Desktop Ship

A transparent "cockpit" overlay for your desktop, built with Electron. It draws a sci-fi ship cockpit on top of everything (or behind everything), filled with draggable holographic widgets: clock, system stats, map, todo list, terminal, camera, Spotify, images, video and more.

It is also fully controllable by AI agents via MCP: any MCP client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, etc.) can spawn, move, configure and close widgets on your screen.

Features

• Transparent, click-through overlay that lives on any display

• Draggable, resizable holographic widgets (clock, sys, map, ship, log, todo, image, video, folder, gmap, spotify, camera)

• Always-on-top or behind-everything modes

• Built-in MCP server: control the whole cockpit from an AI agent (see MCP.md)

• Local-only control channel (WebSocket on 127.0.0.1 with a per-session token)

Related MCP server: helix-pilot

Getting started

git clone https://github.com/louisperner/desktop-ship.git
cd desktop-ship
npm install
npm start

Requires Node.js 18+. Currently developed and tested on macOS; other platforms may work but are untested.

MCP control

Register the bundled MCP server in your MCP client and an agent can drive the cockpit (spawn widgets, move them, switch displays, toggle click-through). See MCP.md for the tool list and setup for both dev and the packaged app.

Building a DMG

npm run dist    # bundles the MCP server and builds the .dmg (arm64 + x64) into dist/
npm run pack    # packages the .app only, for quick testing

Note: to distribute outside your own machine without Gatekeeper warnings, the app must be signed and notarized with an Apple Developer ID.

License

MIT