GlassForge

A fast, glassy Linux GUI for Claude Code. Wraps the claude CLI in a Tauri 2 app with multi-session PTY streaming, usage tracking, a skills manager, a runtime theme editor, and native KDE Plasma 6 window blur.

Stack: Tauri 2 · Rust · React 19 · TypeScript · Zustand · portable-pty · x11rb

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Features

• Multiple live sessions — every session is a real claude process in its own PTY, streamed to the UI via session://{id}/stdout events.
• Usage tracking — per-session token estimates, cost estimates by model, concurrent/daily/weekly limit bars, and a color-graded context-window ring.
• Skills manager — scans ~/.claude/skills/, installs new skills with git clone from a URL.
• Runtime theme editor — 7 presets (Dark Glass, Midnight Blue, Cyberpunk Neon, Forest, Nord, Dracula, Catppuccin Mocha), plus sliders for blur, glow, saturation, transparency, typography, and corner radius. Persisted via tauri-plugin-store.
• KDE blur — sets _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION through x11rb so KWin blurs whatever sits behind the window. Toggleable from the theme editor. X11 today; Wayland blur manager is on the roadmap.
• No Electron — ~10 MB binary, native WebKitGTK webview.

Requirements

• Linux with WebKitGTK (KDE Plasma 6 tested; GNOME works without the window blur)
• Claude Code CLI installed and on PATH (claude --version should succeed)
• For building from source: Rust stable + Node 20 + pnpm 10

System packages

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libgtk-3-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev \
  librsvg2-dev libssl-dev pkg-config curl wget build-essential \
  libxdo-dev libx11-dev libxcb1-dev

# Fedora
sudo dnf install webkit2gtk4.1-devel gtk3-devel libappindicator-gtk3-devel \
  librsvg2-devel openssl-devel xdotool libX11-devel libxcb-devel

# Arch
sudo pacman -S webkit2gtk-4.1 gtk3 libappindicator-gtk3 librsvg openssl \
  xdotool libx11 libxcb

Install

AppImage (one-liner)

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/3L0935/glassforge/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

This grabs the latest AppImage from GitHub Releases, drops it into ~/.local/bin/glassforge, and creates a .desktop entry in ~/.local/share/applications.

Flatpak

git clone https://github.com/3L0935/glassforge
cd glassforge
./scripts/build-flatpak.sh
flatpak install --user glassforge.flatpak

From source

git clone https://github.com/3L0935/glassforge
cd glassforge
pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev       # run against Vite HMR
pnpm tauri build --bundles appimage  # produce a release AppImage

KDE blur setup

GlassForge ships with two distinct kinds of blur:

• In-app glass — CSS backdrop-filter on cards, sidebar, settings panel. This works on every compositor (GNOME, KDE, Sway, etc).
• Window-level blur — KWin blurs the wallpaper/other windows that sit behind GlassForge. Controlled by the _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION X11 atom.

To enable window-level blur:

1. Make sure you're running KDE Plasma 6 on X11 (Wayland support is pending).
2. Open GlassForge → Settings (gear icon) → Window → toggle Enable KDE blur behind window.
3. If nothing happens, check KWin compositing is on: System Settings → Display → Compositor → Enable on startup.

Theming

Open Settings (top-right gear). Every knob is live:

• Preset — pick one of the bundled palettes.
• Accent & glow — primary/secondary accent, ambient glow intensity & radius.
• Glass & blur — in-app backdrop blur strength, saturation, background opacity.
• Window — background color, window opacity, KDE blur toggle.
• Typography — sans/mono font families, base size, corner radius.

Settings persist to ~/.local/share/com.glassforge.app/settings.json (or whatever your platform's store path is).

Configuration

Path	Purpose
~/.local/share/com.glassforge.app/settings.json	Theme + limit config (managed by tauri-plugin-store)
~/.claude/skills/	User skills discovered by GlassForge
~/.local/share/com.glassforge.app/logs/	Runtime logs via tauri-plugin-log

GlassForge never writes anywhere else. It spawns only the user's local claude binary — no network calls of its own.

Architecture

Frontend (React)  ←─ invoke / event ─→  Tauri Command Layer (Rust)
                                                │
                                                ├── claude::session    (PTY + streaming)
                                                ├── skills             (scan + git install)
                                                ├── kde::blur          (X11 atom)
                                                └── config             (tauri-plugin-store)

• Every side effect goes through a Tauri command — the frontend never spawns processes directly.
• Sessions live in a SessionRegistry (Arc<RwLock<HashMap<Uuid, SessionHandle>>>).
• Each session owns a dedicated OS thread that blocks on portable-pty reads and re-publishes chunks as session://{id}/stdout Tauri events.
• Status transitions emit session://{id}/status; exit codes emit session://{id}/exit.

Contributing

PRs welcome. Before committing:

cargo fmt --manifest-path src-tauri/Cargo.toml
cargo clippy --manifest-path src-tauri/Cargo.toml -- -D warnings
cargo test --manifest-path src-tauri/Cargo.toml
pnpm typecheck

CI re-runs all of the above on every push.

Not in scope

• GlassForge is not a reimplementation of Claude Code — it spawns the user's existing claude binary.
• Not an Electron app — no bundled Chromium.
• Not a network service — all state is local; the only network activity belongs to claude itself.
• Not a theme engine for KDE — the window-blur integration is nice-to-have, not the core feature.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.