--- title: "About Helicon: who builds it, and why" url: https://helicon.sh/about description: "Who builds Helicon, why a Muse Code desktop app exists at all, how it is funded, and what it deliberately is not. One maintainer, MIT licensed, no company behind it." updated: 2026-09-19 site: Helicon --- # About Helicon Helicon is a free, MIT licensed desktop and web client for Meta's Muse Code CLI, built and maintained by Harjot Singh Rana in New Delhi, India. It is an independent community project with no company behind it, no funding, no account system and no paid tier, and it is not endorsed by Meta. ## What Helicon is Helicon is an agentic development environment for Muse Code. The muse CLI already does the work: it plans, edits files, runs commands and asks for approval. What it does not have is a place to see several of those conversations at once. Helicon is that place. It speaks the Muse Code Session Protocol directly, through Meta's own MIT licensed `@muse-code/sdk`, and it shows every project, session, diff, approval and cost figure in one window. It ships two ways from one React codebase: a Tauri 2 desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux, and a web app you can point at a daemon running somewhere else. Both drive your own muse install, on your own subscription. ## Who builds it One person. Harjot Singh Rana, a developer based in New Delhi, India, writes and maintains Helicon. There is no company, no team and no investor. Contributions arrive through pull requests on GitHub, and the issue tracker is where the roadmap actually lives. | Question | Answer | | --- | --- | | Who publishes it | [Harjot Singh Rana](https://harjotrana.com), independently | | Where | New Delhi, India | | Legal entity | None. This is a personal open-source project, not a registered company | | Licence | [MIT](https://github.com/HarjjotSinghh/helicon/blob/prod/LICENSE), for the whole repository | | Source | [github.com/HarjjotSinghh/helicon](https://github.com/HarjjotSinghh/helicon) | | Contact | [me@harjotrana.com](mailto:me@harjotrana.com), or [open an issue](https://github.com/HarjjotSinghh/helicon/issues) | ## Why it exists The terminal is an excellent place to run one agent. It is a poor place to run five. Scrollback is not a history, a diff printed forty turns ago is not reviewable, and an approval prompt that scrolls past is an approval you did not really give. Helicon started because three Muse Code sessions across two repositories on a Windows machine was already more state than one terminal could hold. Windows is the second reason. Muse Code runs natively on Windows, and it also runs inside WSL2, and the two see different filesystems. Helicon translates paths in both directions so that a session started in WSL2 still opens the right file on the Windows side. ## How it is funded It is not. Helicon is free, has no paid tier, no trial, no account and no telemetry beyond an update check that reports the platform, the version and a weekly hash of the IP address. It does not resell model access: every token it spends is billed to your existing Muse Code subscription through your own `muse login`, and the cost figures the app shows are what those threads would have cost at published API rates, not a bill. ## What Helicon is not - Not official. Helicon is not made, sponsored or endorsed by Meta. Muse and Muse Code are Meta trademarks, used here only to name the thing Helicon connects to. - Not a model, and not a wrapper around an API key. It drives the muse CLI you already have. - Not the only Muse Code GUI. VS Code extensions, Agent Client Protocol bridges for Zed and JetBrains, and other open-source wrappers exist, and the comparison pages say when one of them is the better answer. - Not a hosted service. There is no server holding your code. The web app runs against a daemon you start yourself. - Not related to the Muse assistant app for Mac. Different product, similar name. ## How it is built | Layer | What it is | | --- | --- | | Desktop shell | Tauri 2, Rust host, signed Windows installer and universal macOS DMG | | Interface | React and TypeScript, shared byte for byte between the desktop app and the web app | | Daemon | Node 22, one `muse serve` host per workspace, spoken to over JSON-RPC | | Protocol | Muse Code Session Protocol, through the official MIT `@muse-code/sdk` | | State | Local SQLite on your machine. Nothing is uploaded | | This site | Next.js, deployed on Vercel, with a Markdown mirror and a JSON API for agents | ## Getting involved Issues and pull requests are welcome at [https://github.com/HarjjotSinghh/helicon](https://github.com/HarjjotSinghh/helicon). Bug reports are more useful than feature requests, and a bug report with the operating system, the output of `muse --version` and the steps that reproduce it is more useful than both. Security reports have their own private channel, described on the [contact page](https://helicon.sh/contact). ## Frequently asked questions ### Is Helicon a company? No. It is a personal open-source project by one developer, Harjot Singh Rana, based in New Delhi, India. There is no registered entity, no funding and no team. ### Is Helicon affiliated with Meta? No. Helicon is an unofficial community client for Meta's Muse Code CLI. It is not made, sponsored or endorsed by Meta, and Muse and Muse Code are Meta trademarks used only to describe what Helicon connects to. ### How does Helicon make money? It does not. There is no paid tier, no trial and no account. It uses your existing Muse Code subscription through the muse CLI, so it never resells model access. ## Related - [Contact](https://helicon.sh/contact): How to reach the person who maintains Helicon: email for anything private, GitHub issues for bugs and features, and a private advisory channel for security reports. - [Developers](https://helicon.sh/developers): The public JSON API for Helicon: releases, downloads, documentation and search. No key, no account, read only, with an OpenAPI description and structured JSON errors. - [Legal](https://helicon.sh/legal): Everything in one place: the MIT licence, what Helicon collects, the terms, the security policy, and the trademark position on Muse and Muse Code. - [Pricing](https://helicon.sh/pricing): Helicon is free and MIT licensed with no paid tier, no account and no API key. It uses the Muse Code subscription you already pay Meta for. --- Helicon is a free, MIT licensed, unofficial community client for Meta's Muse Code CLI. Not made, sponsored or endorsed by Meta. Source: https://helicon.sh/. Machine readable index: https://helicon.sh/llms.txt