Desktop App

Electron + Vite + React + Hono + Bun

Project Structure

• packages/app/ — Electron shell + React frontend (pages, components, styles)
• packages/app/electron/ — Electron main process and preload
• packages/api/ — Hono API server on Bun (localhost:3001), database schema and migrations

Quick Start

# Install dependencies
bun install

# Copy env and fill in secrets
cp .env.example .env

# Generate and apply database migrations
cd packages/api
bun run db:generate
bun run db:migrate
cd ../..

# Start dev (API + Electron app)
bun run dev

Environment Variables

All env vars live in a single .env file at the project root.

Prefix	Available to	How to access
VITE_	Desktop app (renderer) and API server	App: import.meta.env.VITE_* · API: process.env.VITE_*
No prefix	API server only	process.env.*

Secrets (auth keys, DB credentials) must not have the VITE_ prefix — Vite strips non-prefixed vars at build time, keeping them out of the renderer.

Database

Uses Drizzle ORM with SQLite via bun:sqlite.

cd packages/api
bun run db:generate    # Generate migrations from schema
bun run db:migrate     # Apply migrations
bun run db:studio      # Browse data in Drizzle Studio

Schema is in packages/api/src/database/schema.ts, migrations in packages/api/drizzle/.

API

Backend uses Hono running on Bun. The app consumes it via typed RPC client (hono/client).

// packages/api/src/index.ts
const app = new Hono()
  .get("/ping", (c) => c.json({ message: "pong" }));

export type AppType = typeof app;

// packages/app/src/lib/api.ts
const res = await api.ping.$get();
const data = await res.json();

Building

bun run build:mac      # macOS (dmg + zip, x64 + arm64)
bun run build:win      # Windows (nsis, x64)
bun run build:linux    # Linux (AppImage + deb, x64)
bun run build:all      # All platforms

Agent Rules

IMPORTANT: Don't assume how a package works from memory. Check the installed version in package.json and read docs in node_modules/<pkg>/ before using any package. APIs change between major versions — guessing leads to broken code.

This is a monorepo with two packages. packages/api runs on Bun (server-side), packages/app runs in Electron/Vite (client-side). Don't import server-only code (like bun:sqlite or process.env secrets) into the app package — use the RPC client or VITE_ env vars instead.