Waku: A new native application for managing coding agents built with Rust and GPUI

Introduction to Waku

Waku is a newly developed native application that provides a unified interface for interacting with coding agents. It consolidates various agent CLIs, offering a centralized view of sessions, transcripts, and tool activity. The application runs entirely on the user's machine.

Technical Foundation

The application is built using Rust and GPUI, the GPU-accelerated framework also used in the Zed editor. This technical choice contributes to its performance characteristics, such as instant launch times and smooth scrolling through extensive logs. It avoids the use of Electron, opting for a native implementation.

Agent Integration and Data Management

Waku connects to agents through their native interfaces, including stream-json, JSON-RPC, and live events, normalizing their output into a provider-neutral model. A key feature is its ability to checkpoint the working tree under a hidden git ref with every prompt, allowing users to roll back both code and conversation history simultaneously. All project data, sessions, transcripts, and provider IDs are stored locally on the user's disk, with no account requirements or telemetry.

User Interface and Updates

The application emphasizes keyboard-first interaction, with shortcuts for starting sessions, queuing follow-ups, steering agents, and stopping processes. Waku is designed for quiet operation, featuring signed, notarized, and auto-updated binary deltas via Sparkle to maintain currency without user intervention.