Hydrogen Desktop

The entire Adom Hydrogen workspace as a native Windows app — your editor, the AI agent, your repositories, and the full electronics‑design toolchain, running locally on your own machine.

Hydrogen Desktop (HD) is the whole Adom Hydrogen experience packaged as one signed Windows application. Sign in with your Adom account and HD provisions a complete local workspace for you: a Linux dev environment (WSL2), VS Code, Claude Code, the Adom skills + CLIs for hardware design, and a live bridge to your desktop — all set up automatically, hands‑off, in a couple of minutes.

You write code and design boards locally; Adom is your identity and your toolchain. Nothing about your work has to live in the cloud.

What you get

• A full Linux dev workspace — Ubuntu 24.04 (WSL2), VS Code (code‑server) with a clean dark layout, ready the moment setup finishes.
• Claude Code, built in — the AI agent is wired into the editor and the terminal, signed in with your Claude subscription.
• The Adom toolchain — adom-cli, parts search (Mouser/DigiKey/JLCPCB), KiCad/Fusion bridges, the wiki client, and 59 hd-* skills, all kept current automatically.
• A bridge to your real desktop — drive KiCad and Fusion 360, send files, capture screenshots, and control your browser, straight from the workspace.
• Signed and self‑updating — one verified publisher; the in‑workspace updater keeps your skills and tools fresh without you lifting a finger.

Install

On a Windows PC? Download the release below — don't pkg install it. The adom-wiki pkg install adom/hydrogen-desktop command does not install the app. It installs the skills that let an Adom container/workspace agent discover and remotely drive a running Hydrogen Desktop (see driving-hd-remotely). To put Hydrogen Desktop on an actual Windows machine, download and run the signed installer from the release below.

1. Download the latest Hydrogen Desktop … x64‑setup.exe from the releases on this page.
2. Run it. The installer is signed by Adom Industries, Inc. (same publisher as Adom Desktop), so Windows SmartScreen recognizes it. It installs per‑user — no admin prompt — and launches HD when it finishes.
3. Sign in with your Adom account. That's the only thing HD needs from you up front.

From there, HD takes over and sets the workspace up for you.

→ Want to see every screen first? Read the full step-by-step install walkthrough — the installer, both sign-ins, the WSL2 setup, all 20 steps, and the finished workspace, each one screenshotted.

First run: the automated setup

On first launch HD runs a fully automated 20‑step setup cascade. It streams every step live, and the only things it needs from you are the two sign-ins (Adom, then Claude). It builds the Linux workspace, wires up the editor and toolchain, proves every connection actually works, and ends by opening your first AI conversations. The whole thing takes ~2–4 minutes on a typical machine (most of it the one‑time workspace download). Three moments are worth calling out — and the install walkthrough shows all of them screen by screen.

1 · It builds your Linux workspace

HD's first and biggest job is creating the environment everything else runs in. It provisions a dedicated WSL2 Ubuntu distro called Adom‑Workspace — enabling the WSL2 feature first if your PC doesn't have it yet (the one point where HD may need a reboot, after which it picks right back up on its own), then downloading and SHA‑verifying a pre‑baked ~400 MB "golden" image, importing it, and starting code‑server (VS Code in the browser) inside it. The cascade refuses to advance until that environment is genuinely up and answering. From there it wires the editor to the platform in a handful of quick steps — reloading to activate the pre‑baked adom‑vscode extension, writing the Adom platform URLs, injecting and validating your Adom session token so every tool authenticates as you, and applying a clean dark VS Code layout.

2 · It connects everything, then asks you to sign in to Claude — once

Before bringing the AI online, HD proves the workspace can actually reach what it needs: it confirms the Adom Desktop companion app is running, starts the in‑workspace relay, and tests both the fast direct path and the file‑transfer path — with a hard gate that adom‑cli reaches Adom on both the cloud and the proxy routes (if it can't, HD stops here rather than limp forward). Then it installs the Claude Code CLI and reaches the one and only step that needs you: signing in to Claude. HD restores your saved Claude credentials if they're still valid; otherwise it highlights and clicks the Claude.ai Subscription button and you approve in the browser. HD deliberately saves this single human moment for last, after all the hands‑off work is already done.

3 · It opens your first AI conversations for you

With everything wired up, HD doesn't drop you at an empty editor — it starts your first AI conversations automatically. It opens the Welcome thread (your first prompt already sent), then quietly spins up two more: one that detects which electronics‑design tools you use (KiCad, Fusion 360, Altium, OrCAD/Cadence) and reports back what it found, and another that locates your InstaPCB quotes and offers to wire up a live loop that re‑prices your board as your KiCad design changes. By the time you glance over, an AI has already mapped your stack and lined up the next steps. Every one of these is fully opt‑in — nothing opens an app or writes code until you say so.

When the cascade finishes you're looking at a fully configured editor with Claude Code ready and your Welcome page open — the workspace shown in the hero at the top of this page.

Adom Desktop — the bridge to your real machine

Hydrogen Desktop installs Adom Desktop (AD) for you automatically. When you run the HD installer, it bundles and installs the matching signed Adom Desktop build in the same pass — it checks your installed version first and never downgrades a newer AD you already have — and from then on HD runs it embedded: AD lives quietly in the background and HD owns the system tray, so there's nothing extra for you to launch or manage.

Adom Desktop is the bridge between your sandboxed Linux workspace and the rest of your real Windows machine. The workspace itself is isolated inside WSL2; AD is what lets the AI agent and tools reach out of it to do real work on your computer — drive KiCad and Fusion 360, read and capture your screen, stream files back and forth, control your browser, and run UI automation against native apps. The in‑workspace relay connects to AD as a bridge client, so a prompt like "open this board in KiCad and run DRC" actually reaches the real KiCad on your desktop and comes back with the result.

It's signed by the same publisher as HD (Adom Industries, Inc.). For the full feature list, release notes, and the public download, see the Adom Desktop page on the wiki.

A real Linux workspace, local to your PC

The heart of HD is a genuine Linux environment running on your own machine through WSL2 — not a remote VM, not a cloud container you rent. HD provisions a dedicated, isolated Ubuntu 24.04 distro (Adom‑Workspace) from a pre‑baked golden image, and everything Linux‑side lives inside that container: VS Code (code‑server), Claude Code, adom‑cli, the design tools, and the skills. Because it's WSL2, it boots in seconds, uses your CPU and memory natively, and stays cleanly separated from the rest of your system — including your other WSL distros and Docker Desktop, which HD never touches. Your repositories stay on the Windows side, never trapped inside the distro, so they survive resets and reinstalls untouched. Your Adom account is identity only; the work runs locally, and nothing about it has to leave your machine.

Plugged into the Adom wiki — the whole community's apps, skills & components

HD comes wired into the Adom wiki, the shared registry where the whole Adom community publishes apps, skills, and components. From inside the workspace, you — and the AI — can discover and install any of them in one step with adompkg: a parts‑search app, a KiCad‑bridge skill, a ready‑made connector or symbol/footprint component. Each is a signed, versioned package with its own page, screenshots, and docs, so you always know exactly what you're pulling in. The workspace even keeps itself current, re‑pulling newer skills and tools on its own.

This is what makes HD more than a local IDE — it's a place to collaborate. When someone cracks a hard part of electronics design (a vendor integration, a footprint generator, a board‑bring‑up skill), they publish it to the wiki and everyone's workspace can pull it the next day. The whole point is to make electronics prototyping stronger, better, and faster — for everyone, together.

AI that designs alongside you

Claude Code is built into both the editor and the terminal and signed in with your own subscription, so the AI isn't a sidebar — it's a teammate that can read your project, search the wiki, install the right skill, and (through Adom Desktop) drive your real EDA tools. On first run it already opens conversations that map your design stack and offer to wire your KiCad work to live InstaPCB pricing that re‑quotes as your board changes. Everything stays opt‑in: the AI proposes, you decide what actually runs.

Your conversations, anywhere — Remote Control + the conversation API

HD treats each Claude chat as a first-class conversation you (and the AI) can manage through a simple API: list what's open, open or close conversations, switch between them, read each one's title, message count, and draft, and type into a specific one — instantly or with a human typing animation.

The standout: turn on Remote Control for any conversation and HD hands you a claude.ai URL. Open it in your browser or the Claude mobile app and you're viewing and driving the same conversation in the cloud — start at your desk in HD, continue from your phone. And because HD automatically matches each live conversation to its on-disk log, you can always get its session id and read the full transcript.

This is for humans and for the AI in your workspace alike (see the bundled hd-claude-management skill). Full guide: Claude Conversation Management →

Driving HD from outside (developers / cloud agents)

HD is also fully drivable from an external AI or script — e.g. one in an Adom cloud container — through the adom-desktop (Adom Desktop) verbs, the same way these conversation features were built and tested. If you're automating HD from outside (calling its control API with hd_api, screenshotting windows, driving the real Chrome over the extension bridge), read Driving Hydrogen Desktop remotely → — it covers the verbs and the mistakes to avoid (use hd_api not curl; prefer background UIA/CDP over blind synthetic keystrokes; the control port is dynamic and sometimes needs a restart).

What's new in v15

Hydrogen Desktop's golden workspace image is v15, and it's built a fundamentally cleaner way:

• Built entirely from signed packages. The image is assembled from signed adompkg packages on wiki.adom.inc — no clone‑and‑build steps, every artifact SHA‑verified at install.
• Self‑updating workspace. An in‑workspace updater (adom-workspace-updater) re‑pulls newer skills, CLIs, and extensions on its own (shortly after boot, then periodically). Your tools stay current without a re‑install.
• Leaner + faster. ~400 MB compressed (down from ~650 MB) — the C/C++ build toolchain and docs were dropped since everything ships as pre‑built binaries. Faster download, smaller footprint.
• Runtime Claude CLI. The claude CLI is installed on first run rather than baked, so it's always a clean, current install.

Updating

You don't have to do anything. The workspace updater keeps your skills, CLIs, and extensions current automatically. When an editor extension updates, HD shows a one‑click "reload to apply" banner.

Uninstalling

Uninstall Hydrogen Desktop like any Windows app — Settings → Apps → Installed apps → Hydrogen Desktop → Uninstall, or run the bundled uninstaller. The WSL2 Adom‑Workspace distro is separate; if you also want to reclaim its disk space, remove it with wsl --unregister Adom-Workspace (this only touches HD's workspace — your other WSL distros and Docker Desktop are untouched). Your repositories live on the Windows side and are never inside the distro, so they're unaffected.

Troubleshooting

• The window isn't visible after launch. HD may have started minimized — check the taskbar. It runs in the background during setup.
• Setup paused at "Claude Authentication." That's the one human step — approve the sign‑in in the browser window HD opened, and it continues automatically.
• "Ensure workspace runtime" won't complete. Make sure WSL2 is healthy (wsl --version, wsl -l -v). A stale or corrupt Adom‑Workspace distro can be reset with wsl --unregister Adom-Workspace — HD re‑imports a fresh v15 image on the next launch.
• Something feels out of date. The workspace self‑updates, but you can force it from the workspace terminal: ADOMPKG_ALLOW_SUDO=1 adompkg install adom/hd-windows-bootstrap.