RuDS

RuDS is a native Rust blogging desktop application and the successor to bDS2. It manages local projects from authoring through preview, static-site generation, integrity checks, and publishing while preserving the existing bDS filesystem and SQLite formats.

The project is under active development. Core blogging workflows are broadly available; remaining core work and optional extensions are tracked separately.

Available Features

• Native Iced desktop workspace with localized menus, tabs, anchored editor popovers, automatically paged post/media sidebars, dialogs, tasks, embedded Wry previews, and a live Pico CSS theme editor.
• Post and translation authoring with draft/published lifecycle, metadata, tags, categories, links, media, and batch gallery-image import.
• Media import, thumbnails, metadata translations, filters, validation, post assignment, and sequential drag-and-drop insertion into post editors.
• WordPress WXR migration with saved analyses, HTML-to-Markdown and shortcode conversion, conflict/taxonomy review, recoverable 500-item execution batches, media-parent linking, progress reporting, and optional AI-assisted taxonomy mapping.
• Post, Liquid template, and Lua script editing with dedicated syntax highlighting and explicit syntax-check feedback, including publish-time enforcement of the bDS2 Liquid tag/filter/operator subset, using a custom Ropey/Syntect/Cosmic Text editor and the documented, bDS2-signature-compatible project-scoped bds host API across utilities, rendered macros, and Blogmark transforms, including airplane-gated Git sync.
• SQLite and filesystem persistence with frontmatter, sidecars, rebuild, metadata diff/repair, bDS2-compatible checksums and NFD slug generation, and FTS5 search.
• Optional on-device multilingual semantic search and similar-post tag suggestions backed by a persistent USearch index, plus always-available partial-name tag autocomplete and duplicate-post review in the desktop workspace.
• Read-only in-app browsers in the Help menu for the bundled global DOCUMENTATION.md, the generated Lua API reference with public types and runnable examples, the CLI/server/TUI documentation, and the MCP server documentation, with safe GFM rendering and confirmed external links.
• A localized OPML menu editor manages pages, submenus, and category archives with protected Home ordering, keyboard-accessible tree controls, drag-and-drop, and bDS2-compatible persistence.
• Project-scoped typed domain events synchronize desktop views with shared-engine and future CLI mutations; persisted CLI notifications are consumed once, and the selected UI language is shared through settings.
• Headless bds-cli automation for rebuild/repair/render, publishing and Git sync, post/media/gallery creation, effective shared settings with secret-presence redaction, projects, utility Lua tasks, JSON I/O, airplane-mode AI routing, and guarded launcher installation from Settings → Data or bds-cli install.
• Local MCP automation over stdio or a localhost-only stateless HTTP endpoint, with project resources, read/search/count tools, inert write proposals, explicit desktop approval, and opt-in Claude Code/Copilot configuration.
• A fully localized Ratatui terminal workspace, available locally through bds-cli tui/BDS_MODE=tui and remotely through authenticated SSH shell sessions, with shared post/template/script editing and publishing, project/search/command overlays, settings, tags, Git, reports, task progress, live multi-client locale updates, and airplane-mode AI gating.
• bds-cli server hosting the shared application engines over a loopback-by-default, public-key-only SSH service, with restrictive private key material, live authorization updates, terminal-session transport, CLI-change synchronization, ordered domain/task events, and native desktop remote-project selection.
• bDS2-compatible Markdown/Liquid rendering with built-in macros rendered from bundled Liquid templates in isolated scopes (customizable with macros/* partial-template slugs), descriptive category archive titles, canonical multilingual and flat page routes, recursive menus, calendar archives, feeds, a root hreflang sitemap, Pagefind, and incremental site generation through cancellable section task groups.
• Navigable generated-route preview in the app or system browser, with draft database overlays and published filesystem content.
• Optional one-shot AI translation, description, analysis, taxonomy, and language-detection operations run in background tasks with editor-level waiting indicators, using provider-portable JSON-only requests through independent online and local OpenAI-compatible profiles. Each profile has secure credentials, persistently discovered chat/title/image model selections, explicit tool/vision overrides, chat testing, and restart-persistent status-bar airplane-mode routing.
• Persistent conversational AI with safe Markdown, streamed and cancellable responses, model/session/token tracking, bounded project-aware blog tools, and localized conversation management in the Chat workspace. Allowlisted render tools add persistent native cards, charts, forms, lists, metrics, mind maps, tables, and tabs without executing assistant-provided HTML or JavaScript.
• SSH-agent-based SCP or rsync publishing.
• Integrated Git workflow with repository initialization, Git LFS image tracking, status and diffs, branch/file history, commits, remotes, cancellable fetch/pull/push, and post-pull filesystem reconciliation; network actions respect airplane mode.
• Site, media, and translation validation plus ruds://new-post Blogmark capture and Lua transforms; captures open directly in the post editor and defer automatic translation until an explicit save or publish, which queues one task per still-missing language. bDS2 keeps its separate bds2:// bookmarklet protocol.

RuDS uses no JavaScript application runtime and loads no CSS or JavaScript from CDNs. The preview is served by the Rust application and displayed by the operating-system webview.

The packaged Apple Silicon application requires macOS 26 or newer.

Packaged executables share native bds-core and bds-server dynamic libraries. ONNX Runtime is statically contained in bds-core; the package does not ship or download a separate ONNX library. The Install CLI action writes a small forwarding launcher to ~/.local/bin, so the command continues to execute the packaged CLI beside the same runtime libraries instead of copying them.

Local macOS packages are ad-hoc signed without hardened runtime. A Developer ID and notarization remain optional release-channel steps for downloads that should pass Gatekeeper without a user override.

Repository Map

• crates/bds-core — data, engines, rendering, AI, publishing, and Lua
• crates/bds-editor — reusable syntax-highlighting editor
• crates/bds-ui — desktop application and platform integration
• crates/bds-cli — headless automation CLI over the shared engines
• crates/bds-mcp — packaged stdio MCP transport over the shared MCP engine
• crates/bds-server — reusable headless host, SSH transport, remote protocol, and desktop client library
• specs — authoritative Allium behavior specifications
• fixtures — compatibility projects and generated-site fixtures
• locales — UI and native-menu translations

References

• Specification index
• User guide
• CLI, headless server, and terminal UI
• MCP server
• UI style guide
• ../bDS2 — reference implementation when an Allium contract is ambiguous

Contributor workflow and project invariants are documented in AGENTS.md.

Development gates

Install the dependency audit tools once:

cargo install cargo-machete cargo-outdated

Before committing, verify dependency usage and freshness, then build and test the complete workspace:

cargo machete --with-metadata
cargo outdated --workspace --root-deps-only --exit-code 1
cargo build --workspace
cargo test --workspace

The full test suite starts loopback-only mock and preview servers, so localhost binding must be permitted.

Headless server

Run bds-cli server for a dedicated headless process, or set BDS_MODE=server when launching bds-ui. The SSH listener defaults to 127.0.0.1:2222; use --bind/BDS_SSH_BIND and --port/BDS_SSH_PORT to opt into another address. Startup prints the private authorized_keys path. The desktop creates its own private id_ed25519.pub; add that public key to the server file, then use File → Connect to Server… and select a remote project. Host keys are recorded on first connection and verified thereafter. Run bds-cli tui or set BDS_MODE=tui for the local terminal workspace; an authenticated SSH shell opens the same workspace against server-side data and locale. Press : for its command list and :? for help.