What this thing is, what counts as an app, and why a name you can see is not always a name you can run.
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One place to launch everything on Hexworth. Every lab, course, tool and hub is listed in a
single manifest, and Hex OS gives you two ways into it: a command line at /hex/
and an icon grid at /hex/apps.html. Same list behind both.
It exists because things used to go quietly unreachable. Five Vault cards rendered as clickable and did nothing. A final exam had no link from its own hub. If something is launchable, it belongs in the manifest, and a deploy gate now fails when a manifest entry points at a file that is not there or that nothing links to.
An app is one thing you can open: it has an id, and it has a real page
behind it. run <id> takes you there. Everything else in the listing is a way of
grouping apps, and grouping names are not runnable.
| Kind | What it is | Runnable |
|---|---|---|
| app | a page: a lab, a course hub, a tool | yes, run cloud-incubator |
| category | a grouping: course, cert-prep, incubator, track, platform | no, use ls incubator |
| house | the house an app belongs to: cloud, forge, shield, and so on | no, use ls cloud |
The confusing bit, honestly. ls with no argument prints
categories and how many apps are in each. Those look exactly like app names,
because they are printed in the same column. So run incubator is a
reasonable thing to type, and it fails, because incubator is a
category, not an app: it holds several, and the shell will tell you how many.
The shell now says so instead of just refusing. Ask for a group and it tells you what kind of thing you named, how many apps it holds, and gives you one to try.
hex> run incubator incubator is a category, not an app. It groups 8 apps. list them with ls incubator, then run one by name. e.g. run cloud-incubator
hex> ls categories, and how many apps in each hex> ls incubator the apps inside one category hex> ls cloud the apps inside one house hex> search linux match on id, name or house hex> info az-104 everything known about one app hex> run az-104 open it
If you half-remember a name, search is the one to reach for. It matches
anywhere in the name, not just the beginning.
help lists them; man <command> gives the full page for one.
Every command has a manual entry, enforced by a gate, so the list and the
manual cannot drift apart.
| Command | Does |
|---|---|
ls, search, info | find things |
run, cd | open things |
ps, stop, restart | manage your running lab sessions |
help, man, clear | the shell itself |
Most content requires you to be signed in and sorted into a house, and some requires more than that. Hex OS shows you what exists; it does not decide what you may open. If a launch bounces you, the page behind it applied its own rule.
Worth being straight about: the guard shown in info is what the target page
declares in its own code, and it runs in your browser. It is a signpost, not a lock. The
real enforcement for anything graded lives on the server.
Yes, on hardware you already own, with no flashing and nothing from an app store. In Chrome
on a Chromebook, laptop or Android device, open /hex/ and use the install icon
in the address bar, or the browser menu, then Install page as app. On iPad or
iPhone, use Share, then Add to Home Screen.
After that it opens in its own window with its own icon and no browser chrome. Long-press the icon for a shortcut straight to the launcher grid.
No, and that is deliberate rather than unfinished. Installing changes how Hex OS opens, not what it can reach without a network. Every lab is a live container session and every course page is fetched when you open it, so an offline shell could list things and launch none of them.
Report it. A manifest entry pointing at a missing file should be impossible, because a deploy gate checks every entry resolves and that nothing is orphaned. So if you find one, the gate has a hole worth knowing about.
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