Feature request: Web UI / headless server mode for remote access

[meumeu-dev]

Summary

It would be great to have an optional web server mode that serves the Switchboard UI as a web application, accessible from any browser on the network — similar to how tools like Portainer, Grafana, or code-server work.

Use case

Many developers run Claude Code on a headless server, a home lab machine, or a remote workstation. Currently, Switchboard requires a desktop environment (Electron) to use. A web UI mode would allow:

• Remote monitoring from a laptop, phone, or tablet
• Headless server setups where no desktop environment is available
• Multi-device access to the same Switchboard instance (e.g. check session status from your phone while AFK)
• SSH-only machines where X11 forwarding is impractical

Why it's feasible

After looking at the codebase, the architecture is already well-suited for this:

• Clean IPC boundary: The ~40 ipcMain.handle() calls in main.js map directly to HTTP/REST endpoints
• Vanilla JS frontend: app.js has no Electron-specific rendering — replacing window.api.* calls with fetch() / WebSocket would be straightforward
• Terminal streaming: xterm.js already supports WebSocket backends, so the PTY bridge could use WS instead of IPC
• SQLite DB: Already portable, no changes needed

Proposed approach

• Add an optional --serve or --web flag that starts an Express/Fastify server instead of the Electron window
• Serve the existing frontend static files
• Expose IPC handlers as REST endpoints + WebSocket for terminal/live updates
• Add basic auth (token or password) since it would be network-exposed
• Keep the Electron app as the default — web mode is opt-in

Example

# Start Switchboard as a web server on port 3000
switchboard --web --port 3000

# Then access from any browser
# http://192.168.0.4:3000

This would make Switchboard a complete remote session management dashboard, which fits perfectly with its "command center" positioning.

Thanks for the great tool! 🎯

[abasiri]

I like this idea. I assume it shouldn't be too hard to implement. Will look into it sometime next week (i'm out most of this week)