Waku

Waku is a fast, native desktop app for working with local coding agents. It is built in Rust with GPUI and keeps projects, sessions, transcripts on your machine.

Install

On macOS, download the signed .dmg. It updates itself.

On Linux:

curl -fsSL https://waku.sh/install.sh | sh

The script installs into ~/.local without root. See docs/linux.md for requirements, manual installation, and uninstalling.

On Windows, run Waku-<version>--Setup.exe from the latest release. It installs per-user and updates itself. A portable .zip is published alongside it. See docs/windows.md for requirements and what is not available there yet.

Supported agents

Waku works with:

• Amp
• Claude Code
• Codex CLI
• Cursor CLI
• Fx
• Grok Build
• Kimi Code
• OpenCode
• Pi

Install and authenticate at least one supported agent CLI before starting Waku. Waku detects available CLIs automatically and uses each provider's native structured protocol and session continuity.

Highlights

• Keep projects and independent agent sessions in one native app.
• Switch models, reasoning effort, and access modes from a shared interface.
• Queue or steer follow-up messages while an agent is working.
• Rewind Git-backed tasks with conversation-aware checkpoints.
• Store app state locally, with no Waku account or remote service required.

Architecture

The native desktop is an RPC client of the standalone waku-daemon process. Provider sessions run in waku-core, behind the authenticated, versioned WebSocket contract in waku-protocol. Waku Desktop depends on waku-client, not on the daemon implementation. The daemon owns task SQLite data, uploaded attachments, provider-native session forks, and all workspace filesystem and Git operations; paths returned by it always refer to the daemon host. The desktop retains only presentation state and a disposable preview cache.

The browser client lives at apps/web and uses the generated browser transport in packages/waku-client. Its checked-in types are generated directly from the Rust protocol, while its WebSocket client implements the same handshake, request IDs, subscriptions, sequence deduplication, and replay cursors as the Rust client. Run bun run protocol:generate after changing a wire type and bun run protocol:check to verify that generated files are current.

Projectless task workspaces live on the daemon host under ~/.waku/projects/<date>/<slug>. The daemon moves workspaces created by the older ~/.waku/<date>/<slug> layout on first load.

Configuration ownership is separate too: the Release desktop writes ~/.waku/app.json, while Debug stays isolated at temp/app.json. Daemon provider and Computer Use settings live in ~/.waku/settings.json. The desktop's Settings → Daemon page can explicitly expose the child daemon on a fixed port, configure exact browser origins, and copy its stable authentication token. It remains loopback-only by default.