scratch

Appearance

Viewer ​

scratch ui opens a read-only view of a pad — so a human can see what the agent gathered without digging through transcripts.

Layout ​

A 2-pane view (pad/file tree + preview) in a "Lab Notebook" theme that auto-detects OS light/dark. It shows all files in the pad dir (unregistered ones dimmed). Per-file preview:

  • Markdown rendered, with a raw/rendered toggle.
  • Code syntax-highlighted (highlight.js).
  • Mermaid diagrams (```mermaid fenced blocks).
  • Images inline; binaries / oversized files get a notice.

Native window vs. browser ​

Transport is glimpse for a native window. If its per-OS backend is unavailable, it falls back to serving the same HTML over a local server + the browser.

bash
scratch ui "<name>"                   # native window by default
scratch ui "<name>" --browser         # force the browser viewer (always works)
scratch ui "<name>" --install-native  # build the native host on demand

On Windows the native host needs the .NET 8 SDK + the WebView2 runtime. Under Bun, the host isn't built at install time, so scratch ui prints a one-time instruction and falls back to the browser until you run --install-native.

TIP

The viewer is long-running — it keeps a local server alive until you close it. When driving it from an agent, launch it backgrounded so the session keeps moving, then report the URL.

Export to a single HTML file ​

scratch export writes the viewer to one self-contained HTML file — openable in any browser, no server.

bash
scratch export "<name>"            # → <pad-name>.html
scratch export "<name>" -o out.html

File contents are embedded; highlight.js / mermaid load from a pinned CDN.

Config ​

User-level viewer preferences live in a single JSON file (machine-wide, not per-pad):

jsonc
// ~/.config/scratchpad/config.json
{
  "ui": {
    "frameless": true   // native window without OS title bar/border (page draws
                        // its own close button + drag strip). Set false for native chrome.
  }
}

The config file is resolved from (in order): SCRATCHPAD_CONFIG env var → XDG_CONFIG_HOME → %APPDATA% (Windows) → ~/.config.