Most "web desktop" or "portfolio OS" projects on GitHub are structured as templates. They look great, but the moment you want to add a custom application, swap out the file system, or customize the window behaviors, you find yourself hacking directly into someone else's monolithic codebase. It's a DX nightmare of spaghetti styling and tightly-coupled state.
We decided to build Open Web Desktop (OWD) to solve this. OWD is a wip modular framework built natively on top of the Nuxt 4 and Vue 3 ecosystem. It provides a clean, programmatic engine API so you don't "fork a template"—you build on top of a chassis. Your apps, your rules, absolute modularity.
The Core Problem: Monoliths vs. Frameworks
When building a web-based desktop environment, you are essentially writing a mini-operating system running in a single-page application. A typical portfolio template couples the window management, state synchronization, visual theme, and desktop apps into one giant block of code.
OWD decouples these responsibilities into three package types:
