Chimera

Multi-provider AI sidebar with bento workflow UI. Local-first, sovereign stack.

What

Chimera is a standalone cross-platform AI sidebar app that routes between multiple providers — local Ollama, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity — through a unified bento-card workflow interface. Design-forward, agent-aware, built for the Inferis mesh.

Design Direction

• Bento card layout with squiggle/flow workflow visualization (ref: Synapse)
• Dark mode only, Secret Menu design system tokens
• Compact mode for constrained screens (1366x768 IRONHIDE)
• Provider pills with status badges (LOCAL / CLOUD / SEARCH)

Tech

• Tauri v2 — ~8MB binary vs Electron ~150MB
• Vanilla JS + CSS tokens — no framework bloat
• Multi-provider streaming — Ollama, Anthropic, Gemini, Perplexity
• SQLite conversation history via Tauri
• System tray + global hotkey

Architecture

CHIMERA SIDEBAR
├── Provider Bar        [Ollama] [Claude] [Gemini] [Perplexity]
├── Bento Workflow Grid  Agent cards, pipeline status, mesh nodes
├── Chat Area           Streaming responses, markdown, code blocks
├── Input               Provider-aware, model selector
└── Status Bar          Ollama status, mesh nodes, model info

Build

Requires Rust toolchain + Tauri CLI + WebKit2GTK (Linux):

cargo install tauri-cli --version '^2.0'
cd src-tauri && cargo tauri build --no-bundle

8.9MB compiled binary on Linux x86-64.

Providers

Provider	Endpoint	Auth	Badge
Ollama	localhost:11434 or Tailscale	None	LOCAL
Claude	api.anthropic.com	ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	CLOUD
Gemini	generativelanguage.googleapis.com	GEMINI_API_KEY	CLOUD
Perplexity	api.perplexity.ai	PERPLEXITY_API_KEY	SEARCH

Mesh

Part of the Inferis distributed compute network:

• UNICRON (M4 Mac Mini) — operator seat
• ACIDBURN (Ubuntu 24.04) — build/compute, Ollama, Qdrant
• IRONHIDE (Arch Linux) — portable node
• HERBIE (M1 Mac) — idle

Status

• Tauri v2 scaffold
• Design system tokens
• Ollama streaming chat
• 8.9MB compiled binary
• Bento workflow grid UI (wireframes incoming)
• Anthropic streaming provider
• Gemini + Perplexity providers
• System tray + global hotkey
• SQLite conversation history
• .deb + .AppImage packaging

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Secret Menu LLC · nu.secretme.chimera