorage.
The data lives in clauder-data next to the executable — together with config.json, the database, favourites and titles. The app travels on a flash drive as a whole.
Settings instead of .env
Everything that is edited in .env under docker is edited here in the window: network access and the port, session directories, the agent's allowed roots, addresses for hooks, the bot token, access keys for devices.
Builds without a window
Besides the windowed app there is clauder-server-… — the server only, no window. That is the option for a home machine or a service: settings are edited with flags and config.json, and you look at it from a browser and from the phone. It is not published in the releases — you build it from source with ./scripts/build-local.sh --server.