the platform stops knowing what VNC is

Desktop is a plugin as of today, and this is the half that leaves. sidecar/vnc/, api/desktop/ and
apps/Desktop/ are gone from src/, along with the vocabulary that was the real problem.

sidecar/protocol.ts had a VNC section: vnc:start, vnc:ensure-password, vnc:stop, four reply variants
and two types. sidecar-registry.ts had startVnc, ensureVncPassword, stopVnc, isVncConnected. Four
functions and a dozen message types in the platform, describing a feature that is not the platform's —
the rule CLAUDE.md states most plainly, and its clearest breach.

What replaced them is generic. sendSidecarCommand(kind, cmd) and isSidecarConnected(kind) know that a
command has a type and an id and that a reply carries the same id. A plugin's sidecar speaks whatever
it likes through them and nothing here has to be edited when it adds a message.

The desktop PERMISSION leaves too, and that is the interesting part: it was kind: 'execution', a kind
a plugin permission cannot have and never will, because a permission nobody can delegate is a
contradiction. The plugin expresses the same refusal as ownerOnly: ['/'] — every path under it denied
to anyone but the owner. Verified: /api/desktop, /api/desktop/vnc-password and a path that does not
exist all resolve owner-only. registry.test.ts records the round trip rather than just dropping the
key from its list.

Also gone: the app store's `vnc` entry, which would have offered an older second way to install the
same thing against a process PM2 no longer has, and four commented-out mounts left from 2026-08-13.

The disconnect-scope test used startVnc as its stand-in for "another sidecar's long-running request".
It now uses the generic door, which is the better instrument — that file is about the blast radius of
a disconnect and never had anything to do with VNC.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

src/servers/hono.ts

@@ -40,7 +40,6 @@ import { queueRouter } from './api/queue/queue';
 // The browser relay is switched off — see server.tsx. Restoring this mount means restoring the
 // registry's claim on '/browser' in the same commit, or assertPermissionTotality refuses to boot.
 // import { browserRouter } from './api/browser/router';
-// import { desktopRouter } from './api/desktop/rest';
 import { bugReportRouter } from './api/bug-report/bug-report';
 import { agentStatusRouter } from './api/agent-status/router';
 import { chatRouter } from './api/chat/chat';
@@ -156,7 +155,6 @@ const PROTECTED_MOUNTS: [prefix: string, router: ReturnType<typeof createRouter>
   ['/command-hq', commandHqRouter],
   ['/pipeline-jobs', pipelineJobsRouter],
   ['/jobs', pipelineJobsRouter], // unified jobs API (script + pipeline); /pipeline-jobs kept for the existing UI
-  // ['/desktop', desktopRouter],  // plugin — switched off 2026-08-13
 ];
 
 /** Every prefix served behind the account gate. Read by the permission totality check at boot. */