Multi-Frontend Consolidation Strategy

Tagline: rationale for the multi-shell layout (shell/, shell-dojo/, shell-docs/, shell-dashboard/), the rollout order, and how packages target shells today (they don't — every shell embeds every package).

This document records the intentional rationale for having multiple showcase shells in this repo, which shell each one replaces, and how packages target them during the transition.

This is a transition-period strategy document. Once the rollouts below are complete, expect this doc to be updated or retired.

Why multiple shells exist

Showcase is in the middle of consolidating several external frontends into this repo so they are built, deployed, versioned, and tested alongside the integration packages that back them. The fan-out in showcase/ is intentional: each shell is the target replacement for a distinct external property, and they co-exist until their respective rollouts cut over.

The alternative — a single super-shell that hosts every audience — was rejected because the existing external frontends each have a different visual language, different audience framing, and different routing/embed conventions. Merging them into one shell would either lose each identity or require runtime mode switching that obscures what's actually rendered at a given URL.

Current shells and their roles

Directory	Package name	Role	Status
`shell/`	`@copilotkit/showcase-shell`	Public showcase integrations browser at showcase.copilotkit.dev. Canonical today.	Production
`shell-dojo/`	`@copilotkit/showcase-shell-dojo`	Styled like the external ag-ui Dojo. Target replacement for the ag-ui Dojo property.	Deployed (rollout in progress)
`shell-docs/`	`@copilotkit/showcase-shell-docs`	Docs-forward shell for the `docs.copilotkit.dev` consolidation.	Deployed (rollout in progress)
`shell-dashboard/`	`@copilotkit/showcase-shell-dashboard`	Internal feature × integration grid (ops / QA audience).	Internal

All shells:

Consume the same shared/ registry / constraints / manifest schema
Pull from the same registry.json (generated by scripts/generate-registry.ts)
Embed package demos via iframe pointing at integration.backend_url + demo.route (each package's own deployed Next.js app) — they do not import package code

They differ in chrome, nav, and audience framing, not in the underlying demo surface.

`shell/` — public integrations browser

The canonical public site. Routes under src/app/:

integrations/ — list and per-slug profile, plus [slug]/[demo]/page.tsx with Preview / Code / Docs tabs
docs/[[...slug]]/ — MDX docs served from src/content/docs/
ag-ui/[[...slug]]/ — ag-ui reference content
matrix/, reference/ — matrix and reference surfaces

Build pipeline runs generate-registry.ts + bundle-demo-content.ts + bundle-starter-content.ts + generate-search-index.ts before next build. Docker image showcase-shell, Railway service 40eea0da-6071-4ea8-bdb9-39afb19225ec.

`shell-dojo/` — Dojo replacement

A single-page Dojo-style viewer (integration selector + demo list + preview iframe + code pane) styled to match the external ag-ui Dojo. This is not abandoned spike or cleanup waste — it is the rollout vehicle for replacing the external ag-ui Dojo site with an in-repo shell fed by the same registry every other showcase surface uses. Reference visuals are kept at shell-dojo/agent-notes/reference-dojo.png (external Dojo target) and shell-dojo/agent-notes/v-final-handcrafted.png (current iteration).

Built standalone (no monorepo scripts), Docker image showcase-shell-dojo, Railway service 7ad1ece7-2228-49cd-8a78-bddf30322907. CI builds both shells independently in .github/workflows/showcase_deploy.yml.

Adding future shells

The expected pattern for any additional consolidation target:

New directory at showcase/<shell-name>/ with its own package.json, Dockerfile, next.config.ts
Consume shared/ registry + data/registry.json generated by scripts/generate-registry.ts
Add a matching entry in .github/workflows/showcase_deploy.yml (workflow_dispatch option, change-detection filter, build-matrix entry) with its own Railway service id
Update this document with the target external property, deploy URL, and rollout status
If the shell needs its own demo-content bundling, extend scripts/bundle-demo-content.ts rather than forking it

Rollout order

ag-ui Dojo → shell-dojo/ (target #1, in progress).
- Build in-repo against the live reference (agent-notes/reference-dojo.png)
- Deploy Railway service 7ad1ece7-2228-49cd-8a78-bddf30322907 continuously from main
- Visual parity pass against the reference screenshot
- Domain cutover: point the external Dojo domain at the Railway service (see Open Questions)
- Archive / redirect the external Dojo repo
Further consolidations (TBD). Any other external frontend that is semantically a view over the showcase registry is a candidate. Per-shell criteria:
- Audience and visual language distinct enough that folding into shell/ would lose identity
- Currently lives outside this repo (the point of this exercise is consolidation)
- Can be expressed as a view over the existing registry, or the registry schema can be extended to support it

Order is driven by which external property is most worth consolidating next — not by code readiness in this repo.

Per-package shell selection

There is currently no explicit shell-selection field on packages. The relationship is one-to-many in the other direction: every shell can embed every package.

At runtime, in every shell: each integration package is embedded via <iframe src={integration.backend_url + demo.route}>. Both shell/ (src/app/integrations/[slug]/[demo]/page.tsx) and shell-dojo/ (src/app/page.tsx) do this using the exact same backend_url and route fields from manifest.yaml. Which shell a user sees is determined by which domain they visit, not by anything on the package.
For per-package E2E: tests in packages/<slug>/tests/e2e/ run against the package's own dev server on http://localhost:3000/demos/<id> — not against any shell. scripts/run-e2e-with-aimock.sh <slug> starts aimock + the package's pnpm dev + Playwright; no shell is involved. See TESTING.md for the current per-package/shared E2E split.
For shared E2E (scripts/__tests__/e2e/): these target whatever is running at BASE_URL (defaults to http://localhost:3000). The starter hero tests (starter-e2e.spec.ts) expect the starter app; demo tests (demo-e2e.spec.ts) expect a package dev server. Again, no shell is mounted.
NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL on packages points at showcase.copilotkit.dev for production links back to the canonical shell. It does not gate which shell embeds a given demo.

Implication: as long as a package's manifest.yaml is valid and its backend is deployed with deployed: true, both shells pick it up automatically on the next generate-registry.ts run. No per-package change is required to appear in a new shell.

If per-package shell targeting is ever needed (e.g., a package should only appear in Dojo-replacement but not the canonical browser), this will require a new manifest field — something like shells: ["shell", "shell-dojo"] — plus a filter in each shell's registry consumer. That structural change is not in place today.

Open questions

Domain / DNS cutover plan for ag-ui Dojo replacement. Which domain does shell-dojo/ land on, and is the external Dojo repo archived or redirected on cutover?
Shared vs. per-shell content. shell/ has substantial MDX docs under src/content/; shell-dojo/ has none. When we add a third shell, is documentation shell-specific or hoisted into shared/?
Visibility filtering. Do we ever need a package to appear in one shell but not another? If yes, add a manifest field now rather than after the second rollout makes the lack of one painful.
extract-starter and preview capture. Preview capture scripts assume the shell/ layout (showcase/shell/public/previews/, showcase/shell/src/data/registry.json). When a future shell wants previews, decide whether to hoist these assets into shared/ or dual-write.
E2E strategy once shells proliferate. Per-package E2E still tests the package dev server directly, which is correct. But do we want shell-level E2E (iframe load, nav, search) per shell, and if so, where do those specs live?

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