reverse-engineering-anything/docs/specs/desktop-app-environments/export/spec.md

Export a captured application as a computer app

Outcome

rea export-desktop-application <capture-folder> <directory> writes an agentenv bundle with one computer_app environment for the captured application: installed from the distribution archive on the ubuntu-24.04 base with the reference driver, launched at boot and ready when its window appears, seeded with the user's state from before the capture, and serving that state through data/add, data/get and data/reset.

Requirements

• CLI only. It reads the capture and its state view and runs nothing else. The output directory must be new or empty; files are written through the shared safe output tree.
• It refuses applications not installed from a Debian package archive, captures without an application window, and environment names that are not portable.
• The class declares the apt package, the packages --extra-package names beside it (refused unless each is a Debian package name), and the package of the program the desktop entry runs when another one owns it (refused when the capture found no source the computer can install that package from, or only repositories the export leaves out supply it, as library packages so supplied are left out; a capture whose entry runs a program no package owns is refused), the captured launch command with arguments under the captured home respelled under $HOME, an exact window class match with a window ready check, paths from the state view's roles (state directories of application state files, or a folder beside one that differs only in letter case in the files' spelling, and folders of documents, nested ones collapsed) and the skill file. When the seed holds exactly one document and the desktop entry's Exec takes files, the launch appends its path under $HOME; a command that already names a document, absolute or from its working directory, is kept, a seed with no document launches as captured, and otherwise the README and the limitations say why the app opens no document.
• With paths, it declares all three data hooks and calls agentenv's helpers: seed the home once per boot then keep_initial, add, reset, and get plus a data part holding a typed JSON view of each file. Without paths it declares no hooks.
• The seed is the baseline version of every state view path under paths, copied from retained content after its digest is checked; text files have the captured home path respelled when seeded. Baseline dconf keys of the application are compiled into the user's dconf database with dconf-cli, without D-Bus.
• The README and the result state the agentenv-framework release the class was checked against (0.9.1464), and that the seed is real user data, unless --synthetic-seed says it was made for the task.

Non-goals

• No image build, deploy or run; verification inside a computer is the next step.
• No tasks beyond a deploy smoke task.
• No pinned package version, other package kinds, or redaction of the seed.