Command Center

A personal desktop dashboard — one place to reach your services, notes, and tools.

Built with Electron, React, and TypeScript (electron-vite). macOS-first today: terminal launching targets Warp, and npm run package produces a .app bundle.

Features

The UI is split into tabs. Widget data loads and refreshes in the background regardless of which tab is active.

Home

Widget	What it does
Today's Schedule	Google Calendar events for the day (prev/next day, join links, expandable notes)
Due & Overdue	Todoist tasks due today or overdue (grouped by project, tags, subtasks)
Today's Log	Renders today's Obsidian daily note (prev/next navigation, open in Obsidian)
Active Missions	Lists notes in your missions folder, newest first
Local Apps	One-click open of local app URLs (drag-to-reorder, add/edit/delete)
Learning	Same launcher UI for course/docs links

Development

Widget	What it does
Services	Live Docker container status with start/stop controls
Claude Code	Opens a Warp tab in a project directory and runs `claude`

Reader

Widget	What it does
Reader	Latest Readwise Reader documents, paginated (archive/delete)

Scratchpad

Widget	What it does
Scratchpad	Autosaved markdown scratch notes (write / split / preview modes, clear button)

Click Refresh in the header to reload all remote widgets. The app also auto-refreshes on a configurable interval (default: every 10 minutes). Docker polls separately on its own interval (default: every 15 seconds).

Requirements

Node.js 22 LTS — Electron's prebuilt binary can silently fail on newer/non-LTS Node versions. If you see "Electron failed to install correctly," run node --version, switch to Node 22 (nvm use 22), and reinstall dependencies.
macOS — primary target. Linux/Windows branches exist for some features but are stubs.
Docker (optional) — for the Services widget. Degrades gracefully if the daemon isn't running.
Warp (optional) — for Claude Code terminal launching. Swap src/main/services/launcher.ts for your terminal of choice.
Obsidian vault (optional) — for daily log and missions widgets.
API tokens (optional) — Todoist, Google Calendar OAuth, Readwise Reader.

Quick start

git clone <repo-url>
cd command-center
npm install
cp config.example.json config.json   # then edit with your paths/tokens
npm start                            # launch dev build

Other scripts:

npm run dev        # launch with devtools
npm run build      # production bundle → out/
npm run preview    # run the production bundle
npm run package    # build macOS .app → dist/mac-arm64/Command Center.app
npm run typecheck  # type-check without emitting

Configuration

config.json is gitignored (it holds real API tokens). Copy config.example.json to get started.

Key	Purpose
`grimoire.vaultPath`	Absolute path to your Obsidian vault
`grimoire.dailyLogDir`	Relative path inside the vault for daily notes
`grimoire.missionsDir`	Relative path inside the vault for mission notes
`docker.refreshSeconds`	How often the Services widget polls Docker (default: `15`)
`app.refreshMinutes`	How often to auto-refresh all widgets (default: `10`; set `0` to disable)
`todoist.apiToken`	Todoist personal API token
`googleCalendar.clientId` / `clientSecret`	Google Cloud OAuth Desktop app credentials
`reader.apiToken`	Readwise access token from readwise.io/access_token

Google Calendar setup

Create a Google Cloud project and enable the Calendar API.
Set the OAuth consent screen to External and add yourself as a test user.
Create an OAuth client of type Desktop app under Credentials.
Paste the Client ID and Secret into config.json.
In the app, click Connect Google Calendar for one-time browser consent. Tokens are cached locally — never stored in config.json or git.

Local Apps, Learning, and Claude Code

These lists are managed in the UI and persisted in SQLite — not in config.json. On first launch, if a list is empty, the app seeds it from legacy localApps / learning / claudeCode keys in config.json if present (one-time migration).

Running without a terminal

npm run package

This builds dist/mac-arm64/Command Center.app, which you can drag into /Applications and launch from Spotlight or the Dock.

Unsigned app: Gatekeeper blocks the first launch as "unidentified developer." Right-click → Open once to bypass, or run xattr -cr "Command Center.app".
Separate config: The packaged app can't edit config.json inside its bundle. It keeps a user copy at:

~/Library/Application Support/Command Center/config.json

Seeded from config.example.json on first launch. Edit that copy for packaged builds.

Data storage

What	Where
User config	`config.json` (repo root in dev; `~/Library/Application Support/Command Center/` when packaged)
Google OAuth tokens	`~/Library/Application Support/Command Center/google-tokens.json`
SQLite database	`~/Library/Application Support/Command Center/command-center.db`

The database holds Local Apps, Learning, Claude Code project lists, and the Scratchpad note.

Architecture

An Electron app has three deliberately walled-off parts:

Main process (src/main/) — Node.js with full OS access. Window creation, IPC handlers, file I/O, shell commands, API calls.
Preload (src/preload/) — the only bridge. Exposes a small typed API (window.api.*) via contextBridge.
Renderer (src/renderer/src/) — sandboxed React UI. Talks to main only through window.api.

Shared types in src/shared/types.ts define the contract used by all three.

UI event → window.api.x() → ipcRenderer.invoke → ipcMain.handle → service → result

Services fail soft: they return { ok: false, reason } instead of throwing, so a broken widget shows a message instead of crashing the app.

Notes

Docker shells out to the docker CLI — Docker Desktop (or the daemon) must be running.
Terminal launching writes a Warp Tab Config to ~/.warp/tab_configs/ and opens it via warp://tab_config/....
Reader without a token shows "No Readwise API token configured" instead of erroring.
Widgets without configured credentials degrade gracefully with a friendly message.

Roadmap

GitHub — open PRs / CI status via the GitHub API.
Drag-to-rearrange grid — swap the CSS grid for something like react-grid-layout.

License

MIT

Command-Center