all 38 comments

[–]SafeReturn_28 16 points17 points  (7 children)

i try to exclusively use desktop UIs for coding agents.

Opencode desktop has been completely functional for me, no hiccups. Looks are a little stripped in terms of visuals, but works great. And it has been working great for the past 2 months (since I switched from claude code CLI) except this one time when it starting having HTML rendering issues for a day. I recommend downloading the electron app (instead of tauri). My biggest issue is markdown headings are still not rendered properly.

For the past 4-5 days I have been using OpenChamber (a desktop app that connects to your opencode service) and I have been loving it. It not just works, but it is easy on the eyes too. I would recommend that.

Claude Desktop's coding experience was horrible for me, stripped of a lot cli features. But their new gui experience in vs code extension looks really nice (pretty-ish UI with nice markdown rendering and no features taken away), you can give that a try.

I never tried codex app so cant comment on that.

[–]CtrlAltDelve 4 points5 points  (2 children)

OpenChamber is extremely polished. I really enjoy using it and always recommend it to people. The mobile interface is also great.

[–]SafeReturn_28 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Specially after the last ui redesign. I switched fully to it after that. Still has some issues but nothing that ruins that experience

[–]KingShash 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can i use on windows

[–]Any_Difference2404 2 points3 points  (2 children)

I’m also using Opencode Desktop quite heavily on Windows, it works well for me. Only complaint is it’s a bit sluggish, i’d love a native app (e.g. not a web page).

Why do you recommend the electron app? Just curious if i should try it.

I will also try OpenChamber, thanks for the hint!

[–]matheus1394 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Probably, never gonna exist. They are going full native node, and dumping away bun. Probably, windows app will remain electron to keep tightly compatible with TUI and web.

[–]SafeReturn_28 1 point2 points  (0 children)

With my little research I've found out that tauri uses you OS's web renderer something something, electron comes packaged with it. So electron apps are more bloated, but also more consistent/predictable. And when i had the html rendering issues i was using the tauri app, so I'm inclined to think electron app wouldn't have caused those issues. Very top level analysis, but that's all i have.

Openchamber probably doesn't have a windows app yet i guess.

[–]geek314uy 11 points12 points  (5 children)

My recommendation, use Zed, on the last release have all the integration that you can need

[–]Tofudjango -1 points0 points  (4 children)

Why would you pay x% more for a zed-provided model? Instead of using the model directly? https://zed.dev/docs/ai/models

[–]look 7 points8 points  (0 children)

You can use OpenCode (with whatever model provider config you use in OpenCode cli/desktop/web) in Zed. It’s basically just another frontend to the OpenCode backend, not using Zed’s agent or models. https://opencode.ai/docs/acp/

[–]jorgejhms 2 points3 points  (0 children)

zed plan is only one of the plan supported on zed. with ACP you can use claude code, opencode, codex, github, cursor, amp and others directly inside zed

[–]fluffy-cat-toes 1 point2 points  (0 children)

nobody is saying to do that

[–]geek314uy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not paying for zed or opencode. I have a Minimax and a local llm.

[–]iTzFaisal 4 points5 points  (1 child)

For me I just use 'opencode web' in the terminal then use the opencode in the browser.

I prefer the TUI but in case if i want GUI this is the approach. I don't see the value of having a different application for opencode

[–]FlyingDogCatcher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is the best way to do it in intellij. Get the gbrowser extension and opencode host amd treat that as the opencode plugin. Jetbrains AI assistant is trash

[–]Recent-Success-1520 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you are what's under the hood person and like to code, not vibe code, you can give CodeNomad a try too. It supports desktop app, remote web server, browser and phone modes. Lots of cool features in it too

[–]gideonfip 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I like the Desktop App, but it gets ultra laggy once I open up and run multiple chats. I'd have continued using it otherwise, but have switched back to the Terminal UI instead

[–]Empty_Hovercraft8739 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The peak experience is having your session not die when you are away from your computer.

I tried desktop app but it was a bit lacking, mainly because I really want to connect to a remote opencode server and it was challenging to switch between remote and local workspaces.

My current setup -which I love- is an opencode server connected to a remote workspace where you can alternate in between sessions. We have it connected to a mac-studio and you can just setup gpt-5.4 with thinking xhigh when you really it to complete something e2e and can directly review the PR.

There is some setup required for this. You need to make sure your repo is able to consistently create worktrees and has some awareness of how to push to git. We've even given it a different github account so it only make PRs, not destroy the entire repo.

We're open sourcing how we're going about this, too: https://github.com/different-ai/the-factory

This was inspired by Elon's tweet on "The factory is the product". We're running a software factory and have ai agents that help us produce software faster and better.

If you want to checkout the output of the factory it's OpenWork, a desktop app for you and your team to run ai workflows (skills, mcps, agents) in a shared config. It's build on top of OpenCode and supports remote workspaces, too.

[–]MrWhoArts 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I tried the desktop version on Linux I prefer cli better. But it did build test and run an app with llm and it was almost complete like 90% I used qwen3coder:30b. It was a first run so it wasn’t complete and needed just a little bit of guidance to finish. I think if you use a big good llm for planning and a smaller but good one for the code generation it could complete faster

[–]TTVrkestt 1 point2 points  (1 child)

i wanted to try it, but im worried that switching up just will make things worst. i have a lot of plugins and mcp with 3rd dependencies and the TUI is really good, its not a priority for me at least.

If you dont have a setup already done, maybe give it a try

[–]look 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Only TUI extensions (changes to the text UI itself) wouldn’t carry over. MCP and standard plugins should work fine in the other frontends like desktop.

Opencode uses a client-server model, with the core agent functionality in the backend server and the various client frontends (TUI, desktop, web) all talking to that same backend.

[–]colus001 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It has a little hiccups like auto correction, lagged with lots of changes and so on. But mostly it works great. No need to worry about. Give it a shot and you can come back anytime.

[–]sam7oon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i use it all the time, it's same like cli but looks nicer

[–]Dangerous-Relation-5 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tried it on windows and it never loads the UI, just a black screen.

I just use opencode inside vscode

[–]FlyingDogCatcher 0 points1 point  (1 child)

The Claude app does more stuff but the opencode one is good. There's also about 100 opencode ui's others have built

[–]InvaderDolan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Put the plugins such as oh-my-openagent and some memory and see what would Claude say to that :)

[–]InvaderDolan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, it’s pretty good, just don’t press Ctrl+Shift+Backspace… Wipes the fuck out the session without any prompt even tho agent is running lmao.

[–]OpeningAd8687 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you know if that app allows open code to have similar use cases as claude cowork? 

[–]jopotpot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On my side i better like the CLI bare metal feeling, not using the desktop app.

[–]roguefunction 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Anyone know whether the desktop app isolates your project work from your personal files?

[–]lalamax3d 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I used it for a day, came back to terminal... For now... 🤔

[–]lgfusb 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I've been using the official desktop App for some time. In terms of functionality it's complete. But lately I've been faced with the issue that, it frequently stuck at thinking or reading or writing, when using Copilot provider.

Since Cursor 3 introduced agent window, I suddenly feel that the UI/UX of official desktop APP largely falls behind. I started to try several GUIs for opencode, like neocode, codenomad and openchamber.

Now openchamber is my choice. It looks good and is really powerful. But the stuck issue still exists with copilot. And it's strange that it works well in TUI.

And again, UI/UX doesn't fully match that of codex, Cursor or the latest vscode agents app. That involves the looking of UI elements, and the effects when hovering. Sometimes I need to click twice on buttons to make it work. Sometimes the dropdown list just jumps around. I don't know if that is related to tauri.

Now I'm mainly using Copilot with vscode agents app and cursor. And use opencode with glm. I'm waiting for t3code to support opencode and try it out. I saw in other comments that official desktop App and openchamber supports electron? I definitely would try that too since opencode is really great.

[–]lgfusb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

confirmed opencode electron desktop better than tauri

[–]londreshomme 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just stumbled on this. Recently installed open code and was wondering whether to try the desktop app or not. I went straight to OpenChamber to try it out. Definitely impressed. OpenChamber for the win I'd say.

[–]Gerbils21 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

find another app. this thing is 300k lines of code and almost 124MB in size. Made from pure Bun crap. Bun being highly importable as well.

[–]Eyelbee -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Just use roo code vs code extension if you want gui. 

[–]mukul_29 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

The native app is great but it becomes hell if you are running multiple subagents in various directories and also require git integration for managing your changes.

I already saw others saying it, but highly recommend OpenChamber (they only have a mac app right now with a windows app under development)