Browser-based UI tools

Overview

RAFT includes several browser-based tools in addition to the core CLI:

manifest generator
config generator
report viewer

These tools are launched from the CLI and served by RAFT’s built-in FastAPI UI server.

Workflow-specific templates

The manifest generator and report viewer can use workflow-owned UI templates when a workflow configuration repository provides them. RAFT looks for files such as:

manifest-ui.json
report-ui.json
<workflow>.<species>.<input>.manifest-ui.json
<workflow>.<species>.<input>.report-ui.json

If these files are present, RAFT uses them to customize labels, manifest columns, sample types, validation hints, and report-bundle expectations. If no workflow-specific template is available, RAFT falls back to packaged generic defaults.

Manifest generator

When creating a new project, omitting --manifest causes RAFT to launch the manifest generator:

$ raft run \
    --project-id demo-lens \
    --workflow lens \
    --version v1.9-dev

You can also reopen the editor for an existing manifest:

$ raft run \
    --project-id demo-lens \
    --workflow lens \
    --version v1.9-dev \
    --manifest /path/to/manifest.tsv \
    --edit-manifest

Config generator

For new projects, RAFT can launch a config generator UI to capture workflow parameters. Use --workflow-profile to skip that UI and apply a pre-defined workflow configuration:

$ raft run \
    --project-id demo-lens \
    --workflow lens \
    --version v1.9-dev \
    --manifest /path/to/manifest.tsv \
    --workflow-profile standard

Report viewer

Launch the report viewer for a finished project:

$ raft generate-reports --project-id demo-lens

RAFT will inspect the project, detect the workflow, locate output and QC directories, and preload those files when possible.

If no local browser is available, RAFT creates a portable report bundle under outputs/reports/. Copy that .tar file to a machine with browser access and upload it through the hosted viewer. The bundle is read locally by the browser and is not saved on the web server.

Very large QC artifacts, such as LENS IGV HTML reports, are not included in portable report bundles by default. They remain available in the project outputs/qc/ directory for local review, and the bundle metadata records which files were skipped.

Demo viewer

To launch the viewer with synthetic data:

$ raft generate-reports --demo

Headless environments

When a local browser is not available (e.g. on a remote server or SSH session), RAFT automatically falls back to a headless flow for the manifest generator, configuration generator, and report viewer:

For manifest and config generators, RAFT prints a hosted UI URL and waits for an encoded response that you paste back into the terminal.
For report generation, RAFT writes a portable .tar report bundle and prints the hosted viewer URL where that bundle can be uploaded.

This allows the full browser-based UI to be used without a display on the remote host.