File Explorer

Windows-first file explorer rebooted from scratch as a Rust application with a thin Tauri renderer.

Product Direction

• Beat Files on perceived speed, not just binary size.
• Keep all file-system logic in Rust.
• Use Tauri and SvelteKit only as the UI renderer.
• Optimize for Windows first while keeping Rust interfaces portable enough for future macOS/Linux backends.

Core Principles

• Navigation must be incremental, cancelable, and benchmarked.
• The UI never owns sorting, searching, metadata hydration, or file operations.
• Expensive enrichments such as thumbnails, Git state, hashes, preview generation, and cloud metadata stay off the hot path.
• Large lists must be virtualized from day one.

Current State

This repo has been reset and reinitialized on the latest stable Tauri scaffold with:

• Tauri 2
• SvelteKit
• TypeScript
• bun
• Rust

Planning Docs

• ROADMAP.md - product and architecture roadmap
• TODOS.md - implementation backlog for the next build phases

Why Svelte Here

Svelte is a good fit for this architecture because the frontend is intentionally thin. It keeps renderer code smaller and simpler than a typical Vue setup while still being perfectly capable of hosting virtualized views, panes, tabs, and command surfaces.

Vue would also work, but for a renderer-only desktop shell I would pick Svelte first unless your team already has strong Vue momentum.

Development

bun install
bun run tauri dev

To artificially slow navigation for UI testing, set VITE_EXPLORER_NAV_DELAY_MS before starting dev.

PowerShell example:

$env:VITE_EXPLORER_NAV_DELAY_MS = "500"
bun run tauri dev

Immediate Goal

Build a single-pane details view backed by a Rust directory engine that streams incremental results into a virtualized Svelte list.