The hosted half of Aesel with a touch interface. It is not a port: the agent loop is easel/src/ac-server.mjs, loaded unmodified, and publishing is easel/src/publish.mjs, also unmodified. This directory is only the shell around them.

Why this shape #

easel/docs/native-shell.md concluded that iOS should be its own project with "the agent loop rewritten in Swift." Reading ac-server.mjs closely argues against that. Its entire Node surface is EventEmitter, three fs calls, path.join, randomUUID and process.env — and piece, token, fetch and site are already constructor-injected. Every one of those is a few lines of shim, so a Swift rewrite would buy nothing and guarantee the phone and the desktop drift apart. shim/ answers the imports instead, through an import map in index.html.

The one thing that genuinely could not be shimmed is validatePieceSource, which shells out to node --check. shim/revisions.mjs explains what replaced it and what that costs.

Running it #

node easel/phone/serve.mjs --port 8770 --token

Serves the repository so the bridge's own paths resolve — /easel/src/*.mjs and /easel/context/*.md are fetched at the very paths bundledContext() builds. Only those three trees are reachable; the root is the repository, so the fence matters.

--token exposes /dev-token, which hands the page the access token out of ~/.ac-token so a phone on the same network can sign in before any Apple plumbing exists. Private addresses only, and off by default. It is a bearer token: do not run it on a network you do not own.

Open the printed LAN address on the phone. Without --token, the page asks for a pasted token instead.

What it does #

Type a sentence; the bridge writes the whole piece; the write handler publishes it under your @handle; the preview reloads. The piece is live on aesthetic.computer while you are still making it, which is the thing this client is actually for.

Caveats worth knowing before judging output: the server allowlists three cheap models, so this is a deliberately weaker agent than desktop Aesel, and the allowance is the same daily one /api/ask spends.

Where it is going #

This page is the content of the iOS app, not a detour. The Swift shell replaces three things and nothing else:

Browser now	iOS later
`/dev-token` or a pasted token	`ASWebAuthenticationSession`, then `window.aeselAdoptToken(token)`
`localStorage`	the app's Documents container, via `vfs.setWriteHandler`
an `<iframe>`	the same `<iframe>`, or a second `WKWebView`

app.mjs is written against those seams already.