Variorum

Introduction

Variorum is a single file artifact editor that is assisted by a generative AI model of your choosing.

The goal of this tool is to help you speed up your creation of single artifacts but allowing you to retain your human control over the exact details of said artifact.

This is a tool for a simpleton like me who can only think and design, one artifact at a time. If that sounds like you too, then feel free to clone or fork until your heart's content.

To try it: npx variorum, then open the printed localhost URL.

What kind of artifact you're editing is not hardcoded. Variorum began life as a LinkML editor, but the artifact type, the system prompt, and the sampling behavior all live in a named, versioned configuration — linkml is just the first configuration; react-component could be the second.

An example of this use case is LinkML. Let's say you want to use LinkML to be the source of truth for the data model of your project. Let's say you have a pretty good idea of what the model is but you want to use an LLM to get the bulk of it laid out "on paper". But, once you've seen it, your own craftsmenship kicks in and you know exactly how you want to change it. Now you can either change it directly or you can ask the LLM to change it for you. This tool will support either approach.

Architecture

I'm keeping this VERY simple. SPA — React/Tailwind/Vite/shadcn/Vercel AI Elements — talking directly to an OpenAI-compatible endpoint (LM Studio, to start). No server: this tool talks to localhost, and a backend here would be a proxy from your machine to your machine. Persistence is a single IndexedDB database holding everything — conversations, artifact revision histories, and versioned configurations — with export/import as a true backup.

Every decision above, and the ones it implies — CORS coupling, API keys in localStorage, the unit data model, immutable configuration versions, what tools the LLM does and does not get, prompt injection and exfiltration — is recorded with its rationale in the design record. That file is the source of truth; this section is just the trailer.

License

Variorum is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

Apache-2.0 rather than MIT for a specific reason: AI Elements is Apache-2.0 and ships as a shadcn-style registry, so its source files live in this repository rather than in node_modules. Matching the license keeps the attribution story simple. See NOTICE for third-party attributions.

Note the warranty disclaimer in section 7. The design record is candid about the risks this tool carries — API keys in LocalStorage, XSS exposure, prompt injection through pasted YAML, and tool results reaching whatever model you point it at. Those caveats are the point, not boilerplate. Fork accordingly.