# Show HN: Artifold – A local-first library for AI-generated HTML artifacts > Source: > Published: 2026-05-26 23:48:42+00:00 **Your AI artifacts have a home now.** Index, search, preview, **share with one click**, and use your past work as the style guide for your next one. "I've started preferring HTML as an output format instead of Markdown. The added expressiveness means I get overall better output, and the chance of someone actually reading your spec, report or PR writeup is much higher if it's in HTML. … When writing this article, I asked Claude Code to read through my code folder and find all the HTML files I've generated, group and categorize them …"— Thariq, (Claude Code team)[The Unreasonable Effectiveness of HTML] **Artifold is that library.** If you're shifting from Markdown to HTML for specs, reports, designs, prototypes, throwaway editors — the way Thariq describes — Artifold is where they live. You've been making a lot of HTML with AI lately: Claude Artifacts, ChatGPT Canvas, v0, Lovable, Cursor. They land in `~/Downloads` or some project folder, you bookmark a tab, you mean to come back to that ROI calculator you made three weeks ago — and you can't find it. That's the whole reason this exists. I made a 30-day workout tracker for my partner, lost it in a maze of folders, regenerated a worse version, and decided to just build the index myself. Local-first, fast, runs entirely on your machine. Plus the part where, when you *do* want to share an artifact, it's one click to a permanent public URL. Click any card → hit the share icon → in ~30 seconds you get back a permanent URL like `https://you.github.io/artifold-share/abc12345.html` that you can paste into iMessage, Slack, email, anywhere. URL is copied to your clipboard automatically. Free forever (uses your GitHub Pages quota — no Artifold infrastructure, no sign-up, no per-share fees, no expiry). Anyone with the link sees the fully-rendered report; recipient needs nothing installed. Sidebar filters by tool, status (shared / local), category, date. ⌘K palette to jump to anything by name, prompt, or intent. Click → in-app preview pane, no tab spam. Dark/light themes. Live auto-rescan — drop a new file in any watched folder and it appears within seconds. → **See the side-by-side gallery**: four prompts run through `claude-sonnet-4` *twice*— once plainly, once via `/craft` . Same model, same prompt, visibly different output.After installing the Claude Code skill, type `/craft a 30-day strength tracker for a beginner` in any session. The skill: - Reads your library to see styles you've used, then deliberately picks a *different*direction so your next artifact doesn't look like the last one (the "all AI output looks the same" problem, actively fought) - OR inherits a specific style: `/craft a poker probability explainer, like dobble` — pulls dobble's actual CSS as the design baseline - Applies 12 opinionated design principles distilled from Refactoring UI, Linear, and Vercel/Geist (every one cited) - Avoids 15 specific AI-slop signatures (purple-gradient hero, identical bento cards, decorative emoji on every list item, glassmorphism, etc.) - Saves to `~/artifold-inbox/2026-05-26-.html` — auto-indexed in Artifold within ~2 seconds Your past work becomes your style guide for the next one. The loop closes. If you have [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code), paste this prompt — Claude figures out the rest, installs everything, and walks you through first-run: Tip **Copy this into Claude Code:** ``` Install Artifold from https://github.com/shubhamgoel27/artifold using pipx (or pip if pipx isn't installed). Then run `artifold init` and help me pick a folder to watch. After that, run `artifold install-skill` to set up the /craft skill. Open the dashboard when ready and tell me what to try first. ``` That's the whole install. No terminal commands to memorize, no dependencies to debug — Claude handles the awkward parts. If you'd rather drive: ``` pipx install artifold # or: pip install artifold artifold init # interactive wizard artifold # serves dashboard + opens browser artifold install-skill # adds /craft to ~/.claude/skills/ ``` Don't have `pipx` ? Run `brew install pipx` (mac) or `python -m pip install --user pipx` (anywhere), then the above. ``` /craft a one-pager comparing three SF apartments /craft a 30-day strength tracker, like my last one /craft a probability explainer for poker, in the style of dobble ``` (Restart Claude Code once after `artifold install-skill` so the skill loads.) The first run installs Playwright's headless Chromium (~170 MB) for artifact thumbnails. After that, only new/changed files re-shoot. **Auto-indexes** every `*.html` in your watched folders. Groups `-v2` , ` (1)` , `print` variants into one card with a version dropdown. Skips templates, `.git` repos, and anything buried 3 levels deep — your library stays clean even when your folders aren't. **Source-aware** — fingerprints Claude / ChatGPT / v0 / Lovable / Bolt / Gemini artifacts from HTML markers, tags each card with the tool that made it. Also reads `` tags (which the `/craft` skill emits) for zero-effort provenance. **Visual** — every artifact gets a real screenshot thumbnail. Click a card → slide-out preview pane with tabs for Provenance (source URL, prompt, model, tags) and Design (palette swatches, fonts, mood flags). **Live** — `artifold serve` watches your folders. Drop in a new artifact and it appears in the dashboard within ~2 seconds, no refresh. **Searchable** — ⌘K palette runs across titles, prompts, intents, and exposed actions (toggle theme, switch view, rescan, import). Linear / Raycast pattern. ``` artifold # default: scan + serve + open browser artifold init # interactive setup wizard artifold add # watch another folder artifold roots # list watched folders artifold scan # one-shot rescan artifold open # open the existing dashboard artifold share # publish to public URL + copy to clipboard artifold share --list # all shares artifold share --revoke # take a public share down artifold import # fetch a public Claude/v0/Lovable share URL artifold link --tool claude --source URL --prompt "..." artifold info # show provenance for a file artifold designs # list design fingerprints artifold designs --template # dump CSS + skeleton (paste into Claude) artifold inbox [topic] # print the canonical path for a new artifact artifold install-skill # install /craft into ~/.claude/skills/ artifold doctor # check setup; tells you exactly what to fix ``` `~/Library/Application Support/artifold/config.json` on macOS, `~/.config/artifold/config.json` on Linux: ``` { "roots": ["/Users/me/Downloads", "/Users/me/work"], "allow_repos": [], // dirs with their own .git to include anyway "max_depth": 3, "drop_dir": null, // where `artifold import` saves (default ~/artifold-inbox) "enable_intent": false, // opt-in LLM intent metadata (Claude Haiku) "categories": { // extend the auto-tag keywords "Research": ["paper", "experiment", "ablation"] } } ``` Cache (thumbnails, manifest, dashboard, Playwright Chromium) lives under `~/Library/Caches/artifold/` . Wiping it just regenerates everything from your real files — cache is replaceable, your source files are sacred. | Key | What | |---|---| `⌘K` / `Ctrl+K` | palette (actions + artifact search) | `↵` | open selected in preview / run action | `⇧↵` | open selected in new tab | `Esc` | close palette / preview | `/` | focus the search box | | Click card | open in preview pane (in-app, no tab spam) | `⌘` /`Ctrl` -click | open in a new browser tab | Artifold's core is **fully local — no LLM, no network, no API key required**. If you want richer metadata (a one-line intent per artifact, topic tags, audience detection — used for smarter search): ``` pipx install 'artifold[intent]' export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-... artifold scan --intent ``` ~$0.003 per artifact with Claude Haiku, cached forever by content hash so re-scans are free. ~$0.05 for 15 artifacts. Toggle off with `artifold scan --no-intent` . Skip the extra and the feature simply doesn't appear. **Not a cloud product.** Nothing leaves your machine unless you explicitly`artifold share` . There's no sign-up, no account, no Artifold server somewhere. Your library is`~/artifold-inbox/` and the dirs you pointed it at — that's it.**Not a replacement for git** or your existing organization. It's a*lens*on whatever you already have.**Not opinionated about where your files live.** Multi-root by design. Want it to watch`~/Downloads` +`~/Documents` +`~/work/reports` ? Run`artifold add` three times.**Not trying to be everything for everyone.** Built for the specific pain of "where did I put that thing I generated last month." A artifold is a working collection of pages that informs your next piece of work. Your past artifacts become the reference set for the next one. It's not an archive (cold storage), it's a working library. The PyPI package is `artifold` because `artifold` was taken. CLI command is `artifold` . Same pattern as `open-interpreter` / `interpreter` . **v0.5.2, alpha — live on PyPI.** Tested on macOS Sequoia; Linux should work; Windows untested. Single-developer project made in evenings — issues + PRs welcome, but I'm shipping what I personally use rather than what's broadly polished. The [ /craft gallery](https://shubhamgoel27.github.io/artifold/) shows side-by-side outputs (default Claude vs `/craft` ) on four prompts through Opus 4.7 — if you want to see what the skill actually does before installing, start there.If you try it and something feels off, [open an issue](/shubhamgoel27/artifold/issues/new) — even one line is helpful, "the X button is confusing" is exactly the feedback that improves things. In rough priority order: - **Mobile dashboard**— currently breaks below 760px - — opt-in consolidation into`artifold adopt ` `~/artifold-inbox/` for existing files (keeping multi-root for those who want it) - **Cloudflare Pages backend** for`artifold share` (alternative to GH Pages for users without`gh` CLI) - — direct one-command generation, opt-in via`artifold generate --like ` `[intent]` extra - **Markdown rendering**— first-class support for`*.md` - **Semantic search**— when you remember the gist but not the title - **Version diff view**— when you iterate v1/v2/v3, see what changed - **A real test suite**— currently human-tested [@shubhamgoel27](https://github.com/shubhamgoel27) — built because I genuinely needed it. If you find it useful, **starring the repo is the single best thing you can do** so other people building with AI find it. The `/craft` skill took real research to make non-generic — the 12 design principles trace to Refactoring UI chapters, Linear's [Method](https://linear.app/method/introduction), Vercel's [Geist](https://vercel.com/geist), and a couple of recent AI-slop critique articles. If you ship cool reports with it, tag me — I love seeing what people make. MIT