Hallway is out (npm i -g hallway): v0, v1 and v2 have shipped, apart from checking it all on a real Mac. See the roadmap.

Thumbnails

Every app’s door on the dashboard carries a picture. Which kind is thumbnails.mode in config.yaml:

`thumbnails.mode`	The door shows
`favicon` (the default)	The app’s favicon on a small tile; a monogram on a colour derived from the slug if it has none.
`screenshot`	A screenshot of the app as the door’s pane of glass. An app with no screenshot yet falls back to its favicon.
`card`	Every door drawn as a generated card: the app’s name, address, framework and `repo @ branch`.

Favicons

v0 The default needs nothing. Hallway fetches each app’s favicon (and each bookmark’s), caches it in the data home (cache/favicons/), and paints the door with the icon’s dominant colour.

Screenshots

v2 Screenshots are opt-in, because they need a browser:

hallway thumbs enable          # install the browser into the data home and turn screenshots on
hallway thumbs refresh         # take them again now (or: hallway thumbs refresh <slug>)
hallway thumbs status          # the mode, whether a browser is installed and its size, how many screenshots
hallway thumbs disable         # turn them off and delete the browser and the screenshots

hallway thumbs enable installs Chromium’s headless shell (about 300 MB) into cache/browser/ in the data home, never anywhere else, and sets thumbnails.mode: screenshot. Hallway itself doesn’t depend on Playwright or any browser: npm i -g hallway downloads none. Run enable again after an upgrade if Hallway says the browser is out of date; it is safe to repeat.

How screenshots behave:

Healthy apps only. Declared apps that are healthy get one; bookmarks are never shot.
Kept fresh: a new screenshot when there is none, when the app has restarted (its process ID changed) or its address changed, and when the last one is six hours old. hallway thumbs refresh (which needs the daemon running) takes them now.
Light: one page at a time, in one headless browser that closes after two idle minutes. A page that never goes quiet is shot after ten seconds anyway.
Private: screenshots are taken on your machine, stored in cache/thumbs/, and never leave it.
The detail drawer shows the screenshot larger.

hallway thumbs disable sets the mode back to favicon and deletes cache/browser/ and cache/thumbs/.

Generated cards

v2 With thumbnails.mode: card, every door is drawn as a card: the app’s name, its address on a brass plate, its framework and repo @ branch, on the door’s own paint. The daemon renders it with fonts bundled in the package, so it looks the same on every machine, and needs no browser.

thumbnails:
  mode: card

card is a look you choose for every door, not a fallback: in the other modes an app with no favicon keeps its monogram. The drawer doesn’t repeat the card, since it already shows everything a card says.

From the API

GET /api/apps/:slug/thumb serves an app’s picture with an ETag (a card as a 640×400 PNG), and each app in /api/state has a thumbKind of favicon, screenshot or card saying which it is. POST /api/thumbs/refresh takes new screenshots. See the HTTP API.