A creative OS for designers
who work in the terminal.

The unicorn is built from terminal block glyphs, not an illustration. The exact same pixel sprite -- horn, mane, and tail in lilac, body in peach -- is the single logo across every surface: the terminal hook that prints at the start of each Claude Code session, the desktop app icon, the preloader, and the Logo row in Mirror › Taste. It is rendered as text or solid pixels, never as a smooth vector, so it always reads as made of pixels.

The family. Every unicorn is named after a color in the design system. Same size, same ground line, each a little different.

The agent. Peach shows what your agents are doing, in the Quest panel and on the roaming layer. The rare state is Lilac’s visit.

Two signature colors carry everything: peach and lilac. Daikon is the text; Nori Dark, the near-black, is the ground, and Nori is the softer dark. Tomato is a rare accent for destructive or urgent moments only; Watermelon is its calmer twin, the delete × at rest, deepening to tomato on hover.

Peach to lilac is the one gesture that signals Unicorn, and it shows up as a 1px gradient stroke in two forms, matched to scale. Both are drawn with the same mask-composite technique so the gradient sits on the edge, not the fill -- light does the work, fills are avoided.

Where each form lands. The signature shows up two ways depending on the surface -- and the banners break from both: they are filled, not stroked.

Two families. Ubuntu Sans for body and reading; Ubuntu Sans Mono for display, labels, and anything that should feel like the terminal. Three sizes only: meta, body, display. Restraint over a type ramp.

Three levels of Daikon, by opacity. Loud enough to read, quiet enough to layer over the desktop.

On the desktop the glass is painted, not sampled: a near-opaque base (rgba(21,20,25,0.99)) under two crossing gradients -- a soft top-left light sheen and a faint lilac→peach wash from the bottom-right -- so panels stay legible over a busy terminal. The web preview uses the translucent fill (rgba(22,22,22,0.78)) with a 26px backdrop blur. Both carry a soft drop shadow (0 6px 16px rgba(0,0,0,0.35)) and the signature peach→lilac stroke that fades at the top-right and bottom-left corners. Only two lines survive inside a panel: the 2px peach→lilac hairline under each title (it ends on lilac, no fade) and the quest progress fill. Recessed wells (the Currently card, the archived pill, Completed chips) sink with rgba(0,0,0,0.18), never a white wash. Radii: 18px for panels, 6px for chips and inputs.

Agent strip + minimized Quest: minimized, the Quest panel is titled with the quest's own name. Line 1 is the status (Working / Waiting for You / No agent running); line 2 is what it's on (the started experiment, else the quest) or, while waiting, what it needs (Your reply, Permission: Run a command); on hover line 2 becomes Open Session / Open Terminal. Commits: Fewer · More left, the count centered, Sound On / Off right, all 11px (Sound medium). Month pager: carets at rest; while the panel is hovered (when the min/max caret appears) each caret grows into an arrow -- the head slides out and the line draws in behind it, one solid stroke so nothing overlaps. Faint at rest, bright on hover, never a fill.

Chips (Paper · Design · Week, Quest · Story) are one size app-wide: Ubuntu Sans Medium 12px, 6px × 8px padding, 6px corners. The selected chip is the filled gradient with a Nori Dark label and does not change on hover; the others lift to a soft gray. Quiet links (Directory, Show in Finder) share the 12px size, mute at rest and Daikon on hover; Show in Finder appears only on hover, and mid-drop the same spot shows the destination path in lilac.

Neutral buttons stay calm: a background tint shifts on hover, with no border-color swap. The primary action -- the compose CTA is the showpiece: it rests as a Nori Dark fill with a peach→lilac gradient stroke, and on hover the whole pill fills with the gradient while the label goes Nori-dark (#100F11). Reserved for the two compose buttons, Compose weekly brief and Tell the case story -- making an artifact earns more than a tap (it even gets its own ascending arpeggio -- see Sound). The label stands alone, no symbol in front. Padding runs on a three-tier scale: 9px pills, 10px buttons, 11px CTAs.

Each experiment row is [chip] name ... ×: the status chip sits hard left in a fixed slot, the × in a reserved slot on the right, so nothing moves under the cursor. The chip is the only action -- click to cycle. Color carries the signal: lilac is just starting, peach is in motion, muted is paused (doesn't count toward active work). Live states are drawn in light (a faded-corner stroke in their own hue); a closed loop is drawn in shadow -- Completed, whisper label in a recessed well. Reopening one arms first (Reopen?), the same two-click confirm as Delete quest.

Unicorn composes a creative brief, not a recap. Structured as Direction (where the quest is heading), Signal (the tools, themes, and links your work revealed), and Work (the kept moments, experiments, and commits). It opens with a one-line read of what you're becoming and closes on a gradient line: Make something this week. Self-contained HTML, shareable.

Sound is designed, not decorated. A single warm steel-pan voice (Tone.js AMSynth, a sine through chorus + reverb) speaks for the whole app, so every cue feels like one instrument in one room. Each gesture earns its own phrase -- never a generic system beep.

Every cue only starts after a user gesture (browsers block autoplay), so the room stays quiet until you act. After 20 seconds of silence the audio engine sleeps, and the next note wakes it.

In the Electron app the window is transparent: panels float on your real desktop, beside the terminal. HUD mode keeps Unicorn on top and lets clicks pass through the gaps to the terminal underneath, so Claude Code and Unicorn are usable at once. The preloader, panels, and greeting all soften so the desktop stays visible. Unicorn draws its own traffic lights in tomato / peach / lilac, wearing the panels' peach→lilac ring as their edge. The menubar carries two controls: ⊞ Panels (show or hide Quest · Mirror · Keep · Commits · Activity · Settings, ⌘1-5 / ⌘,) and ⊹ Float (on top, ⌥U). Hold ⌥ and drag anywhere to move the window.

The rally cry is "git-ty up" -- a mash of git + giddy up -- the one phrase that carries Unicorn's personality. It prints beside the mark in the terminal hook (✺ Unicorn · git-ty up) and surfaces when you close a loop (✺ git-ty up — closed ...). Used sparingly, as a signature delight, never a slogan plastered everywhere. Voice notes that ride alongside it: Ships at midnight Pacific.