VLC for JSX. Double-click any interactive artifact — JSX, TSX, HTML, SVG, Markdown, Mermaid — to run it natively on your desktop. Sandboxed, local, offline. Your files never leave your machine.

Built for artifacts from Claude, v0, Canvas, or anywhere else that produces single-file interactive content.

Grab the installer for your platform from Releases:

• Windows: .msi or -setup.exe
• macOS: .dmg
• Linux: .deb or .AppImage

Windows installers are Authenticode-signed. Code signing provided free of charge by the SignPath Foundation under the SignPath Foundation OSS signing program, using a certificate issued by SignPath.io.

• Opens any supported artifact file natively. Double-click in Explorer/Finder and it just runs.
• Sandboxed rendering. Artifacts run in an isolated iframe with no access to your files, cookies, or other artifacts' data.
• Library. Imported artifacts persist across sessions in a local SQLite database.
• 15 vendor libraries built in — React, Recharts, D3, Three.js, Chart.js, Plotly, Mermaid, and more. Most Claude artifacts run with no extra setup.
• Drag and drop. Drop files onto the window to import.
• Export to HTML. Any artifact can be exported as a standalone HTML file.
• Watched folders. Point Stele at a folder and new artifact files auto-import.

Artifacts can opt in to richer capabilities — network access, camera, geolocation, clipboard — by declaring them in an @stele-manifest block at the top of the file:

/**
 * @stele-manifest
 * name: Site Pre-Start Check
 * version: 1.0.0
 * author: TPB Kitchens
 * description: Daily site safety check
 * requires:
 *   - geolocation
 *   - camera
 *   - network: https://webhooks.example.com
 */
export default function PreStart() { /* ... */ }

On first run, Stele shows a consent dialog listing exactly what the artifact is asking for. You can Allow or Block. Grants persist per-artifact (keyed by content hash) and can be revoked any time in Settings → Permissions.

Default policy for artifacts without a manifest: presentation-only. window.storage still works for back-compat, but network requests, camera, geolocation, and microphone are all blocked by browser-level enforcement (CSP + iframe allow attribute).

Capabilities you can declare:

Wildcard subdomains are supported: network: https://*.example.com.

Ask Claude to create a JSX artifact as you normally would, then download the .jsx file (or copy to a file locally). Open it with Stele.

For artifacts that need capabilities (network, camera, etc.), ask Claude to add an @stele-manifest block listing what's required. A short prompt you can paste into your Claude project:

When generating JSX artifacts, add a JSDoc block at the top with @stele-manifest listing the capabilities the artifact needs (geolocation, camera, microphone, clipboard-read, clipboard-write, or network: https://host). Only declare what's actually used.

git clone https://github.com/stele-app/stele.git
cd stele
pnpm install
cd vendor-src && pnpm install && cd ..
pnpm prebuild:vendor
pnpm tauri build

Requires Node.js 22+, pnpm 10+, Rust toolchain, and platform-specific Tauri dependencies (see Tauri docs).

pnpm tauri dev

Note: file associations only register when installed via the platform installer — in dev mode, use drag-and-drop or the Import button.

• Frontend: React 19, TypeScript, Vite
• Backend: Tauri 2, Rust, SQLite
• Sandbox: esbuild-wasm for JSX/TSX transpilation, vendor UMD bundles, CSP-hardened iframe

Paired artifacts (Archetype C — two .stele files holding ECDH-derived shared keys) talk to each other via WebRTC. The handshake needs a signaling server to relay SDP/ICE envelopes. Stele ships a reference signaling Worker in packages/signaling/ and the stele.au/pair generator points artifacts at a public demo deployment of it.

The default https://stele-signaling.unscramble-apiworkersdev.workers.dev is fine for trying things out. It's free-tier hosted, rate-limited per IP, and may be paused if abuse hits the cost ceiling — not for anything you depend on. For real use, run your own:

cd packages/signaling
pnpm exec wrangler login
pnpm exec wrangler deploy

Cloudflare prints your worker URL when deploy completes. In the manifest of any paired artifact, override the default by adding a signaling: line:

/**
 * @stele-manifest
 * archetype: paired
 * pairing_id: ...
 * partner_pubkey: ...
 * private_key: ...
 * signaling: https://your-worker.workers.dev
 */

Optional: for cross-NAT pairs that fall back to TURN relay, set up Cloudflare Realtime / Calls and push two secrets to the worker:

pnpm exec wrangler secret put CALLS_TOKEN_ID
pnpm exec wrangler secret put CALLS_API_TOKEN

Free-tier Cloudflare gives you 100k Worker requests/day, 1M Durable Object operations/month, and 1 TB/mo of TURN bandwidth — comfortably tens of thousands of pair-chat sessions. No accounts on stele.au, no rate limits we control, no demo to pause.

Stele is local-first and collects no data. See PRIVACY.md.

Apache 2.0. See LICENSE.