harness · view · interact · respond
A lightweight, view-first workbench for agentic development: a polished code and Git explorer wrapped around the terminals where Claude Code, Codex, and your shell do the work.
hvir is not an IDE and not an editor. It serves one workflow: “I hand work to agents frequently, but I want to stay in the loop.” tmux is too hands-off for exploring a codebase and its history; a full IDE is more than this workflow needs. hvir sits between them.
- Local and SSH projects, with auto discovered Git worktrees as workspaces.
- View files, rendered Markdown, source, diffs, blame, changes, history, or the commit graph
- Multiple shell, Claude Code, and Codex sessions split, recover, resume, and report attention without a daemon.
- Small ui elements try to keep the viewer focused on content instead of chrome.
- Dark/light themes, viewer and terminal splits, three-state pane controls, and configurable core shortcuts.
- Lightweight is a feel: heavy filesystem, Git, watching, and telemetry work stays off the render thread.
Install hvir from its latest GitHub Release, then launch it from any directory:
curl -fsSL https://github.com/jarmak-personal/hvir/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash
hvir .The installer selects and verifies the release's native package for Linux x64, Linux arm64, or Apple-silicon macOS before invoking the platform installation step.
hvir does expect the system git binary. Claude Code and Codex launch options use those CLIs
from the selected host's login-shell environment; plain shells work without either.
The same workspace can move from reading to review to a terminal-focused handoff without turning the workbench into an IDE.
| Rendered documentation | Branch-point diff |
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| Terminal focus | Live HTML beside the harness |
hvir's maintainer-authored issue pipeline began as a security boundary: public text is untrusted input to an agent. It is now also a deliberate contribution model. Public contribution ends with defining worthwhile problems and outcomes through discussion; maintainers decide product fit and readiness, author every canonical GitHub Issue, and own implementation. Outside issues and pull requests are not accepted contribution paths, even if future tooling provides stronger prompt-injection defenses.
Start in the Discussion category that best fits:
- Bug reports for broken or incorrect hvir behavior.
- Feature requests for a specific proposed product change.
- Documentation for missing, incorrect, or unclear project documentation.
- Q&A for usage and support questions.
- General for workflows, show-and-tell, and other hvir-related conversation.
Announcements is the maintainer-to-user surface for updates and requests for feedback. GitHub Releases remains the canonical release surface; an announcement may discuss or link to a release, but does not replace it.
Development requires Node 24 or newer; release CI uses Node 24.
Start with the contributor guide. It separates public product discussion from the maintainer development workflow. Substantive implementation is aligned in a governing issue before code or a pull request; the repository also includes optional, contributor-only agent skills for creating and implementing issues.
npm ci
npm run verify
npm run smoke
npm run smoke:capacity
npm run performance:capacity # controlled machine only
npm run devnpm ci downloads Electron and rebuilds native dependencies for Electron's ABI. On a
headless Linux machine, run the Electron smoke under xvfb-run.
Raw npm run dev and unsigned npm run build:dir are not the macOS LAN SSH acceptance identity;
use the
signed coexistence workflow for that boundary.
See the performance gauntlet and packaging guide for release acceptance.
| Document | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Design and ADR index | Product philosophy, hard boundaries, architecture, and decision index |
| Architecture decisions | Canonical decision-only ADR records and template |
| Historical implementation plan | Frozen early implementation context; active work lives in GitHub issues |
| Contributor guide | Issue-first workflow, architecture discipline, and verification |
| GitHub project management | Canonical labels, normalized planning records, and Project automation commands |
| AGENTS.md | Repository rules for AI collaborators |
| CLAUDE.md | Claude entrypoint for the shared repository instructions |
hvir is available under the MIT License. See Third-party notices for software redistributed with hvir, including the locally modified terminal runtime.