Frontend before the Rust port; v0 served by the daemon

Status: accepted · 2026-09-04 · amended 2026-09-05

Context

KO-168 plans a Rust port module by module once the Python seams stop moving; its own trigger is a few weeks without structural change. Ko asked whether to port before or after a frontend.

Decision

Frontend first. A frontend consumes the daemon's JSON, which a Rust daemon would have to honour anyway, so it is untouched by the port. Building the client is what shapes the API (/attention exists because the drawer needed it). Rust waits until the JSON and the schema stop moving.

v0 is a page served by the daemon at /, read-only over /status, /runs, /attention and the ledger. It is built, not hand-written: a console/ package on Bun, React and Tailwind, bundled to a static directory the daemon serves, so the writer host needs Bun to build it and nothing to run it. Bun is runtime, test runner and bundler; there is no second toolchain. The choice trades "nothing installed" for a renderer that can grow into the app Ko wants without a rewrite. An Electron wrapper, if wanted, loads the daemon URL and changes nothing in the renderer. Writes come behind a serve token.

Tickets

Shape settled by note 13, accepted 2026-09-05; the tickets are filed there.