# assistant

Overlay for desktop-assistant, the local voice assistant. It appears when the
mic button is pressed and shows the assistant's name, its model context use,
the tool running, and a ring of sound waves that follows the real audio: the
user's voice in one palette colour, the reply in another. It fades out a few
seconds after the reply.

The assistant owns a Unix socket, `$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/desktop-assistant.sock`,
and writes one JSON event per line (`hello`, `state`, `ctx`, `level`); this
component only reads it and reconnects every 2 s while the assistant is down.
Name, position, fade delay and the two colour roles come from the
assistant's `config.toml` `[overlay]` table, in the `hello` event. The
protocol is specified in the desktop-assistant repo,
`docs/superpowers/specs/2026-09-26-overlay-design.md`.

Run: `qs -p <this dir>`. Test the position maths: `node assistant/test_place.js`.