Dashboard Architecture

Status: Current Last updated: 2026-05-21 15:00 EDT

The Batchalign dashboard is one React UI shipped two ways: the web dashboard served by the Rust control plane, and a desktop operator app via Tauri that hosts the same React code. Rust OpenAPI is the canonical dashboard contract source.

Two delivery surfaces, one UI

┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Same React codebase (one UI)        │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘
            │                 │
            ▼                 ▼
   Web dashboard      Tauri desktop shell
   (served by         (apps/dashboard-desktop)
    Rust server)
            │                 │
            ▼                 ▼
   ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
   │  Rust control plane (batchalign)     │
   │  OpenAPI = canonical contract        │
   └──────────────────────────────────────┘

React layer

React is the canonical dashboard UI implementation. The web dashboard is the supported public surface; the Tauri shell is a desktop wrapper around the same React code with a researcher-friendly processing flow.

The Tauri side is intentionally thin, plugins + one custom command. All UI logic lives in React. Reasons:

One UI codebase across web and desktop.
Mature ecosystem for web UI quality, testing, and observability.
Strong desktop packaging / update path via Tauri with minimal bespoke runtime code.

Tauri shell features

The desktop processing flow (apps/dashboard-desktop) provides:

Command picker.
Native folder dialog.
Job submission with paths_mode.
SSE-driven progress.
“Open output folder” action.
Server auto-start on launch, auto-stop on exit.
Status bar with manual start / stop controls.
First-time setup wizard (engine selection + Rev.AI key) matching batchalign2’s mandatory interactive_setup() gate.

The CLI also gates processing commands on ~/.batchalign.ini existence, matching the BA2 behavior.

Rust OpenAPI contract

The dashboard contract is generated from Rust types. Both the web dashboard and the Tauri shell consume the same OpenAPI spec, so schema drift between the two delivery surfaces is impossible by construction.

Scope rules

React is the dashboard feature-development target.
The web dashboard is the supported current public surface.
The Tauri shell provides the end-user processing flow (/process route) for researchers who aren’t comfortable with terminals.
The Tauri side stays thin (plugins + one custom command); all UI logic lives in React.
Rust-only end-to-end UI stacks are not pursued, adding Node/TypeScript toolchain ownership is the conscious tradeoff for ecosystem maturity.

Source layout

Path	Role
`frontend/`	React dashboard sources (served by `batchalign` server)
`apps/dashboard-desktop/`	Tauri shell (rust-tauri + React UI build)
`crates/batchalign/src/openapi.rs`	OpenAPI schema generation

This page last changed: 2026-06-19 (commit c82a6d03). The whole book last changed: 2026-09-16 (commit 34d249d8).

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