Workbench Architecture

hone-ide is the IDE workbench shell. It assembles the editor, terminal, and core services into the full IDE experience. Compiled to a native binary via Perry.

Entry Point

src/app.ts is the Perry App() entry point:

App({
  title: 'Hone',
  width: 1200,
  height: 800,
  icon: 'hone-icon.png',
  body: body
})

Bootstrap sequence:

1. Load and apply theme
2. Detect platform (__platform__ compile-time constant: 0=macOS, 1=iOS, 2=Android)
3. Register commands and keybindings
4. Initialize panel registry
5. Check for first-run (show setup screen) or launch normal workbench
6. Initialize plugin system (conditional on __plugins__ compile flag)

Render Tree

src/workbench/render.ts defines the main UI layout:

+--+---------------------+------------------+
|  |                     |                  |
|A |     Sidebar         |   Editor Area    |
|c |  (explorer, search, |   (tab bar +     |
|t |   git, debug, etc.) |    editors)      |
|i |                     |                  |
|v |                     |                  |
|i |                     +------------------+
|t |                     |   Panels         |
|y |                     |  (terminal,      |
|  |                     |   output, debug) |
|B |                     |                  |
|a |                     |                  |
|r |                     |                  |
+--+---------------------+------------------+
|          Status Bar                       |
+-------------------------------------------+

• Activity bar – Left icon strip for switching sidebar views
• Sidebar – Contextual panel selected by activity bar
• Editor area – Tab bar with open files, editor instances below
• Panels – Bottom area for terminal, output, debug console
• Status bar – Language mode, cursor position, encoding, git branch, sync status

Views

25+ views organized in src/workbench/views/:

Command System

Commands are the primary way to expose IDE functionality:

• Command registry – central map of command ID to handler function
• Keybindings – modifier keys, chord sequences (e.g., Ctrl+K Ctrl+C), platform-specific defaults
• When-clauses – conditional activation (e.g., editorTextFocus, inDebugMode)
• Commands are contributed by core, views, and extensions

Native Menu Bar

Platform-native menu bar setup with standard menus (File, Edit, Selection, View, Go, Run, Terminal, Help). Menu items map to commands.

Grid Layout System

The workbench uses a grid layout for arranging sidebar, editor area, and panels:

• Resizable splits between sidebar and editor area
• Resizable splits between editor area and bottom panels
• Collapsible sidebar and panels
• Persisted layout dimensions in settings

Panel Registry

Built-in panels are registered at startup:

• Terminal panel
• Output panel
• Debug console panel
• Additional panels contributed by extensions

Theme Engine

Loads and applies VSCode-compatible JSON themes:

• Theme colors accessed via getter functions (getEditorBackground(), getSideBarBackground(), etc.)
• Applied at two levels: workbench chrome colors and editor token colors
• Theme switching without restart
• See Theme Architecture for details

Settings

Layered settings with precedence:

1. Language-specific (highest priority)
2. Workspace (.hone/settings.json)
3. User (~/.hone/settings.json)
4. Defaults (lowest priority)

Perry UI Considerations

Perry’s UI system creates widgets once and mutates them imperatively (not declarative/virtual-DOM). Key constraints:

• Widgets are created in the render function and updated via property mutations
• Closures must follow Perry’s by-value capture rule – use module-level state and module-level functions
• No requestAnimationFrame – use setInterval for animation loops
• No setTimeout self-recursion – use setInterval