what about local filesystem access, os integration, and all the other things that you expect a desktop app to be able to do (like in this case executing a separate binary) which violate the security models of browsers?
App becomes a local backend server that has privileged access to the machine (with control over what it accesses, maybe give it a specific user), and a web UI to access the app.
Someone in the tree of replies for your parent explained and was contemplating actually going through with it.
