TUI architecture

ainb is a Cargo workspace rooted at ainb-tui/. The TUI application and CLI live in the ainb-core crate; the rest of the workspace is the v2 plugin platform (runtime, SDK, reference plugins, conformance + test tooling).

Workspace crates

Members are declared in ainb-tui/Cargo.toml (default-members = ["crates/ainb-core"]):

Crate	Role
`ainb-core`	The TUI app + `ainb` CLI binary. All screens, event loop, session/git/tmux/docker integration.
`ainb-plugin-runtime`	Host-side plugin runtime that loads and supervises v2 plugins.
`ainb-plugin-sdk-rust`	Rust SDK for authoring v2 plugins.
`ainb-plugin-protocol`	Wire protocol / JSON-RPC types shared by host and plugins.
`ainb-plugin-types-sessions`	Shared session data types exposed to plugins.
`ainb-plugin-burndown`	In-tree v2 reference plugin: usage/burndown analytics.
`ainb-plugin-notifyd`	In-tree v2 reference plugin: notifications.
`ainb-plugin-session-reader`	In-tree v2 reference plugin: session data backend.
`ainb-plugin-cts-v2`	Conformance test suite for the v2 plugin ABI.
`ainb-plugin-testkit`	Test harness for plugin authors.
`xtask`	Workspace task runner (build/release helpers).

The workspace pins version = "1.2.0", Rust edition 2021, and forbids unsafe_code.

ainb-core module tree

App code lives under ainb-tui/crates/ainb-core/src/:

crates/ainb-core/src/
├── main.rs              # Entry point, CLI parsing, TUI loop
├── lib.rs               # Crate exports
├── app/                 # App state machine + event handling (state.rs, events.rs)
├── components/          # TUI screens (session_list, git_view, logs_viewer, home_screen, …)
├── widgets/             # Reusable UI widgets
├── cli/                 # Non-interactive subcommand implementations
├── fleet/               # `ainb fleet` orchestration (standup/broadcast/sequence/needs/daemon)
├── providers/           # Multi-provider (claude/codex/gemini/copilot) abstractions
├── claude/              # Claude API client
├── docker/              # Container management
├── tmux/                # Tmux / PTY integration
├── git/                 # Git + worktree operations
├── config/              # Configuration loading
├── models/              # Data models
├── agents/              # Agent registry
├── agent_parsers/       # Parse agent output
├── interactive/         # Interactive-mode helpers
├── usage_cache/         # Persistent usage-analytics cache
├── audit.rs             # Audit helpers
├── credentials.rs       # Credential storage
├── editors.rs           # Editor integration
└── plugins.rs           # Plugin install/management CLI surface

Plugin runtime

ainb-plugin-runtime is the host-side supervisor that loads v2 plugins as native subprocess binaries speaking JSON-RPC over stdio (the ainb-plugin-protocol types). Authors build against ainb-plugin-sdk-rust and validate with ainb-plugin-testkit and the ainb-plugin-cts-v2 conformance suite. The three in-tree reference plugins — burndown (analytics), notifyd (notifications), and session-reader (data backend) — double as worked examples. Install and inspect plugins via ainb plugin install|list|lint|watch|tail (see the CLI reference).

Style guide

Components follow the shared palette in .claude/skills/tui-screen/SKILL.md: cornflower-blue borders (Rgb(100,149,237)), gold titles/CTAs (Rgb(255,215,0)), green active state (Rgb(100,200,100)), BorderType::Rounded on all panels, a ▶ selection indicator, and a gold-keys / muted-descriptions bottom help bar.

Testing surface

Tests live under crates/ainb-core/tests/:

Unit + model tests — test_app_state.rs, test_events.rs, test_session_model.rs, etc.
Behavioral — behavioral.rs and the behavioral/ suite.
E2E PTY — e2e_pty_tests.rs, interactive_mode_tests.rs (real PTY drive).
Tripwires — tripwire_*.rs tmux-driven end-to-end screen assertions (burndown, inbox, crash recovery, new-session, …).