Desktop app & offline mode
Archon in a browser tab works exactly as before — the desktop app is an additional, optional way to run it: a native window, and the ability to keep working with no connection.
What the desktop app is
The desktop app is the same Archon your lab already runs, in a native window instead of a browser tab. It doesn’t replace your self-hosted deployment or talk to any Archon server of ours — on first launch it asks for your lab’s Archon URL (the same one you use in a browser) and connects to that.
Downloads
Straight from this site — each button below redirects to the current build.
Prefer to see release history and checksums first? View all releases on GitHub — every build published here is the same file GitHub Actions attaches there.
These builds aren’t code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen and macOS Gatekeeper will warn on first launch — that’s expected until a signing certificate is added, not a sign anything is wrong.
On first launch, enter your lab’s Archon URL once. After that the app opens straight to it — sign in exactly as you would in a browser.
For administrators: publishing a new build
A release is triggered by pushing a version tag — GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/desktop-release.yml) then builds all three installers in parallel and attaches them to the matching GitHub Release. The download buttons above ask GitHub’s API for that same release at the moment someone clicks, so there is nothing separate to publish or keep in sync.
git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0The buttons need a GITHUB_RELEASES_TOKEN environment variable set on this deployment (Vercel project → Settings → Environment Variables) — a GitHub fine-grained personal access token scoped to only this repository, with Contents: Read-only permission. Create one at github.com → Settings → Developer settings → Personal access tokens → Fine-grained tokens. Without it, the GitHub Release still gets published; only the on-site buttons return an error until it’s added and the deployment is redeployed.
Offline mode
If your connection drops — a field site with no signal, a laptop between networks — the desktop app doesn’t just show an error. Three things keep working:
- Your licence stays recognized. Archon licence keys are verified with offline cryptography (Ed25519) with no server call at all, online or off — the desktop app simply keeps that recognition available with no connection.
- Your last-known session and lab context stay visible in the offline fallback screen, so the app doesn’t look broken — it tells you it’s offline and what will happen next.
- New draft records queue locally and sync automatically the moment the app can reach your server again — the same authenticated action runs as if you’d had a connection the whole time, so it’s recorded in the audit trail normally, at the moment it actually syncs.
What offline mode deliberately does not do: finalize a notebook entry, capture an electronic signature, or write to the audit trail directly. Archon’s tamper-evident hash chain is appended to in one place, on the server, inside a database lock that guarantees entries can never fork or race — that guarantee is the whole point of the product, and it isn’t something a laptop with no connection can safely reproduce. Anything that touches it needs a live connection, by design, in the browser and the desktop app alike.
Offline licence keys
Archon licences were built to work with no internet access from day one — a laboratory deployment might sit behind a firewall with no outbound connection at all. A licence key is a signed token your administrator installs once (Settings → Billing → Install a licence key); verifying it is pure cryptography against a public key that ships with Archon, never a phone-home call. The same key, and the same verification, works identically whether you’re in a browser or the desktop app, connected or not.
eyJ2IjoxLCJvcmciOiI4YjZm... . MEUCIQDx7z...
(base64url payload) (base64url Ed25519 signature)Not yet built
Offline mode currently covers new draft records created in the Electronic Lab Notebook. Full offline read access to samples and protocols, and offline queuing for those modules, follow the same mechanism and are on the roadmap — ask your administrator if your lab needs a specific workflow prioritized.