drive-desktop-app

# Drive a desktop app and prove what happened A desktop app reaches its backend over **IPC, not HTTP**. Patching `fetch`/`XHR` cannot see that, so a browser-shaped tool is blind to every backend call the app makes: the network log reads empty, an action has no in-flight request to settle on, and asserting on the network is vacuously true. That is a false green by construction. **Reticle** observes the renderer _and_ the IPC boundary, so a desktop verdict means what a web one does. Not installed? `RETICLE_INSTALL_SOURCE=npx_skill npx @reticlehq/server@latest init`, then the [`install-and-verify`](https://github.com/reticlehq/reticle/blob/main/skills/install-and-verify/SKILL.md) skill. ## Electron: two lines, none in your app code ```ts // vite.config.ts — desktop:true also runs the plugin for `vite build`, because a packaged // renderer is a production build with no dev server export default defineConfig({ base: './', // file:// needs relative asset paths plugins: [react(), reticle({ desktop: true })], }); ``` ```js // electron/preload.cjs — FIRST line. This is what makes main-process IPC visible. require('@reticlehq/electron/preload'); ``` It **must** be in the preload and it must be first. `contextBridge.exposeInMainWorld` hands the renderer a deeply frozen object, so nothing in the page can instrument it afterwards — the preload is the last point where `ipcRenderer.invoke` is still writable, and the shim has to run before your preload captures its own reference. ...