Thirty-One Apps, One Desktop

Date: 2026-03-24 Duration: Continuation from 2026-03-23 session Status: Implementation complete, ready for final user setup Commit: d2b41ab1

What Happened

ArgoBox OS is live. Deployed to CF Pages at argobox-os.pages.dev/os. A full KDE Plasma-like desktop interface running in the browser with 31 container apps listed in the Start Menu.

This is the thing I've been building toward. A web-based operating system that fronts my entire homelab. Click Jellyfin, it loads in an iframe. Click Sonarr, same thing. Click Grafana, terminal, file manager — all proxied through Cloudflare tunnels to containers running on argobox-lite at 10.0.0.199.

And 24 of the 27 tunnel routes work perfectly. 89% success rate on first deploy. I'll take it.

The User Management API

Built a POST endpoint for managing KV user roles:

POST /api/admin/users

Takes email, displayName, role (admin/member/demo), optional osProfile override, optional service list for limited access. Returns HTTP 201 with the created record. Stored in KV under data:user-roles.

The immediate use case: adding Bogie as a member with the homelabber profile. But the API is generic enough for any future user. CF Access handles authentication. The KV store handles authorization. Two separate layers.

Commit d2b41ab1 — pushed to origin/main, ready for production.

The Three Broken Routes

Spent time debugging the 3 routes that aren't working. Plot twist: none of them are tunnel problems. All three are container configuration issues.

Healthchecks (port 8084): Returns 400 Bad Request. Django's DisallowedHost error. The container doesn't have healthchecks.argobox.com in its ALLOWED_HOSTS config. Tunnel delivers the request fine. Django rejects it.

SABnzbd (port 18085): Returns 403 Forbidden. API authentication or authorization misconfiguration on the container side. The tunnel routes correctly. SABnzbd just won't let anyone in.

Finance (port 4200): Returns 404 Not Found. App might not be initialized, or it expects a different URL path. Need to check if it wants / or /finance at the root.

Three different failure modes. Three different containers. Zero tunnel issues. The infrastructure layer works. The application layer needs per-container fixes. Should be 2-3 hours of work.

The Infrastructure Scorecard

Component	Status
CF Pages	Live at argobox-os.pages.dev/os
Container Backend	Running at argobox-lite:9000 (authenticated)
CF Tunnel	24/27 routes operational
Service Registry	31 apps registered
API Auth	Bearer token enforcement working
Demo Mode	Fixed, no more crashes
KV Roles Store	Ready, data:user-roles key
User Mgmt API	Ready, POST /api/admin/users

What's Left for Me to Do

Three manual steps. All in the Cloudflare dashboard.

Add custom domain os.argobox.com to the CF Pages project. Should be a DNS record and a 5-10 minute certificate provisioning wait.
Update CF Access application to point to the custom domain instead of argobox-os.pages.dev.
Test live access — login via CF Access, verify Start Menu loads, click through some apps.

After that, add Bogie via the API:

curl -X POST https://os.argobox.com/api/admin/users \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "displayName": "Bogie",
    "role": "member",
    "osProfile": "homelabber"
  }' \
  --cookie "CF_Authorization=<token>"

What's Not Done Yet

The stuff that didn't make this session:

Binary WebSocket protocol for terminal sessions — designed, not implemented. Target is under 20ms latency and 50x message size reduction.
Durable Objects for session persistence — commented out in wrangler.toml. Right now sessions live in-memory only.
Terminal scrollback ring buffer — planned.
AsyncFileSystemAdapter for the file manager — planned.
Virtual scrolling for 10,000+ file directories — planned.

All optional enhancements. The core OS works. 31 apps load. The desktop interface is functional. The tunnel routes are 89% operational.

The Feeling

I keep looking at the Start Menu and counting. 31 apps. All of them running on a box under my desk. All of them accessible through a browser interface that looks like a real desktop environment. Click, iframe, done.

It's not perfect. Three routes are broken. The terminal still uses JSON protocol instead of binary. Session persistence relies on in-memory state. But the bones are right. The architecture is right.

Implementation 90% complete. The last 10% is dashboard configuration and container debugging. Not glamorous work, but it's the kind that turns a demo into something someone else can actually use.

31 apps. One desktop. 24 out of 27 working. I'll fix the other 3 tomorrow. Probably.