Chamber

Where AI agents are born and operate.

Chamber is a desktop app for AI agents that act as your Chief of Staff — managing priorities, surfacing context, and keeping operations moving. Connect a mind (an agent with memory, skills, and personality) and the agent extends the UI itself: drop a view.json into the mind and a new panel appears. No code changes, no deploys.

Built with Electron, React, Tailwind CSS, a local loopback server, and the GitHub Copilot SDK. Minds are created with Genesis.

The Idea

Our agents aren't pre-programmed. The user chooses who they become.

Chamber is where that happens. Your agent wakes up, finds its voice, and prepares your world.

Features

• Lens — declarative view framework. Drop a view.json in .github/lens/, get a UI panel. 7 view types: form, table, briefing, detail, status-board, timeline, editor.
• Prompt-driven views — click Refresh, the agent gathers data and populates the view. Edit the prompt to change what it shows.
• Write-back — type instructions in the action bar on any view. The agent modifies the data.
• Self-extending — the agent has a Lens skill. Ask it to "create a view for my cron jobs" and it builds one.
• Built-in canvas — render HTML dashboards, reports, and forms in the browser with live reload and a simple action back-channel.
• Built-in cron — schedule prompt, process, webhook, and notification jobs per mind without installing per-mind extensions.
• Activity bar — VS Code-style icon strip. Icons appear as views are discovered.
• Streaming chat — real-time responses with markdown, tool calls, and reasoning blocks.
• Chatroom — multi-agent group chat with 5 orchestration modes: Concurrent (all agents respond in parallel), Sequential (round-robin), GroupChat (moderator-directed), Handoff (agent-to-agent delegation), and Magentic (manager-driven task ledger).
• Marketplace install links — enroll public, private, or internal Genesis mind registries from a chamber://install?registry=... link.
• Model picker — choose your model, persisted across sessions.
• Agent identity — chat shows the agent's name. This is their chamber.

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/ianphil/chamber
cd chamber
npm install
npm start

Select a mind directory from the sidebar. The agent connects, views appear, and you're ready.

Genesis Marketplace Links

Marketplace maintainers can add a click-to-enroll link to a README or internal portal:

[![Add to Chamber](https://img.shields.io/badge/Add%20to-Chamber-7c3aed)](https://chmbr.dev/install.html?registry=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fagency-microsoft%2Fgenesis-minds)

The GitHub Pages interstitial at https://chmbr.dev/install.html?registry=<encoded registry URL> opens the matching chamber://install?registry=... URL and shows a fallback copy button if Chamber is not installed.

Architecture

Chamber is being split into a transport-oriented workspace layout so the UI can run either in a browser or inside Electron:

apps/
├── web      # Vite + React renderer, browser-runnable
├── server   # Loopback HTTP + WebSocket server
└── desktop  # Electron lifecycle shell and native bridge

packages/
├── shared
├── wire-contracts
├── client
└── services

This is a transport migration rather than a full use-case refactor: services remain the business-logic package, while HTTP/WS routes and the browser client provide the new delivery boundary. Electron is now treated as the desktop wrapper around the same web app and local server.

Electron Main Process
├── CopilotClientFactory — per-mind CopilotClient lifecycle
├── CanvasService       — browser-rendered HTML canvases with live reload
├── CronService         — built-in scheduled jobs and durable run history
├── ChatService         — streaming sessions, background prompts
├── ChatroomService     — multi-agent broadcast (transcript, ledger, mode/config, renderer event mapping)
│   └── orchestration/
│       ├── shared.ts        — XML/JSON helpers shared with strategies
│       ├── approval-gate.ts — tool execution review gate
│       └── observability.ts — structured event emission with redaction
├── SessionGroup        — SDK-shaped adapter: per-mind session cache, lifecycle, orchestrator dispatch
│   ├── stream-session.ts    — shared SDK event wiring + stale session retry
│   ├── permission-handler.ts — ApprovalGate ↔ Copilot SDK PermissionHandler bridge
│   └── orchestrators/
│       ├── ConcurrentStrategy, SequentialStrategy, GroupChatStrategy,
│       │   HandoffStrategy, MagenticStrategy
│       ├── createStrategy.ts — factory keyed by orchestration mode
│       └── wrap-strategy.ts  — adapts legacy OrchestrationStrategy to SessionGroupOrchestrator
├── ViewDiscovery       — scans .github/lens/ for view.json, file watcher
├── Tray                — Windows close-to-tray lifecycle
└── IPC Handlers        — chat, chatroom, agent, lens, config channels

Preload Bridge
└── contextBridge    — narrow typed API (chat, agent, lens, config, window)

React Renderer
├── ActivityBar      — dynamic icons from discovered views
├── SidePanel        — contextual per view (chat, lens metadata)
├── ViewRouter       — routes to ChatPanel or LensViewRenderer
├── Lens components  — Form, Table, Briefing, Detail, StatusBoard, Timeline, Editor
├── Chat components  — MessageList, ChatInput, StreamingMessage, WelcomeScreen
└── Chatroom components — ChatroomPanel, OrchestrationPicker, ParticipantBar

Development

npm start          # Launch with hot reload
npm run lint       # TypeScript + ESLint + dependency boundaries
npm test           # Unit, integration, regression, and component tests
npm run smoke:web      # Browser app Playwright smoke
npm run smoke:desktop  # Electron desktop Playwright smoke
npm run make       # Build NSIS installer + updater metadata
npm run make:forge # Legacy Forge/Squirrel distributable fallback
npm run make:sandbox  # Build + launch Windows Sandbox to test the installer
npm run sandbox       # Launch sandbox using existing out/builder artifacts

make:sandbox rebuilds chamber, then opens a fresh Windows Sandbox with
out/builder mapped read-only to C:\installer. Explorer auto-opens to the
NSIS installer so you can simulate a clean first-run install. Requires
Windows Pro/Enterprise/Education with the Windows Sandbox feature enabled.

License

MIT