What is Songbird?
Songbird is a local-first, Codex-powered wireframing studio for software. It gives humans a visual canvas and gives agents a CLI so both sides can work from the same product workflow.
FAQ
Answers beforeyour first workflow.
Songbird is intentionally local, visual, and inspectable. These answers stay concrete about what the app, CLI, skills, and handoff actually do.
How do I sign in?
Songbird exposes the Codex App Server auth paths from the app: ChatGPT browser login, device-code login, or OpenAI API-key login. The normal image-generation path still goes through Codex.
Does Songbird run locally?
Yes. Songbird ships as a Mac desktop app and runs a local Node server on loopback. Project briefs, AGENTS.md, screen JSON, linked repo metadata, and other workspace files stay local on disk.
How do humans and agents share the same canvas?
The Mac app and the songbird CLI talk to the same local HTTP/WebSocket server. The installed app writes an app-bundled CLI shim at ~/.songbird/bin/songbird so agent commands stay version-matched with the UI.
How do I install the agent skills?
Install the publish-ready Songbird skills with npx skills add Bikz/Songbird. The skills teach agents to use songbird schema --json, status checks, references, diagnostics, and handoff commands instead of guessing from prose.
What can I bring into the canvas?
You can map an existing local app into visible canvas screens, import screenshot folders, or attach reference images and brief files to generation. References help planning and generation; mapped or imported screenshots become visible canvas objects.
Does Songbird edit my app repo?
No. Linked repos are read/run sources in V1. Songbird records linked repo metadata and captures screenshots into its own workspace, but it does not write generated design artifacts or commits into linked repos by default.
How does handoff to Codex work?
Open in Codex prepares handoff/open-in-codex-prompt.md in the Songbird workspace. The prompt points Codex at the linked repo as the code workspace, uses Songbird images as design context, reports blockers, and avoids mutating Songbird design artifacts.
What happens during generation?
Songbird creates visible draft screen cards first, queues per-screen Codex image jobs, and keeps the canvas live while work runs. Inline edits create labeled new versions instead of overwriting the active version.
Where do artifacts go?
Songbird owns the project folder, design metadata, imported and generated images, capture screenshots, export bundles, workspace Git snapshots, and handoff prompts. Public asset routes only serve Songbird-owned image artifacts, not linked repo files.