Hephaestus v0.3.0

Free desktop app · windows · macos · linux

Design help that
shows its work.

Hephaestus picks your colours, lays out your pages and tells you what's wrong with the result. Every answer comes from rules written in the app — the kind you can read, argue with, and ignore when you disagree.

  • works offline
  • no account
  • no AI guessing
  • about 6 mb

Four things, all of them yours

§ 01 — what it does

No cloud, no seats, no monthly bill. It's one program on your machine that does the parts of design that are tedious and repeatable, and leaves the rest to you.

01 · AKMON

Colours from a sentence

Type what you want — "calm banking app", "loud poster" — and it builds the whole palette: background, text, accents, borders, states. Contrast is checked while it works, not after.

02 · CANVAS

Layouts that stay tidy

Drop blocks on a canvas and everything keeps its alignment and spacing. Pages, links between pages, and an HTML export when you're done — viewable full-screen before you use it anywhere.

03 · MERKHET

A review you can argue with

Point it at a design and it lists what's weak — contrast too low, spacing too tight, too many colours fighting — each with a specific fix it will make, or not, at your word. It never claims a repair it hasn't measured twice.

04 · TRENDS

Places to start

1,750 directions with colours, type and layout rules already paired, each with a recipe you can pull apart. Browse them, search them, steal one, keep going.

The screens, in the order you meet them

§ 02 — the app

There are six, and that's the whole app. Nothing here is a mockup — every line below is what the screen in front of you does.

home

The bench

Everything you've saved, the state of the current palette, and a grade that moves as you work. The greeting changes with what you last did and what's still open.

five stats, live
nothing loaded
akmon

Colour

One line of intent in, a whole palette out — painted twice on the same page so you can see what the colour is doing, with every surface measured in steps apart instead of vibes.

7 roles + states
contrast while it works
canvas

The page

Blocks you can click, drag and resize, on a grid that holds its own alignment. Text, images, stacks. Links between pages. An export you can open in a browser and check before you ship it.

16-column grid
export one click
merkhet

The reviewer

Lists what's weak, with the measurement that says so and the fix it would make. Apply one, apply all, undo any of them — it re-measures after each change and tells you what actually moved.

measured twice
every fix revertible
trends

The library

1,750 directions, each one a real starting point: palette, type, spacing rules, and the reason it hangs together. Search, sort, take one and change half of it.

1,750 entries
all on your disk
ask

The questions

Type a question about your own work — "is this too busy", "why does the footer feel off" — and it answers from what's on the canvas, naming the blocks it looked at.

rules, not guesses
says when it can't tell

What the colour engine actually gives back

Three sentences, run through Akmon as it ships — the same call the app makes, with the sentence as the seed and light mode asked for. Nothing below was chosen by hand.

“calm banking app”Calm Banking Slag · analogous · background #EDF8F6
“loud poster”Loud Poster Hammer · complement · background #FFF8F9
“a bookshop that sells good coffee”Bookshop That Crucible · neutral with an accent · background #FFFDFB

surface · border · muted · primary · secondary · accent — copied out of the engine, not out of a designer's file.

What it isn't

§ 03 — the catch

Worth saying out loud, because most tools avoid it.

How to get it

§ 04 — availability

Pick your system. Each card fills itself from the newest published release of the repo this site was built from — and when there is no public release to read, it says not posted yet instead of pointing you at something that isn't there.

01 Windows

Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit. An installer, one .exe, nothing else dragged in.

not posted yet
02 macOS

Apple silicon and Intel, one disk image for both. Unusual for a free tool, deliberate.

not posted yet
03 Linux

Any recent distro: an AppImage that runs, and a .deb for the ones that want a package.

not posted yet

checking for a published release…

Nothing here is typed by hand. The deploy step points this page at the repo it was built from, and the cards take whatever the newest published release actually holds — file name, size, the works. A repo that is private, or a release that was never published, or a network that won't answer all leave the cards as they are: no link invented, no button that goes nowhere. macOS builds aren't signed with a developer certificate, so on the first launch right-click the app and choose Open. Everything else installs normally.

The small print, in full

§ 05 — details
Version
0.3.0
Platforms
win · mac · linux
Disk
~6 mb installed
Network needed
never
Engine
4 files, all readable
Directions in the library
1,750
Accounts, keys, telemetry
none of the three
Licence
MIT
Made by
one person, on purpose
This page
one file, one allowed call