Overview
What Orbit is, core architectural boundaries, and its runtime model.
What is Orbit?
Orbit is a local-first desktop application designed as a persistent, visual control surface for AI-assisted software development. While standard AI developer tooling typically forces users to choose between unconstrained CLI terminals or cloud-hosted web wrappers that disconnect from local files, Orbit operates directly on your local filesystem while providing rich graphical oversight.
Orbit begins with deep integration for Google Antigravity (agy), Google's agentic coding system. Orbit wraps Antigravity's CLI capabilities inside a structured desktop interface that captures turn history, indexes generated project artifacts, and manages interactive human-in-the-loop approvals.
The Runtime Model
Orbit runs as an Electron application with strict process boundary isolation. The frontend renderer is decoupled from system execution, communicating via a typed IPC preload bridge with the Electron main process.
All project databases, conversation indexes, and configuration files are persisted locally on the host machine using SQLite. Orbit never syncs your repository code or sensitive tokens to an intermediary cloud server.
Core Design Principles
| Principle | Raw CLI Behavior | Orbit Desktop Implementation |
|---|---|---|
| Session Continuity | Lost when terminal window or SSH session closes | Persisted turn history linked to local directory and provider ID |
| Authentication | Relies on user shell credentials | Inherits authenticated shell; zero credential copying |
| Permissions | Terminal prompts intermixed with stdout scrollback | Native modal dialogs with tool arguments and exact file diffs |
| Artifacts | File paths printed as terminal text | Visual asset catalog with live sandboxed previews (SVG, HTML, images) |
| Cancellation | Ctrl+C can orphan subprocesses or corrupt state | Coordinated SIGINT/SIGTERM tree termination with state preservation |