I have a project that uses ktorm for database access. I am looking to start using compose desktop as the UI, but I am a little confused on how to handle the ViewModel portion that I previously had used in tornadofx. What is the best paradigm to use with compose and is there any solid implementations that I could use as a reference? Google leaves me with more questions than answers atm

Have a look at decompose and #redux

after looking at both I am assuming that it's one or the other and they do not work in conjuction? Sorry I'm just a little naive and rather new to development in general. Takes me some time to wrap my head around things

You can use both, but that would be redundant since they both solve the same problem.