Wraith

A transparent, tabbed workspace: Notepad, a Command Prompt, and a WSL Ubuntu terminal, all in one see-through window. Pick one from the launcher, and each opens as its own tab.

Features

• Launcher screen: three tiles — Ubuntu (WSL), Command Prompt, Notepad — each opens a new tab of that type. Also has a search box for finding your saved notes by name or content.
• Real terminals: actual cmd.exe and wsl.exe processes via node-pty, rendered with xterm.js. If node-pty fails to load on your machine, the rest of the app (notes, launcher, settings) still works — you just get a clear "terminal unavailable" message on those tabs instead of a crash.
• Tabs: open multiple notes and terminals at once, switch between them, close individually. Notes auto-title with the date if you don't rename them.
• Transparent window with three text-visibility modes (Fully Transparent / Kinda Transparent / Solid Black & White), plus an alternate legibility mode that blurs what's behind the text instead of relying on opacity — or both at once. All configurable from the Settings panel (gear icon in the tab bar).
• Auto-save: unsaved notes save to a recovery slot every N seconds (configurable); once a note has a real save location, autosave writes straight to it.
• File search: searches your Notes folder by filename or content — implemented as a plain JS file walk, deliberately not shelling out to findstr/grep, so there's no command-injection surface from your search text.
• Global summon hotkey: `Ctrl+`` shows/hides the window from anywhere, no need to focus it first (same convention VS Code uses for its terminal). Optionally summons to your current mouse position instead of its last spot.
• "Open in Wraith here": launched with a directory as an argument (e.g. from Revenant's right-click menu or address bar), opens a new Command Prompt tab starting there instead of your home folder. Works whether Wraith is already running (forwarded through the single-instance lock, a new tab gets added to the existing window) or not (opens fresh, starts there directly).
• System tray: closing the window hides it to tray instead of quitting. Quitting for real (from the tray menu) asks about any unsaved notes first, the same Save / Don't Save / Cancel prompt you get closing a single tab.
• Start with Windows, spell check (with real right-click suggestions), and remembers window position/size — all in Settings.
• Paste images and emoji directly into notes — this is native contenteditable behavior, not something bolted on, so it just works.
• Formatting toolbar: bold/italic/underline/strikethrough, bullet lists, checklist items (real checkboxes), sub-item arrows, left/center/right alignment, and a font family/size picker — all from a Google-Docs-style toolbar on every note.
• Autocorrect: fixes ~50 common typos as you type, with a dotted underline you can hover for a one-click revert to what you actually typed.
• Calculator side panel: a collapsible basic calculator (drag the arrow out from the edge) with an advanced mode for graphing expressions (sin, cos, sqrt, ^, etc.) on a canvas plot — no eval(), it's a hand-rolled recursive-descent parser.
• Saves as plain .txt (drop-in Notepad-compatible) by default, or .html automatically once a note actually has formatting applied, so nothing gets silently discarded on save.

Keyboard shortcuts

Ctrl+N new note · Ctrl+T new tab (launcher) · Ctrl+W close tab · Ctrl+O open · Ctrl+S / Ctrl+Shift+S save / save as · Ctrl+F find · Ctrl+H replace · Ctrl+B/I/U bold/italic/underline · Ctrl+=/-/0 zoom · F5 insert date/time · Ctrl+\`` summon/hide window (global) · Ctrl+Shift+T` click-through mode (global)

There's no native File/Edit menu anymore — the app moved to a custom tab bar and Settings panel instead, so menu-driven actions became shortcuts + the visible panels (Settings, Font, Find).

Running it (development)

npm install
npm start

node-pty is a native module and needs to be compiled for your Electron version. npm install triggers this automatically via electron-builder install-app-deps (see the postinstall script in package.json), but it needs Python and Visual Studio Build Tools (C++ workload) installed on Windows to succeed. If terminal tabs show "unavailable" after install, that's almost certainly why — the rest of the app will still work regardless.

Building a real installer (.exe)

npm run dist

Notes

• icon-src/ holds the vector sources for every icon (app icon, and the three launcher tiles) plus make_ico.py to regenerate build/icon.ico.
• Tested end-to-end on a real Windows machine, including real cmd.exe/ wsl.exe terminal tabs through a compiled node-pty, file save/load, autosave, and every feature above.

License

© Stam. All rights reserved. This repository is shared publicly for portfolio and demonstration purposes only — viewing the code doesn't grant permission to copy, reuse, redistribute, or build on it without my consent.