Architecture

AuraDeck is a small, deliberate codebase. There is no bundler, no build pipeline beyond Tauri itself, and no framework on the frontend — just plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript talking to a Rust backend over Tauri's IPC bridge.

High-level layout

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                         Tauri shell                        │
│                                                            │
│   ┌────────────────────┐         ┌──────────────────────┐  │
│   │     WebView        │         │    Rust backend      │  │
│   │                    │  IPC    │                      │  │
│   │  HTML/CSS/JS       │◀───────▶│  Tauri commands      │  │
│   │  CodeMirror        │         │  File I/O, zip,      │  │
│   │  Editor + Viewer   │         │  base64, manifest    │  │
│   └────────────────────┘         └──────────────────────┘  │
│                                                            │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The WebView runs the user-facing app. Anything that touches the filesystem (loading decks, saving slides, inlining images) goes through a Tauri command in the Rust backend.

Frontend

There is no bundler. JavaScript modules use <script type="module"> and load each other via relative paths. This is intentional — it keeps the build trivial and the source readable.

Backend (src-tauri/src/lib.rs)

All Tauri commands live in src-tauri/src/lib.rs. They are grouped roughly as:

• Deck I/O — load_presentation, save_presentation, save_as_adsl, extract_adsl.
• Slide CRUD — create_slide, delete_slide, duplicate_slide, reorder_slides.
• Image handling — inline_images_to_data_urls, add_image_to_deck.
• Global CSS — get_global_css, set_global_css.
• Scratch presentations — new_scratch_presentation (in-memory deck for the New Presentation flow).
• Export helpers — file dialogs and write-to-disk for PDF/PPTX exports rendered in the WebView.

Frontend code calls these via @tauri-apps/api/core's invoke():

import { invoke } from '@tauri-apps/api/core';
const deck = await invoke('load_presentation', { path: '/some/deck' });

Capabilities

src-tauri/capabilities/default.json declares the IPC permissions granted to the WebView. AuraDeck grants only what it needs: window control, dialog plugin access, the registered Tauri commands, and event emission for cross-window communication in presenter mode.

Build and bundle

npm run tauri build runs the Rust build, which in turn runs build.rs to embed the contents of src/ into the binary. The resulting executable is a single self-contained file with no runtime dependencies beyond the platform's WebView.

tauri.conf.json controls window defaults (size, title, resizability), the bundle identifier, and the Content Security Policy applied to the WebView.

Where things live (cheat sheet)

Contributing →