Contributing

MeiliOps is MIT licensed and contributions are welcome. The whole app is TypeScript; you don't need to know Rust.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20 or newer
• Rust via rustup (only to build the desktop shell; you won't edit Rust)
• Windows: the MSVC C++ build tools. WebView2 ships with Windows 11.
• macOS: Xcode command line tools
• Linux: libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libappindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev patchelf libdbus-1-dev

Run it

cd app
npm install
npm run dev          # UI only, in a browser at http://localhost:1420
npm run tauri dev    # the desktop app, with hot reload

The browser mode is the fastest loop for UI work. It stores API keys in localStorage (insecure, development only) and can't run local instances.

For a server to point it at, run Meilisearch locally, for example with the local instance manager in the desktop app, or:

meilisearch --http-addr 127.0.0.1:7711 --experimental-enable-metrics --experimental-enable-logs-route --experimental-enable-tasks-streaming-route

Before you open a pull request

npm run typecheck
npm run coverage -- --strict

CI runs the same two checks. coverage --strict fails when a stable Meilisearch operation has no screen.

Conventions

• API calls go through api().req("METHOD", "/literal/path", …). The path must be a string literal from the generated OpenAPI types: that's what gives compile-time checking and lets the coverage script find every call.
• Styling uses the design tokens at the top of src/styles.css (--bg*, --fg*, --accent*, --control-h). No raw colors in components; both themes must work.
• Icons come from src/components/icons.ts (Lucide). Add new ones there; don't use Unicode glyphs as icons.
• Long-running async work pins the client before its first await (const m = api()), because the user can switch servers mid-flight.
• Native code is limited to three small files in src-tauri/src. Prefer a Tauri plugin; add Rust only when a plugin is broken or missing, and document why.

See Architecture for how the pieces fit together.