A proof-of-concept transparent heads-up display rendered entirely in Apple Metal on macOS. A central animated energy orb is surrounded by ten dynamic widgets — system KPIs, LLM telemetry, world clocks, scrolling log stream, task list, compass, schedule countdowns, status ticker, spectrum analyzer, and vitals ring — updating at 60 fps over a frosted-glass blurred backdrop.

This forms the rendering and shader pipeline architecture powering Jarvis. The HUD floats over your desktop on every Space with click-through enabled, featuring a status item menu to switch between Full, Compact, and Hidden modes.

Technical Highlights

All-Metal Graphics: Five specialized shader pipelines (orb, ornament, widget, vitals, spectrum) plus a two-pass post-process RGB-split glitch pipeline.
CoreText to MTLTexture: Text rasterization with sub-pixel marquee scrolling for live status streaming.
Per-Widget Chamfered Backdrops: Individual NSVisualEffectView layers clipped to chamfered shapes with dark glass tint overlays.
Bundled Typography: Share Tech Mono (body) and Orbitron (display) bundled under SIL Open Font License.
Centralized Parameterization: All layout, palette, animation rates, and shader constants centralized in Sources/Theme.swift.
Mode Switching: Full HUD (⌘1), Compact orb-only (⌘2), and Hidden (⌘3) modes via menu-bar item.

System Requirements

Operating System: macOS 13.0 or newer (macOS 15+ recommended)
Graphics & Hardware: Apple Silicon GPU (M-series required)
Developer Tools: Xcode 15+ with Metal toolchain & xcodegen (brew install xcodegen)

Build & Installation

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/KofTwentyTwo/MetalPOC.git
cd MetalPOC

# Generate Xcode project bundle
xcodegen generate

# Build release application bundle
xcodebuild -project MetalPOC.xcodeproj -scheme MetalPOC -configuration Release build

# Launch HUD application
open build/Release/MetalPOC.app

Architecture Overview

Window Host: Borderless transparent NSWindow set to .floating window level, multi-Space enabled (canJoinAllSpaces, stationary), with ignoresMouseEvents = true for click-through behavior.
Glass Backdrops: One NSVisualEffectView per widget, frame-clipped to chamfered geometry via CAShapeLayer.mask with .hudWindow blur and .vibrantDark appearance.
Renderer Loop: MTKViewDelegate per-frame render pipeline encoding scene elements into MTLCommandBuffer command streams.
Shader Pipelines:
- OrnamentPipeline: Corner framing brackets.
- OrbPipeline: Procedural energy core with counter-rotating rings and radial halo.
- WidgetPipeline: Textured quads with chamfered borders, scanlines, hex grid, and LED indicators.
- VitalsPipeline: Radial progress ring gauges.
- SpectrumPipeline: 32-channel audio spectrum visualization.
- GlitchPipeline: Post-process RGB-split shader firing on randomized intervals.

Project Structure

Sources/
├── App/                      NSApplication host, window setup, and status item
├── Render/                   Renderer, Metal pipelines, FrameContext, HUDElement protocol
├── Elements/
│   ├── OrbElement.swift
│   ├── OrnamentElement.swift
│   └── Widgets/              The 10 dynamic widget implementations
├── Shaders/                  Metal shader files (orb, ornament, widget, vitals, spectrum, glitch)
├── Text/                     TextRasterizer (CoreText to MTLTexture converter)
├── Resources/Fonts/          Bundled Share Tech Mono and Orbitron fonts
└── Theme.swift               Centralized theme constants and layout parameters

Tech Stack & Dependencies

Language: Swift 5.9 / Swift 6.0
Frameworks: AppKit, Metal, MetalKit, CoreText, CoreGraphics
Project Generator: XcodeGen (project.yml)

License & Credits

License: MIT License. See LICENSE for details.
Bundled Fonts: Share Tech Mono by Carrois Apostrophe and Orbitron by Matt McInerney (OFL).