Getting Started

Monorepo Layout

Path	Description
apps/desktop	Tauri desktop app (Vite + React + Zustand) controlling UI, state, and business logic.
apps/desktop/src-tauri	Rust API layer invoked from TypeScript for native capabilities, SQLite storage, and Whisper inference.
apps/web	Astro-powered marketing site hosted at voquill.com.
apps/firebase	Firebase Functions project handling authentication, billing, demos, and Groq-powered server transcription.
packages/voice-ai	Audio chunking + Groq client used for transcription and transcript cleanup.
packages/types	Shared domain models (users, transcriptions, dictionary terms, etc.).
packages/functions, packages/firemix, packages/utilities, packages/pricing, packages/ui, packages/typescript-config, packages/eslint-config	Reusable utilities, UI primitives, configuration, and Firemix helpers consumed by every app.
docs	Architecture notes, release guides, and reference material.
scripts	Automation and helper scripts (for example Linux dependency setup).

Architecture Overview

The desktop app follows a TypeScript-first design: Zustand maintains a single global store, while pure utility functions in apps/desktop/src/utils read and mutate state. Actions compose those utilities and may call out to repositories. Repos abstract whether persistence happens locally (SQLite through Tauri commands) or remotely (Firebase/Groq).

User input / system events
        ↓
React + Zustand state (TypeScript)
        ↓
Repos choose local vs. remote storage
        ↓
Tauri commands (Rust API bridge)
        ↓
SQLite, Whisper models, or external services

Rust stays focused on native integrations—audio capture, keyboard injection, updater, encryption, GPU enumeration, filesystem paths. TypeScript owns business logic, routing, and UI. The same shared packages are imported by the desktop app, Firebase functions, and the marketing site, which keeps the product vocabulary in sync.

See desktop-architecture.md for the full tour.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+ (desktop/web) and npm 10+.
• Rust toolchain with cargo, rustup, and the Tauri CLI (cargo install tauri-cli).
• Platform dependencies for Tauri (GTK/WebKit/AppIndicator/etc.). On Linux you can run apps/desktop/scripts/setup-linux.sh. On Windows use powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File apps/desktop/scripts/setup-windows.ps1 (add -EnableGpu to pull the Vulkan SDK for GPU builds).
• A Groq API key if you plan to use hosted transcription or transcript cleanup (GROQ_API_KEY).
• Firebase CLI (npm install -g firebase-tools) when working on the functions project.

Install dependencies

npm install

Build everything

Use the prepared turbo task instead of manually invoking turbo dev.

npm run build

Run the desktop app

Pick the platform-specific script; avoid turbo dev since the desktop app manages its own watcher.

# Mac
npm run dev:mac --workspace apps/desktop

# Windows
npm run dev:windows --workspace apps/desktop

# Linux (CPU)
npm run dev:linux --workspace apps/desktop

# Linux with Vulkan GPU acceleration
npm run dev:linux:gpu --workspace apps/desktop

During local development you can override platform detection by exporting VOQUILL_DESKTOP_PLATFORM (darwin, win32, or linux). The desktop dev journey now defaults to the emulators flavor (apps/desktop/.env.emulators) so that turbo dev and the workspace dev scripts point at the Firebase emulator suite; pass FLAVOR=dev or VITE_FLAVOR=dev when you explicitly want the hosted dev project. Set VITE_USE_EMULATORS=true to point at Firebase emulators (this is already true in the emulator flavor).

Running on Windows

# 1) Make sure MSVC is initialized
# (Skip this if you're already in "Developer PowerShell for VS 2022")
& "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat"

# (Optional but recommended) shorten build paths on Windows
$env:CARGO_TARGET_DIR = 'C:\cargo'

# 3) Build
npm run dev

Run the marketing site

npm run dev --workspace apps/web

Firebase Functions and emulators

The Firebase workspace targets Node 20. Install its dependencies (npm install inside apps/firebase/functions) and start emulators with:

npm run dev --workspace apps/firebase/functions

Secrets such as GROQ_API_KEY can be managed through .secret.local when using the emulator suite.

Quality checks

npm run lint
npm run check-types
npm run test

Individual workspaces expose the same commands if you need a narrower scope.

Run in prod mode

1. Comment out devUrl in apps/desktop/src-tauri/tauri.conf.json.
2. cd /apps/desktop
3. npm run build
4. VITE_FLAVOR=prod npx tauri dev --no-dev-server

Environment Reference

Variable	Purpose
VOQUILL_API_KEY_SECRET	Secret used by the desktop app to encrypt API keys stored on disk (apps/desktop/src-tauri/src/system/crypto.rs).
VOQUILL_WHISPER_MODEL_URL / VOQUILL_WHISPER_MODEL_URL_<SIZE>	Override download locations for Whisper models when running locally.
VOQUILL_WHISPER_DISABLE_GPU	Force the desktop app to avoid GPU inference, useful for debugging.
VITE_USE_EMULATORS	When set to true, the desktop app points to Firebase emulators instead of production services.
GROQ_API_KEY	Enables Groq-backed transcription/cleanup in Firebase functions and in the desktop API transcription mode.

Releases & CI

• Releases are orchestrated by .github/workflows/release.yml, which detects which folders changed and invokes per-component reusable workflows (release-cli.yml, _release-desktop-impl.yml, release-docs.yml, release-web.yml, release-enterprise-admin.yml, release-enterprise-gateway.yml). Pushes to main/prod/enterprise release to the dev/prod/enterprise channels respectively. Desktop builds bump a channel tag, build all three platforms, and publish assets plus latest.json manifests. See desktop-release.md for step-by-step instructions.
• Turbo caching is configured in turbo.json; CI jobs call npm run build, npm run lint, and other workspace-scoped commands.

Documentation

• Desktop architecture: desktop-architecture.md
• Release playbook: desktop-release.md
• Additional resources and inspiration: resources.md
• Contributor conventions and workspace notes: AGENTS.md (repo root)

License

Unless otherwise noted, Voquill is released under the AGPLv3. See LICENCE for the complete terms and third-party attributions.