SMART Suite
Stop scripting the WRDS pull. Click the icon.
Bundles R-portable, Shiny, and a full WRDS pull pipeline inside a single Electron app. The user clicks an icon, the app spawns R, serves Shiny on localhost, and runs the data extraction without anyone touching a terminal or installing R.
Empirical management research keeps re-solving the same WRDS extraction problem. Each project rebuilds the Compustat–CRSP–BoardEx–ExecuComp–ISS–RavenPack join from scratch, each rebuild introduces a different category of subtle bug, and the cost compounds across collaborators. The data layer becomes the largest invisible tax on the field.
Electron main process spawns a portable R runtime; R serves a Shiny UI on localhost:3838; a 16-stage R pipeline progressively assembles the CEO–firm–governance–market panel. State management (StateManager.R) supports resumeable runs. Cross-platform builds target mac arm64 (.dmg), Windows (NSIS), and Linux (AppImage + .deb). Auto-update via electron-updater. The signed .dmg already exists in dist/.