On macOS, apps launched from Finder/Dock inherit a minimal environment
(PATH is just /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin). This caused two problems:
1. Agent binaries like codex were not detected (findExecutable failed)
2. Terminals spawned by Paseo had no access to user-installed tools
(node, bun, direnv — all "command not found")
Fix: at Electron startup, spawn the user's login shell and capture its
full environment via JSON.stringify(process.env) using UUID markers.
This is the same battle-tested approach VS Code uses. The resolved
environment is merged into process.env before the daemon starts, so
all child processes — agents, terminals, git operations — inherit the
correct environment automatically.
This replaces the previous approach of invoking resolveShellEnv() (via
the shell-env npm package) at multiple scattered call sites. Now there
is a single source of truth: process.env is enriched once at startup.
Changes:
- New: packages/desktop/src/login-shell-env.ts (VS Code approach)
- Removed: resolveShellEnv(), shell-env dependency, $SHELL -lic probes
- Simplified: applyProviderEnv() and findExecutable() now trust process.env
Electron apps on macOS inherit a minimal PATH (/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin)
that doesn't include Homebrew or other user-installed tools. This caused
GitHub features (PR status, Create PR) to show as unavailable in the
desktop app even when gh CLI was installed and authenticated.
Extract findExecutable, resolveShellEnv, and related utilities from
provider-launch-config.ts into a shared utils/executable.ts module.
Use findExecutable("gh") with lazy caching so the login-shell resolution
happens once per daemon lifetime. Pass resolveShellEnv() as the process
env for all gh subprocess calls.
Update all consumers to import directly from utils/executable.ts —
no re-exports through provider-launch-config.ts.
Mohamed Boudra