[IronicRayquaza]

Summary

Sixth step of #7968: a chat in the dashboard itself for the Windows Desktop profile, the screen an owner actually uses.

Builds on #7975 (and #7970). Please review only the last commit. I'll rebase as the earlier PRs merge.

In this profile /api/pixel/status reports "Portal is not enabled". Pixel's existing branch for that state now renders LocalChat instead of a link to Open WebUI, which Desktop doesn't have.

components/LocalChat.jsx:

• Streaming: answers stream from feat(windows): stream local chat from the Windows Desktop llama-server #7975's /api/local-chat/stream through Portal's own PortalStreamingText (Markdown, code highlighting, reveal), so local chat looks like the rest of ODS. The owner's Enter or Ctrl+Enter send setting is respected.
• Stable context: each answer reports contextStart and the next message sends it back, so the model's prompt prefix stays cached (long-chat follow-ups take ~0.8 s instead of ~28 s on a laptop CPU; measured in feat(windows): stream local chat from the Windows Desktop llama-server #7975). When earlier messages fall outside the model's view, the chat says so and keeps them saved.
• Errors: a refused message (too long, model loading or stopped) goes back into the box with the server's plain sentence, never lost. Stop keeps the partial answer.
• Status polling: /api/local-chat/status is polled one request at a time with a 5 s timeout and stops once the model is ready, so requests can't pile up.

lib/localChatStore.js: history lives in this browser, bounded to the newest 50 chats within 4 MB; the open chat is never dropped. A storage failure (private window, full quota) shows a notice but never blocks chatting. Chats can be switched, started, deleted, and saved as Markdown or JSON; the file is named after the chat in any script (Vietnamese, Hindi, Japanese), and a character split across network chunks still arrives whole (tested).

What a non-technical owner no longer runs into:

• No password prompt: /api/auth/dashboard-session now reports remoteAccess, which is false in the Desktop profile (loopback only, so there's no other device to sign in from). The sign-in gate no longer asks that owner to "Choose your password" before the first chat. Compose is unchanged (remoteAccess: true).
• Only working pages in the sidebar: it hides Extensions, Models, GPU Monitor and Portal's own conversation list in this profile. Those pages can't work there, and a second, empty chat list next to Local chat would only confuse.

AI Assistance

Claude Code drafted the code, tests and this description, and ran the validation below on my Windows 11 laptop. I chose the scope and design (see #7968), and I'm accountable for the diff and for responding to review.

Release Lane

• Stable hotfix targeting release/2.6.x
• Mainline change targeting main
• Next-minor work targeting the next feature/minor release
• Not sure; reviewer should help classify

Changed Surface

• Docs only
• Tests only
• Dashboard UI
• Dashboard API / host agent
• Installer / bootstrap / lifecycle
• Docker Compose / service manifests
• Model routing / Hermes / capabilities
• Network exposure / auth / proxy
• Dependencies / runtime wiring

Risk And Validation

• Risk level: Low for Compose. Every UI change keys off runtimeProfile === 'windows-desktop'; the API change only adds remoteAccess: true to an existing response there.
• Validation run:
  • git diff --check
  • Dashboard lint/test/build
  • Focused tests listed below
  • mypy 2.4.0 as CI runs it plus the ratchet: 0 errors added
  • Scoped hardware validation (the real UI in a real browser engine on a consumer laptop)

vitest (Windows, Node 22):
  localChatStore (9), localChatStream (8), core.desktop sidebar (2), LocalChat (6), Sidebar (+1),
  DashboardSignInGate (+1), Pixel (+1 Desktop case) -> 192 passed in the touched suites
  full suite: 3,031 passed, 0 failed (tokenSpySettings.test.js cannot load without `python` on PATH,
  identically on the base branch)
eslint src: 0 errors, nothing in touched files
vite build: ok
pytest test_dashboard_session.py: 33 passed (incl. remoteAccess for Compose and Desktop)

Live, end to end. On Windows 11 Home 26200 (i5-10500H, 16 GB RAM, CPU only), with no Docker and no WSL, I ran:

• llama.cpp b9014 with Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct Q4_K_M;
• dashboard-api from feat(windows): run dashboard-api natively as a windows-desktop profile #7970 + feat(windows): stream local chat from the Windows Desktop llama-server #7975 + feat(windows): serve the dashboard from dashboard-api in the Windows Desktop profile #7978 + this PR, on feat(windows): pinned embeddable Python for the Windows Desktop profile #7972's pinned pythonw.exe;
• the dashboard built from this branch, served by feat(windows): serve the dashboard from dashboard-api in the Windows Desktop profile #7978's gate.

The real UI was then driven in headless Edge over the DevTools protocol (typing into the box and pressing Send):

1. Local chat ready: Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct-Q4_K_M.gguf · 4,096 tokens
   password prompt shown: False      Portal "New task" list in sidebar: False
2. "In one short sentence: what is the capital of France?"  first text 0.88s, done 1.2s
   -> "Paris is the capital of France."
3. "And of Japan?" (same chat)                              first text 0.56s, done 1.0s
   -> "Tokyo is the capital of Japan."
4. Reload -> the chat is still there: [['In one short sentence: what is the capital of France?', 4 messages]]

The first render found the two issues fixed here: the "Choose your password" prompt, and the duplicate Portal chat list in the sidebar.

Operational Change Check

• This is not an operational change.
• This is an operational change and validation is recorded above.
• This is an operational change and validation is intentionally deferred for:

Notes For Reviewers

• Real browser vs. headless: I couldn't drive an interactive desktop browser here, so the live run used headless Edge (the same engine PR6's app window will use) through the DevTools protocol.
• Still to come: model switching in Desktop waits for the switchboard "PR 2B" adapters. The installer and launcher are PR6.
• Running uvicorn under pythonw.exe (for PR6, from live runs):
  • it needs stdout and stderr redirected to files;
  • a .cmd launcher must use 8.3 short paths for non-ASCII folders (cmd.exe mangles José even after chcp 65001);
  • Start-Process -Redirect* lets the child inherit the caller's pipes.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code