Getting started#

Install#

From an installer. Windows: run Ohm-<version>-x64-Setup.exe and follow the wizard (it installs per user, so there is no admin prompt). macOS: open the DMG and drag Ohm to Applications. Both are built from installers/.

From source. Node 22 or newer:

git clone <repo> && cd ohm
npm install
npm start          # production build, then run

For day-to-day work use the dev loop instead — Vite serves the UI with hot reload and Electron restarts when the main process changes:

npm run dev

And before committing:

npm run check      # engine-boundary lint + typecheck + tests

First run#

Ohm creates Documents/Ohm and seeds it with example scripts (ai/, models/, browse.ohm, math.ohm, README.md and others). The window opens on a normal web page — it is a browser first.

Across the top is the tab strip and the address bar. Down the left is the activity bar:

Nothing is modal: the page keeps loading while the editor is open, and the console keeps its Lua session between lines.

Run your first script#

Open the console (Ctrl+` ) and type:

print($\frac{22}{7}$)

That is the whole idea of the language: $…$ is LaTeX math used as an ordinary Lua expression. It prints 3.142857143.

Now something that uses the browser. Open the Scripts panel, hover a script and press ▶, or open browse.ohm in the editor and press F5:

local tab = browser.open("https://example.com", { hidden = true })
print(tab.title())

The tab runs in the background; Ctrl+Shift+H shows hidden tabs if you want to watch.

Connect a model#

Open Settings (⚙) and add a model profile. The quickest local option is Ollama if you already run it; otherwise add an API profile and paste a key — keys are encrypted by the OS and never handed to the UI or to scripts.

Then:

print(ai.generate("Summarise the page I have open in three bullets."))

See Models and settings for every provider, the models folder, Hugging Face downloads, embedded llama.cpp and in-browser (WebGPU) models.

Make a project#

Projects turn a folder into a workspace with links, documents, data, scripts, prompts, experiments, curves, graphs and specs. Open the Projects panel (Ctrl+Shift+P), create one, and drop a PDF into its Files section — you can read and annotate it in place.

The Projects guide covers the rest, including deep-research projects that fan out searches across hidden tabs and write a cited report.

Read the help inside Ohm#

This documentation ships with the app. Press ? in the activity bar and it opens as a searchable site — the same guides, reference pages and specifications you are reading now, with "Open in a tab" if you would rather keep it beside your work.

The site is generated from docs/, so a build of Ohm always ships the help that matches it. From source, npm run docs recompiles it; npm run check fails if it is stale.

Where things live#

All of them can be moved — from Settings → Folders, or with --data-dir, --profile-dir, --scripts-dir and --models-dir for one run. See Storage and Environment.