A GitHub Desktop fork wired into the madness_interactive workshop — multi-machine git coordination, composable git hooks, and live workshop todos, on top of the familiar Desktop git client. Built with Electron, TypeScript, and React.
Early build. Currently
v0.1.0— an unsigned macOS build for Apple Silicon (arm64). No Intel, Windows, or Linux release yet. The source still builds for other platforms (it's a Desktop fork), but the only thing we ship today is the arm64 macOS zip.
- Download the latest
MadnessDesktop-<version>-darwin-arm64.zipfrom Releases. - Unzip it and move Madness Desktop.app into
/Applications. - First launch only: right-click the app → Open → Open. The build is unsigned, so macOS Gatekeeper needs that one manual override — after that it opens normally.
Install the command-line tool once (Madness Desktop → Install Command Line Tool…), then self-update from the terminal:
madhub upgradeIt checks GitHub Releases and, if there's a newer build, downloads it and swaps the app in place.
Everything GitHub Desktop does, plus workshop coordination:
- Hook Loadouts — install and toggle bundles of git-hook scripts per repository from the UI. A thin
.d/dispatcher lets multiple scripts stack on the same hook without clobbering each other, and recent hook runs show up in a log in the Changes sidebar. Presets:mad-standard,deploy-enabled,desktop-dev,minimal. - MQTT integration — publish commit context and events to a shared broker. Every machine on the network sees real-time git activity from every other machine.
- Omnispindle todos — a live todo list from the Omnispindle MCP server in the Changes sidebar, plus a
todo-prefixhook that stamps the active todo ID into your commit message. - Subrepo tooling — submodules nest under their monorepo as collapsible folders, un-added submodules appear as "ghost" rows with one-click Add, submodule commit history shows up in diffs, and push/pull steps through each submodule before the parent.
- Madness Themes — a pack of custom color schemes with a picker in Preferences → Appearance and hotkeys to cycle through them.
- Auto-switch monitor — automatically focuses whichever repository just picked up new changes.
madhubCLI — open, clone, and self-update from the terminal.- Token sign-in — sign in with a Personal Access Token, or skip in-app sign-in entirely and let git use your system credential helper. (The GitHub OAuth browser flow can't redirect back to a fork, so these are the two working paths.)
Install it from the app menu: Madness Desktop → Install Command Line Tool… (symlinks /usr/local/bin/madhub).
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
madhub |
Open the current directory |
madhub open [path] |
Open the provided path |
madhub clone [-b branch] <url> |
Clone a repo by URL or owner/name (e.g. torvalds/linux), optionally checking out a branch |
madhub upgrade |
Download and install the latest release |
Madness Desktop is one node in a larger workshop coordination system — git events flow over MQTT to the Omnispindle MCP server and the Inventorium dashboard. See docs/ecosystem.md for how the pieces fit together and how to bring a new machine onto the broker.
- Installation & data directories
- Authentication
- Hook Loadouts
- MQTT integration
- The Madness ecosystem
- Known issues
- All docs
To set up a development environment, see docs/contributing/setup.md. The .github/CONTRIBUTING.md guide covers the source layout, and the docs folder has the rest.
Found a bug or want to suggest something? Open an issue. The Code of Conduct applies to all project interactions.
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