¶Elyra Conductor Documentation

Elyra Conductor is a local project conductor — a single window where you switch projects, run terminals, split panes, browse files, quick-edit, and launch your real editor. It is cross-platform Rust + web: the heavy lifting (PTYs, filesystem, process launching, git) lives in Tauri/Rust, while the UI is built with Svelte 5, xterm.js, and Monaco.

¶Quick start

Conductor is a desktop app. From a clone of the repository:

pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev

On first launch it scans ~/Code. Click a project to open a terminal tab rooted at that folder, then split with ⌘D, browse files with ⌘B, and jump anywhere with the command palette (⌘K).

For the full first-run flow, see Quickstart.

¶Design principle

Conductor orchestrates; it does not reason.

Conductor is a launcher, terminal multiplexer, and host UI — never an AI agent. All intelligence lives in external tools (chiefly the Elyra CLI), which Conductor runs like any other process. It never calls an LLM, stores API keys, or defines prompts/tools/models. See Architecture & boundaries.

¶Start here

• Quickstart — install, build, and open your first project.
• Using Conductor — day-to-day workflow and the main UI areas.

¶Features

• Projects & sidebar — project switcher, git status, pinned projects.
• Terminals & panes — PTY terminals, splitting, search, titles, rings.
• Command history & insights — the timeline, searchable history, and flow metrics.
• Workspaces — save and restore named layouts.
• Tasks — run package.json / Makefile / justfile / composer.json tasks.
• Runbooks — runnable, project-scoped markdown notes (▶ run, [[file]], [[task:name]]).
• Files & editor — the file tree and inline Monaco quick-edit.
• Git — status in the sidebar and the in-app commit dialog.
• Worktrees & parallel agents — isolated branches, the agent command center, and GitHub PR status.
• Database browser — connect (MySQL/SQLite) from .env, browse tables, run queries, export to Excel.
• Command palette — the ⌘K fuzzy launcher.
• Settings — the ⌘, window, and why there is no AI configuration in it.
• Keyboard shortcuts — every shortcut, and how editor focus changes them.

¶Elyra integration

• Elyra agent — host a native agent panel driven by elyra --mode rpc.
• Ask about this terminal — ⌘↵ inline help in any pane, including over SSH. Advises without acting; no keys in Conductor.
• Worktrees & parallel agents — run several agents at once, one isolated branch each, with PR status.

¶Architecture

• Architecture & boundaries — layering and the host-not-agent rule.
• Tauri commands — the full Rust ↔ webview IPC surface.
• State & persistence — how sessions, workspaces, and scrollback persist.

¶Operations

• Releasing & auto-update — cut a signed release the in-app updater consumes.
• Development — local setup, project structure, and debugging.
• Troubleshooting — common issues and fixes.