ProdDash/launcher/macos

ProdDash for macOS

The Mac application: a menu-bar app that carries the dashboard, its own Node runtime, and the permissions its modules need. Installing it is dragging ProdDash to Applications — nothing else has to be present on the machine, and nothing can go missing from under it.

Build it with ./build.sh. The app is native Swift with no dependencies of its own; the Node it ships is fetched from nodejs.org at build time and checksum-verified.

What's in the bundle

ProdDash.app/Contents/
  MacOS/ProdDash            the launcher (Swift, ~1 MB)
  Resources/node/bin/node   the Node runtime ProdDash runs on
  Resources/app/            server.js, public/, modules/ — ProdDash itself

Everything mutable lives outside, in ~/Library/Application Support/ProdDash: module config, layouts, modules installed from the admin page — and app/, the copy of ProdDash that actually runs.

Why a copy, when the bundle already has one. ProdDash updates itself: the admin page's Update now downloads a new version and writes it over the app folder. Nothing may write inside a signed .app without breaking its signature, so the bundle carries a read-only baseline and the data directory carries the copy that runs. Both routes to a new version work, and they don't fight: installing a newer .app replaces the copy, while a copy that has already updated itself past the bundle is left alone.

Why it exists

Permissions. macOS grants privacy permissions to the application that owns a process, and a child inherits its parent's identity. Started from here, node — and the Timers module's ltc-capture — belong to this app bundle, so the microphone and local-network prompts are asked, and remembered, as ProdDash. Started over SSH or from a bare launchd job there is nobody to ask: the permission is silently absent rather than refused, which is the "endless zeroes, no error" failure ltc-listener.js warns about.

Supervision. The shell was built for this: with PRODDASH_LAUNCHER=1 it exits 75 instead of respawning itself when the admin page applies an update, which the launcher reads as "start me again" rather than as a fault. A crash gets a backed-off restart (1s, 2s, 5s, 10s); four in two minutes stops the cycle rather than spinning forever.

Build

./build.sh                 # build/ProdDash.app — the whole application
./build.sh --dmg           # …and build/ProdDash-<version>-arm64.dmg
./build.sh --install       # …and copy it to /Applications
./build.sh --run           # …and open it
./build.sh --notarize      # with --dmg: notarise and staple (Developer ID)
./build.sh --dev           # launcher only: no Node, no server — runs against
                           # the checkout. Seconds, for work on the launcher.

Needs the Xcode command line tools (xcode-select --install) and macOS 13 or newer. The first build downloads Node (~50 MB) into .cache/ and reuses it. A full build takes about ten seconds and produces a 117 MB app, 43 MB compressed in the disk image.

Builds for Apple Silicon. To change that, or to move to a newer Node, edit ARCH and NODE_VERSION at the top of build.sh — the download is verified against nodejs.org's published checksums either way.

The app icon is built from public/icons/icon-512.png, so ProdDash's own icon is the app's icon. A module's native helper is compiled during the build (<name>.swift beside a module's files becomes <name>), so the Mac running ProdDash never needs a compiler.

Signing

build.sh uses a Developer ID Application certificate when one is installed, and signs ad-hoc when none is — which is fine on your own Macs, but another Mac will refuse the app until someone approves it under System Settings → Privacy & Security.

To sign properly you need the Apple Developer Program (paid) and a Developer ID certificate — note this is not the same as the "Apple Development" certificate Xcode creates for you:

1. Xcode → Settings → Accounts → your team → Manage Certificates → + → Developer ID Application. (Requires Account Holder or Admin on the team.) security find-identity -v -p codesigning should then list a Developer ID Application: … identity.

2. Store notarisation credentials once, with an app-specific password from appleid.apple.com:

   xcrun notarytool store-credentials proddash --apple-id you@example.com --team-id TEAMID
   

3. ./build.sh --notarize

Then the disk image opens by double-click on any Mac, with no warnings. CODESIGN_IDENTITY overrides the certificate; NOTARY_PROFILE overrides the keychain profile name.

Using it

The menu-bar icon is ProdDash's 2×2 tile mark; the accent tile is lit green while the server runs, amber mid-move, red when something needs a person, and hollow when it is stopped. Its menu has the whole app in it:

• Open Dashboard / Open Admin — the running server, in a browser.
• Start / Stop / Restart ProdDash.
• Launcher… — the window below.
• Open at Login — a login item, through the modern SMAppService API.
• Quit ProdDash — stops the server too, and asks first while it is running.

The window has the status, both addresses the dashboard answers on, and three tabs:

• Log — everything the server prints, plus what the launcher did and why. Also written to ~/Library/Logs/ProdDash/proddash-<date>.log, kept a week.
• Settings — the port, and how it starts (at login, server on open, restart on crash, open a browser, show this window). It also shows which copy of ProdDash is running, which node, and where settings are kept.
• Permissions — one line per permission: a status dot, its name, and the one thing you can do about it. See below.

Port

The port belongs to ProdDash, not to the launcher, so it is written to proddash.json in the data directory — the file the server already reads. Set it here and ProdDash keeps that port however it is started next. Changing it while the server runs restarts it.

Permissions

What appears is what the installed modules declare in their manifests ("permissions": [ … ] — see docs/MODULE-GUIDE.md); hover a row to see which module asked, and why.

• Microphone — asked for directly, with the status macOS reports.
• Local Network — macOS has no API that reports whether this was granted, so Check Access asks the network instead: it browses for Bonjour services (which is what raises the prompt) and tries every upstream the admin page is pointed at. Nothing answering, when the gear is on, means macOS is withholding access.
• Notifications — the launcher's own, so a server that stops while nobody is watching still reaches someone. Turn them off for ProdDash in System Settings if you'd rather not have them.

On first run the launcher asks for what the modules declare, while someone is still at the keyboard, rather than halfway through a service.

Details worth knowing

• One instance. Opening a second copy raises the first one's window.
• Port already in use. If something already holds the port, the launcher asks before doing anything. When that something answers like ProdDash — an SSH-started copy, say, with no microphone access — it offers to take the port over.
• Stopping is thorough. The server is spawned into its own process group, so stopping it also stops anything it started. An orphaned ltc-capture would otherwise hold an audio device until someone found it in Activity Monitor.
• Signals. killall ProdDash, a logout or a shutdown stops the server first rather than leaving node running.
• Nothing is required outside the app. A development build (--dev) carries no server and no Node, and runs the checkout it was built in with whatever node is on the machine — Settings → ProdDash folder points it somewhere else.

Troubleshooting

What you see	What it means
"ProdDash can't be opened because Apple cannot check it"	The app is ad-hoc signed. System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway, once. Signing it properly (above) removes this.
"ProdDash stopped 4 times in two minutes"	The server is failing on startup — the Log tab has its own error.
LTC shows no signal	Permissions tab → Microphone. If it says granted and the input is still silent, the server may be an older copy started outside the app — Stop, then Start.
Nothing on the network answers	Permissions tab → Check Access.
A development build says it can't find ProdDash	--dev builds need a checkout: Settings → ProdDash folder.