GizDesk workspace lab

Volume: 4: Autonomous Agents & Generative Systems Source Directory: desk/, docs/guides/desk.md Running Endpoint: http://127.0.0.1:8120/ Status: Live Verified Daemon Visual Evidence: every docs/images/guidebook/gizdesk-*.png, taken by tools/browser/guidebook.giz from a running Desk

1. Architectural Philosophy: The Integrated Agent Workspace

GizDesk is a first-class AI agent workspace built entirely in Gizlang and GizWeb. It unifies conversational interactions with live interactive computing artifacts:

┌────────────────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────┐
│        Conversational Agent Pane       │        Interactive Artifacts Pane      │
│  (Multi-Model Streaming, Voice, Chat)  │  (Live Code, Documents, SQL, Diagrams) │
├────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ • Model Switcher (Qwen, Llama, Nemotron)│ • Code Editor & Native Execution Run  │
│ • Typed Tool Execution with Approval   │ • Live Interactive Render Previews    │
│ • Long-Term Memory & Knowledge Base    │ • Semantic Versioning & Diff History  │
└────────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────┘

2. Live Screenshot Evidence

The following screenshot was captured directly from the active GizDesk daemon running on http://127.0.0.1:8120/:

Knowledge Base & Reference Sources View

When clicking the Knowledge tab on the right workspace pane, the system exposes persistent reference storage, allowing documents, research papers, and codebase schemas to be attached to the agent:

Model accounts and computer connections

The Connections screen owns provider accounts, quota state, rotation order, and remote computer entries:

Credentials stay out of the visible account record. Provider health and usage are shown without tokens, and a limited account yields to the next ready account. The Computers tab lists the computers the agent may work on; every remote command still waits for approval:

Drive: the Desk's own files

Drive (desk/drive/, imported by any host as gizdesk:drive/*) is the whole Drive: file trees, history, search, share links, comments, stars and its HTTP API. A Desk serves its own Drive at /drive with no giz.ai account and no host around it: files live in GIZDESK_DATA/drive/files, records in GIZDESK_DATA/drive/records.db, and the Desk's one owner owns it. giz.ai's hosted stack (gizstack) imports the same modules and only supplies who a person is and which Drives they reach.

The same Drive as tiles, and a search across names and contents:

Sharing makes a link (viewer or editor, optional password and expiry). The link's page is served by the Desk itself at /_share/TOKEN, so anyone who can reach the Desk can open it without an account:

Every change is recorded; the activity view lists them, and the layout fits a phone:

<img src="../images/guidebook/gizdesk-drive-phone.png" alt="GizDesk Drive on a phone" width="260">

The Drive's bytes do not pass through the pages: a Pages.Mount answers /_drive/…, /_share/… and S3 beside them and streams both ways, so an upload or a download has no size limit. On a laptop, a 1 GiB upload form reached the disk in 0.41 s and the same file came back in 0.26–0.46 s (curl, loopback, page cache warm).

S3 works against the Desk itself. S3 access makes a key and shows the endpoint (the Desk's own address), the bucket (desk) and the commands to paste; any S3 client then lists, copies and syncs the Drive (path-style addressing):

aws configure set default.s3.addressing_style path
aws --endpoint-url http://127.0.0.1:8080 s3 cp big.iso s3://desk/Research/

The AWS CLI sends a large file in 8 MiB parts; the Desk keeps each part as a file and joins them in the kernel. On the same laptop, 100 MiB went up in 1.3–1.9 s and came back, byte for byte, in about 0.55 s.

Connections → Services connects what the Drive sends and opens, with no giz.ai in between: one mailer URL (smtp://, smtps://, ses:// or resend://, gizlang:mail) sends share invitations and a secured Desk's sign-in links, and the address of an office engine you run yourself (Collabora Online or CODE, or ONLYOFFICE Docs with WOPI on) edits Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in the browser. Check reads the engine's WOPI discovery. The page shows the mailer's transport, host and sender, never its password; the settings are in GIZDESK_DATA/services.json.

With an engine connected, a document's preview offers Edit in Office; the engine opens it in a frame and saves through the Desk's WOPI endpoint, with a ten-hour access token for that file:

A link to one person mails them its address with a key; opening the mail's link keeps the key in that browser. The link's address alone, without the key from the mail, does not open.

Data Studio and Data & ML

The same sample query rendered as a chart:

Data & ML with a completed regression comparison and deployment approval:

The metric catalog turns the exact query into a reusable governed definition:

No-code collection design remains approval-gated and uses the same Data change owner:

Key UI Subsystems Verified in the Live Session:

1. Left Navigation Panel:
   • New conversation button and conversation search.
   • Dedicated Assistant agent view.
   • Project directory: ＋ New project, All conversations, Show archived.
2. Central Conversational Interface:
   • Model selection dropdown: actively connected to Qwen 3.5 4B · this computer running via local GPU inference.
   • Talk button: real-time voice interaction powered by the native OmniVoice audio pipeline.
   • Suggestion prompts: "Draw a fox in the snow, then film it running" (routing to Flux diffusion and LTX-Video pipelines).
3. Right Artifacts & Management Workspace:
   • Tabbed view: Overview, Artifacts, Agents, Automations, Knowledge, Activity.
   • ＋ New artifact: Allows creating live documents or code directly inside the agent loop.
   • Persistent memory and knowledge integration for external PDF and database sources.

3. Launching GizDesk Locally

To run GizDesk as a standalone workspace:

# Launch GizDesk via the official CLI subcommand:
giz desk

Or run directly from source:

giz run desk/main.giz

The daemon binds to 127.0.0.1:8080 (GIZDESK_PORT), keeps conversations, artifacts and the Drive in data (GIZDESK_DATA), and discovers available GPU inference endpoints.

Retaking the screenshots

Every gizdesk-*.png in this chapter is taken from a running Desk by a real browser, never mocked up:

cd desk && GIZDESK_PORT=8391 GIZDESK_DATA=/tmp/deskdemo giz run main.giz &
giz run tools/browser/guidebook.giz http://127.0.0.1:8391 docs/images/guidebook          # every shot
giz run tools/browser/guidebook.giz http://127.0.0.1:8391 docs/images/guidebook gizdesk-drive

The Drive shots expect a folder Projects holding plan.md, a file whose contents mention notes, and a share link on Projects; make them once in the Desk's Drive before taking the shots.