Quickstart: Desktop

The standalone Windows app. No editor, no terminal — just the noggin tree and details pane in their own window, built from the same @noggin/ui components the VS Code extension uses, plus a sidebar that can list more than one noggin at a time.

1. Install

1. Grab the latest installer from GitHub Releases — the noggin-<version>-win-x64.exe asset.
2. Run it. It's an NSIS installer: pick per-user or per-machine, and optionally change the install directory. Desktop and Start Menu shortcuts are created for you.
3. Launch noggin from the Start Menu.

The app checks GitHub Releases on launch and installs newer versions silently in the background — you generally never have to repeat this.

Windows only for now. The app is cross-platform-capable Electron, but only the Windows installer is wired into the release pipeline today. It also isn't code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen will flag it as an "unknown publisher" on first run — that doesn't affect auto-updates, which verify each download's checksum independently.

2. Open or create a noggin

Use the hamburger menu at the top-left (or Ctrl+N / Ctrl+O) to create a new noggin or open an existing .noggin.yaml. You can also just drag a .noggin.yaml file onto the window.

Whatever you open lands in the sidebar, which lists every noggin you've opened — not just the current one — so you can switch between, say, a work noggin and a side-project noggin without hunting for files. "Open Recent" in the hamburger menu gets you back to any of them.

3. Add your first item

Click the + in the tree, type a title, hit Enter. That item becomes active (marked with 📍).

4. Add children, drag to reorder

• Click an item, then + again (or right-click → Add child) — the new item becomes a child.
• Drag an item between two siblings to reorder, or onto another item to re-home it.
• Keyboard fans: Enter adds a sibling, Ctrl+Enter adds a child, Tab / Shift+Tab demote/promote — all without touching the mouse.

5. Notes

Click an item to open the details pane (to the side or below the tree, your choice). Type into Add note and submit; earlier notes are append-only — a log, not a wiki.

6. Mark things done

Select an item and press Space, or use Mark done from the right-click menu. Active moves to the parent — same "done, what's next?" motion as everywhere else noggin runs.

7. Pair it with an agent

The desktop app has no chat built in, but it doesn't need one: point Copilot Chat, Claude Code, Codex, or the CLI at the same .noggin.yaml file (via the extension, the agent plugin, or noggin-mcp) and the desktop window updates live — it watches the file. Handy as a permanently-open "what am I doing" view while an agent drives the changes.

What you've learned

• The sidebar can hold more than one noggin — this is the environment built for juggling several at once.
• The tree and details pane behave exactly like the VS Code extension's, because they're the same components.
• It's as much a viewer as an editor: leave it open and watch changes land from an agent or the CLI in real time.

Next

• CLI reference — every verb, every flag.
• Verb demo — the JSON shape of every verb response.
• VS Code quickstart — the other rich UI, if you split your time between an editor and a standalone window.