Show Reka UI: Building an unbloated desktop AI workspace with Reka UI, Vue 3 & Tauri 2 (Knovum)

[madebyzan]

Hi Reka UI community! 👋

We’ve recently open-sourced Knovum — a local-first desktop AI knowledge space built with Vue 3 (Composition API), Tauri 2 (Rust), and Reka UI primitives.

When building a production-grade desktop application (rather than a browser dashboard), component primitives must adhere to strict desktop UX expectations: full keyboard accessibility, predictable focus traps in floating overlays, and composable headless behaviors that blend into native macOS / Windows chrome.

Why We Chose Reka UI for Desktop Chrome

1. Headless Primitive Control

   • We used Reka’s headless primitives for dialogs, popovers, dropdowns, tooltips, and command menus.
   • Because Reka completely decouples accessibility logic and keyboard event dispatching from CSS, we were able to style everything strictly to a compact, low-chroma desktop aesthetic using Tailwind CSS v4 design tokens.

2. Native Window & Overlay Interactions

   • In desktop apps, dialogs and floating inspector panels frequently coexist with an infinite 2D canvas (Konva). Reka’s robust focus management and dismiss behaviors ensure that escape keys, outside clicks, and tab order work flawlessly across native window chrome without stealing canvas transform gestures.

3. Performance in a Sub-Second Desktop Bundle

   • Paired with Vue 3 Composition API and Tauri 2, Knovum boots in sub-second time and idles at ~45MB RAM (versus 800MB+ in Electron). Reka’s clean bundle footprint and reactive state model keep our UI layer lean and responsive.

Open Source Repository

The full codebase and component compositions are open source under Apache-2.0:

• GitHub: https://github.com/madebyzan/knovum
• Check out our UI compositions in src/shared/ui/ and feature dialogs in src/features/!

A huge thank you to @zernonia and the Reka UI contributors for providing the cleanest, most reliable headless primitives in the Vue ecosystem!

[madebyzan]

🚀 Update: Knovum v0.0.2 released with Reka UI Polish & Auditionable Voice Engine

We just shipped v0.0.2 of Knovum! In this release, Reka UI unstyled primitives played a huge role in keeping our desktop UI accessible and rock-solid:

1. Spatial Canvas Popover Anchoring:
   When zooming and panning across the Konva 2D canvas, Reka PopoverContent and DropdownMenuContent seamlessly honor coordinate transforms and viewport boundary collisions, ensuring floating menus never clip outside the desktop window.
2. Accessible Audio Controls:
   Our new auditionable voice library and waveform preview components use Reka accessible slider and toggle primitives, delivering native keyboard navigation (Tab + arrow keys) out of the box.
3. Desktop Dialog Performance:
   Because Reka does not introduce heavy runtime CSS-in-JS overhead, mounting and unmounting dialogs in Tauri 2 remains instant (0ms hitch) even on lower-spec laptops.

Full release notes and downloads (macOS DMG & Windows EXE):
https://github.com/madebyzan/knovum/releases/tag/v0.0.2