Changelog Interviews Bringing Atuin to the desktop
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Oct 22, 2025 Ellie Huxtable, the innovative open-source maintainer, shares her journey from London to San Francisco while discussing her creation, Atuin. This magical tool syncs shell history but now evolves into Atuin Desktop, a runbook editor designed for team collaboration. Ellie dives into the use cases of runbooks, detailing how executable blocks streamline workflows. She also explains the tech behind it, including Tauri and Rust, and addresses the challenges of building a desktop app versus a CLI. Expect insights on open-source strategies and the future of Atuin!
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Built With Tauri And Rust
- Ellie built the desktop as a Tauri app with Rust backends to avoid Electron's weight and leverage system webviews.
- She extended BlockNote and wrote execution code in Rust to support a future embedded runtime.
Runbooks Fit Diverse Ops Tasks
- Runbooks cover many use cases: setup steps, database migrations, local dev tasks, and SSH operations.
- Dynamic inputs let blocks use command outputs for environment selection or URIs, increasing reusability.
Use Contextual Runtimes For Portability
- Consider container integration for reproducible environments but weigh Mac VM drawbacks for local dev.
- Offer contextual runtimes (SSH, containers) so runbooks run reliably across different developer machines.