gui

🎛️ gui · crower-gui

Two entries over the same configuration.

Command	Surface
crower gui	Interactive terminal UI
crower-gui	Fyne window

crower gui
crower-gui

Both read the same crower.yaml, so a command created in the CLI appears in the window, and anything done there lands in the history. The Fyne window can create, edit and delete commands with the same catalog rules and history notes as the CLI.

The window is split into tabs:

Tab	What it holds
Commands	The command cards, a filter, a setup row and a group row; a card opens into its fields, parameters and Run, Edit and Delete
History	Every recorded operation, newest first, as expandable cards: an operation icon, command, time and version open into the labelled fields (with the full date), the raw line, and Run, Edit and Restore this state
Tools	Copy, move, search, extract and open; every path field has Browse…, and each card has its own result square that opens when an action runs
About	Logo, version, description, the repository link, and the update controls — padded to the tab width, with the actions stacked vertically

A command can carry an icon — a short marker such as 🚀 — shown beside its name, and a group; the filter lists every group in use, and an opened card shows which one the command belongs to. Both are set from the create and edit dialogs, or with crower create --icon/--group and crower update --icon/--group. The Icon control is a large emoji button: tapping it opens the full catalogue with a category selector and a search over names, aliases, tags and the glyph; Clear removes it. The catalogue omits multi-codepoint sequences (joined faces, skin-tone variants, flags) that the platform font commonly renders as a blank cell. Picking from the window always yields a catalogue emoji; a value set with --icon is shown as stored. The Group field is a dropdown of the groups in use plus New group, which asks for a name and selects it, so a group never has to be typed.

New command sits at the top right of the Commands tab, above the list it adds to; the Filter row under it narrows the cards by name, alias, exec, group and description. Rules separate the create and filter controls, the setup and group rows, and the cards themselves.

On the Commands tab, each command is a card: a name with a chevron that opens into the labelled fields (name, exec, aliases, group, description, params, cwd, shell, timeout and numbered steps), a parameter entry, and Run, Edit and Delete. Opening one closes the previous card; a collapsed card carries no actions. Run passes the entry's text as parameters (an empty entry runs without any), Edit opens the command dialog and Delete asks first, and the confirmation only enables once the command's name is typed.

Each command and history entry is a card panel: the header is the summary and the opened body is indented from it, pairing each field label with its value in a left-aligned two-column list, with the actions under a rule. Labels and values are both selectable. The action row is spaced and coloured: Run green, Edit blue, Delete red and Restore this state amber, so the risk of each action reads before its label.

The edit dialog also changes the rest of the command: Description, Params (comma-separated), Cwd, Shell and Timeout. Emptying a field clears it. Env is not in the dialog — it holds values that look like secrets, so it stays a configuration-file field, and the window shows keys only. Exec and Description wrap and grow with their text (up to a cap); the dialog's field list scrolls, so a long script never clips the buttons.

Groups on the group row opens one compact row per group — its emoji button, its name and Delete — plus New group, which asks for a name and an icon and stores them. Groups live in groups.toml next to the configuration (the window is the only writer; the CLI ignores the file), so a group exists before a command uses it and survives a restart. The filter then reads 🚀 deploy instead of a bare name. A command's Group dropdown lists the same groups and creates one the same way. The dialog sizes itself from the window: it fits a small one and does not stretch across a maximised one.

The Setup list beside it switches between the named setups the CLI creates with crower setup new; New setup and Delete setup manage them without leaving the window (the default and the active setup cannot be deleted). Each entry says how many commands it holds — work (12) — so switching to an empty setup is a choice rather than a surprise. Switching reloads the commands, the history and the group icons without restarting, and saves the choice the way crower setup use does — so the next crower run opens the same setup.

Delete and restore both ask first; deleting a command, a group or a setup needs the name typed before the button enables. Restore this state puts the command set back to how it was before the selected entry and drops it and the newer entries, through the same Session.RevertBack path crower revert uses — so restoring the entry of a deletion brings the command back.

The History tab lists entries as cards, newest first. A card shows an operation icon, the command, the time and the version; it opens into the labelled fields (the full date and version included), the raw key=value note behind a toggle with Copy, and Run, Edit and Restore this state. The raw note sits on its own inset panel rather than as a stray line of text. Opening a card expands it in place and only scrolls if it would otherwise leave the viewport. Opening one closes the previous card. The newest hundred are rendered; Load older appends the next hundred, so a long log opens quickly and only the entries on screen are formatted. Run replays an execute entry with the parameters it recorded; older entries without them ask when the command declares parameters. Edit opens that command on the Commands tab.

Field labels and values in a command or history card, card descriptions, help text, the raw note, tool results, and the output and error dialogs can be selected and copied with Ctrl+C (⌘C on macOS), so a failure can be pasted into a bug report. Information, picker and form dialogs close when you click outside them; confirmation dialogs wait for an answer.

The About tab checks GitHub for a newer release when the window opens and reports what it finds. When there is one, an Install <version> button appears; nothing is installed without a confirmation, and the download goes through the same checksum-verified path as crower --upgrade. Once a release is on disk the install action gives way to Restart now, which closes the window and replaces the running process with the new binary — on Linux and macOS it takes over the same process rather than spawning a child a service manager could reap with the old window. Restore previous appears only when the installation recorded an earlier version. Neither the install nor the restart button is a permanent control, so they never contradict the status line. If a restart cannot start the new binary, restart-error.log is written beside crower.yaml.

The Tools tab runs the file operations through the same use cases as the CLI commands, and every run lands in the History tab. Path fields take a comma-separated list, and Browse… beside each one fills it from a file or folder picker — Fyne's dialog is single-select, so pressing Browse again appends another path. Each card keeps its own result panel: it appears when that card runs something and collapses with its toggle. The panel's left bar is green for a success, amber for a stop and red for a failure, and its message is selectable. A copy, move or extract reports how many items are done and offers Cancel, which stops the batch between items — the platform command already running is not interrupted.

Dropping files or folders anywhere on the window appends their paths to the Sources field of the copy/move card and opens the Tools tab. A drop only fills the field; nothing runs until you press Copy or Move.

The window opens at the size it last closed with, recorded in window.toml beside the configuration. A size too small to work in is ignored, so a corrupted file cannot open an unusable window. Position is not recorded: Fyne's window API does not expose it. A copy or move takes one or more paths and a destination; a search takes a term, a folder (default .) and what to look in; extract takes archive paths and an optional destination; open takes paths and hands them to the platform's default application.

Note

crower-gui needs a graphical session; in a terminal-only environment use crower gui. It ships in every platform archive next to crower and cr, not as a crower subcommand. The CLI binaries are cgo-free and need no display. On Windows, crower-gui.exe is the executable to double-click: it is a graphical program with the crow icon, while crower.exe and cr.exe stay terminal programs. It needs a driver that provides OpenGL 2.1; a start that cannot get one writes the reason to fyne.log beside crower.yaml and says so in a dialog. The window binary has no subcommands: it opens whatever the arguments are — --config and --setup are read, everything else is ignored — so a double-click can never land in a command parser.

🔗 Related

⚙️ Configuration · 🚑 Troubleshooting · 📖 Commands