I want to create a web/browser-based GUI for a command-line python application. The goal is to make use of HTML/JS technologies to create this GUI. As the application itself, it needs to run on Linux and Windows, and the interface will be accessible only from localhost (not exposed to internet). The GUI will contain 5 to 10 pages.

I don't want a traditional desktop GUI that includes HTML/JS, but just a bunch of html files and some kind of controller between those and the application.

I also want to make use of asynchronous programming (ajax like) so I can load and print data in the GUI without refreshing the whole page. I'd probably use jQuery for that and a couple other things.

How would you recommend to design this? Performance is not the key here, I'm rather looking at reliability, portability and simplicity.

I'm thinking of using a lightweight python HTTP server / framework (like CherryPy) and maybe later a Python templating system (at the begining it will just be a couple pages).

EDIT:
I'm looking for ideas/recommendations how to build this, not for alternatives to browser/web-based GUI.