Two specs failed locally and passed in CI, which is the least useful direction for a disagreement to point. **`dev-headless.sh` was the only launcher not stubbing out the catalog.** `seed-sandbox.sh` and `ci.yml` both send `YJ_CORE_INDEX_URL` to a dead address; the dev launcher did not, so the app downloaded and built the real ~1M-row Explore catalog into the run's YJ_HOME and every local `make e2e` after that ran against a world CI never sees. Found by reading the failure screenshot: the spec had searched Explore for its fixture album and the page was full of real ones. It defaults to the dead address now and takes an explicit one for exploring by hand. **And the shared backend carries spec state between runs.** `explore-shelves` staged its catalog only `IfEmpty`, so one album row left behind by `requested-badge` satisfied that gate: the shelves were drawn from a single foreign row and the artist card the spec clicks did not exist. It failed on the *second* local run and passed on the first, and never in CI, where every run gets a fresh home. "Is the catalog empty" was the wrong question and "are my rows there" is the right one, so staging is unconditional (INSERT OR IGNORE keyed on the MBID) and the assertion moved from *this insert wrote a row* to *every fixture row is present*. That is both idempotent and stronger: an MBID that fails CHECK(length(mbid) = 16) is silently dropped by OR IGNORE, which the old per-insert count caught only on a cold catalog and the new one catches always. Verified by running the whole suite twice against one app: 97/3 before, 100 passed both times after.
YellowJacket
Music how it was meant to bee.
YellowJacket is a fast, cross-platform desktop music player for your local collection. It plays your files, keeps your library tidy, and helps you discover and organize your music — all in a clean, responsive interface. No accounts, no streaming, no telemetry: just your music on your machine.
Runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Features
Play your music
- Plays MP3, FLAC, OGG Vorbis, and WAV
- Play, pause, seek, and volume control with a mute toggle
- Gapless, glitch-free seeking backed by a read-ahead buffer
- A queue you can add to, reorder, and shuffle, with play-next support
- Shuffle and repeat (off / all / one)
- Picks up right where you left off — remembers your track, position, and volume between sessions
- Media-key and MPRIS support on Linux, so your desktop's playback controls just work
Keep your library organized
- Point it at your music folders and it scans them automatically
- Reads tags and embedded cover art, and de-duplicates artwork so it isn't stored twice
- Incremental sync — only new or changed files get reprocessed, and deleted files are cleaned up
- Browse by album, artist, or genre, or search across everything
- Mark favorites and see what you've been listening to with play history
- Edit track tags directly when something's off
Playlists
- Create playlists, drag tracks in, and reorder them
- Smart playlists that build themselves from rules (by genre, rating, play count, and more)
- Pin a default playlist and spot duplicate tracks at a glance
Discover and clean up (powered by MusicBrainz)
- Explore — browse artists, releases, and genres from the MusicBrainz catalog, not just what's already in your library
- Auto-tag — match your files against MusicBrainz to fill in correct artist, album, and track metadata, with a review step before anything is written
- Lyrics search — find a track by a line you remember
Install
Download the latest build for your platform from the releases page.
| Platform | Download |
|---|---|
| Linux | yellowjacket-linux-amd64 |
| macOS | yellowjacket-darwin-universal.app.zip (Apple Silicon + Intel) |
| Windows | yellowjacket-windows-amd64.exe |
Prefer to build it yourself? See Building from source.
Getting started
- Launch YellowJacket.
- Open Settings and add the folder(s) where your music lives.
- Let the initial scan finish — you'll see progress as it works.
- Browse by album, artist, or genre, queue something up, and press play.
Your library and settings are stored locally:
| Linux / macOS | Windows | |
|---|---|---|
| Config | ~/.config/yellowjacket/ |
%LOCALAPPDATA%\yellowjacket\config |
| Library data | ~/.local/share/yellowjacket/ |
%LOCALAPPDATA%\yellowjacket\data |
Building from source
YellowJacket is built with Go and a Lit/TypeScript frontend, bridged by the Wails framework.
Prerequisites
| Tool | Version |
|---|---|
| Go | 1.25+ |
| Node.js | 22+ |
| pnpm | 10+ |
| Wails CLI | v3 — vendored, no install needed (go tool wails3) |
The Wails v3 CLI resolves from the tool block in go.mod, so there is nothing
to install globally; make setup fetches it with the rest of the tooling.
On Linux, install the system libraries Wails needs. v3 builds against GTK4 + WebKitGTK 6.0 by default:
sudo apt-get install libasound2-dev libgtk-4-dev libwebkitgtk-6.0-dev # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo pacman -S alsa-lib gtk4 webkitgtk-6.0 # Arch
A machine without webkitgtk-6.0 can still build with -tags gtk3 against the
older WebKit2GTK 4.1 stack, but that is an escape hatch, not what CI or a
release builds.
macOS and Windows need no extra system packages. Run go tool wails3 doctor to
check your environment.
Build
make setup # install tooling and git hooks
make dev # run with hot-reload
make build-prod # produce a release binary
More detail for contributors lives in
docs/dev/overview.md and CLAUDE.md.