Cate v1.0 is out: The Infinite canvas workspace for developers

Cate v1.0, a spatial desktop IDE built on an infinite canvas, has been released for developers. The Electron app replaces traditional window management by allowing users to arrange code editors, terminals, browsers, documents, and AI agents in freeform space, with persistent layouts that restore across sessions. The tool aims to eliminate the bottleneck of switching between multiple windows by providing one persistent canvas per project.

A spatial desktop IDE with an infinite canvas for code, terminals, browsers, documents, AI agents, and git. Current source version: v1.0.3 Cate is an Electron desktop app for arranging development tools in freeform space. Mix floating canvas panels with docked tabs and splits, detach panels into standalone windows, and keep multiple workspaces synced across sessions. Open any folder to create a workspace — Cate restores your canvas layout, panel positions, and open terminals every time you come back. Right-click the canvas to add panels, press Cmd+K for the command palette, or drag panels onto the dock to create tabs and splits. No configuration files, no project setup — just point Cate at a directory and start working. Alt-tab works fine — until you have 12 terminals, 6 files open, docs in another window, and notes scattered across desktops. At that point switching windows becomes the actual bottleneck. Cate replaces that pile of windows with one persistent canvas per project . Terminals, editors, browsers, and notes sit where you put them, grouped how you think about them, and they're still there when you come back the next day. Cate is not a window manager replacement. Tiling/scrolling WMs Hyprland, Niri, GlazeWM, KDE are great if you mainly want to arrange OS windows. Cate is a spatial canvas around a single project's tools — closer to Figma's infinite canvas than to a WM. Infinite canvas — zoom, pan, and arrange panels anywhere in freeform space. Pan with two-finger drag or right-click drag; zoom with Cmd+scroll or the canvas controls. Dock system — drag floating panels onto the dock to create tabs and splits. Each dock zone center, left, right, bottom can hold multiple tabs with type-colored icons. Detached windows — pull panels or full dock layouts into separate OS windows. Saved layouts — name, save, load, and delete canvas arrangements nodes and regions from an in-app modal Cmd+K → "Saved Layouts…" . Multi-workspace sessions — keep several projects open and restore them on restart. Switch between workspaces from the sidebar. Monaco Editor panels — full VS Code-grade editing with syntax highlighting, multi-cursor, find/replace, diff support, and Markdown Preview/Source mode with GFM rendering. Scratch editors persist unsaved content across sessions. Persistent editor buffers — file-backed models are reused across panels, and scratch editor content persists with the session. Document panels — native canvas viewers for PDFs, DOCX files, and images, with file type detection backed by magic-byte checks. Native terminals — xterm.js with WebGL rendering, backed by node-pty PTYs rooted in the active workspace. Shell auto-detection with graceful fallback if the configured shell is unavailable. Browser panels — embedded webview panels for previewing documentation, dev servers, or any URL. Context-isolated with hardened security settings. Git-aware file explorer — file tree with live filesystem watching, tracked/untracked dimming, search, and copy/paste for files and folders with collision-safe renaming. Source control sidebar — stage/unstage, branch management, worktrees, commit history, and inline diff views. Git monitor polls and surfaces changes automatically. Project-wide search — full-text search across workspace files with instant results. Pi Agent panel — run an in-app coding agent powered by @earendil-works/pi-agent-core , with chat threads, per-chat model restore, and workspace-aware panel placement. Provider auth & models — connect OAuth providers such as Anthropic, OpenAI Codex, and GitHub Copilot, or API-key providers such as OpenAI, Google Gemini, OpenRouter, Groq, Mistral, DeepSeek, and more. Marketplace & plan mode — install Pi extensions from the marketplace and use Cate's bundled plan-mode helper for agent-guided implementation planning. Canvas-wide search Cmd+Shift+F — Spotlight-style overlay that searches workspace files, live terminal scrollback, and open panel titles/paths in one place. Recent-focus ranked results with colored type-tile icons. Panel switcher Ctrl+Space — compact keyboard overlay for jumping between open canvas panels and centering the selected node. Command palette Cmd+K — quick access to commands, open panels, and workspace files. Unified Spotlight-style chrome across all overlays. Auto-save & session restore — all panel state, positions, and open files persist automatically. Optional macOS native window tabs — group Cate windows in the system tab bar. Auto-update checks — checks GitHub releases and notifies when a new version is available. Crash resilience — Sentry diagnostics, session restore validation, shell fallback banners in the PTY, and guarded update/restart flows help prevent noisy or looping crash states. If you just want to use Cate, download a prebuilt release — don't build from source. This repository currently targets v1.0.3 . | Platform | Formats | Link | |---|---|---| | macOS | DMG, ZIP arm64 , x64 | | x64 Latest release https://github.com/0-AI-UG/cate/releases/latest tar.gz x64 Latest release https://github.com/0-AI-UG/cate/releases/latest macOS note:release builds are notarized and configured for hardened runtime. Unsigned local or test builds may require: xattr -cr /Applications/Cate.app Linux note:on Steam Deck or other read-only-root distros, prefer the tar.gz portable build. If the AppImage fails to launch, try --no-sandbox as a fallback e.g. ./Cate.AppImage --no-sandbox . The steps below are for contributors— use the prebuilt release above for daily use. Node.js https://nodejs.org/ 20 or 22 LTS see .nvmrc . Node 23+ is not supported; node-pty has no prebuilds and native compilation will fail.- npm = 9 - Python 3 and a C++ compiler for node-pty native module - macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools xcode-select --install - Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install build-essential python3 - Fedora/RHEL: sudo dnf install @development-tools gcc-c++ make python3 - Arch: sudo pacman -S base-devel python - Windows: Visual Studio Build Tools https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/visual-cpp-build-tools/ select the "Desktop development with C++" workload - macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools git clone https://github.com/0-AI-UG/cate.git cd cate npm install npm run dev This starts the Electron app with hot reload via electron-vite. npm run typecheck npm test unit tests vitest npm run test:e2e Playwright integration tests For the Electron smoke test harness: npm run test:smoke:electron npm run build npm run package or target one platform: npm run package:mac npm run package:win npm run package:linux Packaged binaries will be in the release/ directory. Cate uses a context-isolated preload bridge for all IPC communication. Filesystem access is scoped to registered workspace roots, browser panels use hardened webview settings with disabled node integration, and the updater falls back to opening the GitHub release page when a verified installer path is unavailable. Workspace-scoped allowedRoots validation prevents terminals from spawning outside approved directories. src/ ├── agent/ Embedded Pi coding-agent integration │ ├── main/ Agent process manager, auth, marketplace, session files │ ├── renderer/ Agent panel UI, chat thread, providers, model prefs │ └── extensions/ Bundled Cate plan-mode Pi extension ├── main/ Electron main process │ ├── ipc/ IPC handlers filesystem, git, terminal, menu, drag │ ├── analytics Update/app event analytics helpers │ ├── appContext Shared main-process app state │ ├── featureFlags Runtime feature flags │ ├── shellEnv Login-shell environment capture │ ├── shellResolver Shell path resolution with fallback chain │ ├── workspaceManager Workspace lifecycle and session persistence │ ├── workspaceRoots Allowed-roots registration and validation │ ├── windowRegistry Window management main, dock, detached │ ├── webSecurity Webview hardening and CSP │ ├── auto-updater Update checks and release fetch │ ├── sentry Sentry integration │ ├── store electron-store persistence │ ├── jsonFileStore JSON-backed file persistence helpers │ ├── menu Application menu │ └── sessionTrust Session restore validation ├── preload/ Context-isolated bridge exposed to the renderer ├── renderer/ React 18 application │ ├── assets/ Renderer images and asset declarations │ ├── canvas/ Infinite canvas rendering, drag, resize, placement │ ├── docking/ Tabs, splits, detached dock windows, drag/drop │ ├── drag/ Cross-window drag-and-drop runtime and state │ ├── panels/ Terminal, Editor, Browser, Document, Git, Explorer, │ │ Projects, Canvas panel registry/components │ ├── sidebar/ Workspace, File Explorer, Source Control, │ │ Parallel Work, Project List, fileClipboard │ ├── dialogs/ Saved layouts and post-update feedback dialogs │ ├── settings/ Settings window sections and shortcut recorder │ ├── ui/ CommandPalette, GlobalSearch, NodeSwitcher, │ │ WelcomePage, ShortcutHintOverlay │ ├── shells/ Main, panel, and dock window shells │ ├── stores/ Zustand stores canvas, app, dock, settings, │ │ shortcut, status, ui, update, url prompt │ ├── hooks/ Custom React hooks shortcuts, canvas interaction │ ├── lib/ Utilities coordinates, routing, terminal registry │ ├── workers/ Monaco/editor workers │ └── styles/ Tailwind/global styles └── shared/ IPC channel definitions and shared TypeScript types Electron 41 — desktop shell Chromium + Node.js React 18 — UI framework with functional components and hooks Zustand 5 — lightweight state management no Redux/Context Monaco Editor 0.52 — code editing VS Code's editor component xterm.js 5.5 + node-pty 1.0 — terminal emulator with WebGL renderer @earendil-works/pi packages — embedded coding-agent runtime, provider auth, and extension marketplace pdf.js + mammoth — native PDF and DOCX document rendering react-markdown + remark-gfm — Markdown preview with GitHub Flavored Markdown simple-git 3.27 — git operations chokidar 4.0 — filesystem watching @phosphor-icons/react — app iconography Tailwind CSS 3.4 — styling electron-vite 5.0 — bundling with HMR electron-builder 26 — packaging and distribution electron-updater 6.8 — update checks Sentry Electron 5 — crash reporting and diagnostics Playwright — end-to-end integration tests Vitest — unit test runner Cate is under active development. For a detailed history of what changed in each release and a sense of where things are headed, see the CHANGELOG /0-AI-UG/cate/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md . See CONTRIBUTING.md /0-AI-UG/cate/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.