Glyphae

Getting started

Download to first render, in about a minute. One binary, no dependencies; the only hard requirement is a GPU, because everything is a compute shader and there is no CPU fallback.

1. Install

Grab your platform from the download page, then:

macOS (Apple silicon)

unzip glyphae-0.3.0-macos-arm64.zip
sudo mv glyphae /usr/local/bin/
glyphae --version

Linux (x86_64, Vulkan)

tar xzf glyphae-0.3.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
sudo mv glyphae /usr/local/bin/
glyphae --version

Windows (x86_64, DX12)

# PowerShell, in the folder you downloaded to
Expand-Archive glyphae-0.3.0-windows-x86_64.zip
# put glyphae.exe somewhere on your PATH, then
glyphae --version

If glyphae --version prints glyphae 0.3.0, you are done here.

2. First render

# 1. scaffold a scene — a plain-text program
glyphae --scene-new tire work.scene

# 2. open the live viewport; it hot-reloads when the file changes
glyphae --view work.scene &

# 3. edit work.scene in any editor — try params.tire_lugs or camera.yaw

# 4. the final frame, headless: out.png, 400 samples, 1200x900
glyphae --render-scene work.scene out.png 400 1200 900

That is the whole loop: the scene is a text file, the viewport mirrors it live, and the final frame is a deterministic replay of the same file. Every knob you can edit is already in work.scene — --scene-new writes them all out with their defaults, so discovery is reading the file you just made.

Recipes to scaffold from: blank petrol emerald gem slab card carabiner zen tire avatar.

3. Where next

  • Drive it from your coding agent — the page this engine exists for: one block to paste into your CLAUDE.md and the loop your agent should run.
  • The full docs — scene format, the viewport socket, draft vs final, denoise and hardware ray tracing.
  • glyphae --help-ai — the complete manual, printed by the binary itself.

Troubleshooting

macOS says the app is from an unidentified developer

It should not: the binary is signed and notarized by Solar Beam (com.solarbeam.glyphae), and Gatekeeper checks the notarization online on first run. If you are offline the check cannot complete — run it once while connected. If you see a warning anyway, verify your download against the checksum on the download page before going further; a mismatch means a broken or tampered file, not a setting to bypass.

Windows SmartScreen warns on first run

Expected: the Windows build is not code-signed (we hold a certificate for macOS, not Windows). Click More info → Run anyway. The real integrity check is the sha256 on the download page.

Linux: version 'GLIBC_2.43' not found

You have a build from 0.1.3 or earlier: those were compiled on a bleeding-edge box and demanded glibc 2.43, which Ubuntu 24.04 and Pop!_OS do not ship. A field report caught it the day we launched. Since 0.1.4 the Linux binary is built against glibc 2.35 (Ubuntu 22.04) and the release pipeline refuses to ship anything newer — re-download and it runs.

Linux: “no GPU adapter”

The engine needs a working Vulkan driver: Mesa for AMD and Intel, the proprietary driver for NVIDIA. vulkaninfo --summary should list your GPU; if it does not, glyphae cannot see it either. Headless boxes need a real GPU — there is no software fallback.

Renders are slow

Add --draft while iterating (samples capped, resolution halved, loudly logged, never for finals). On NVIDIA, GLYPHAE_RT=1 uses the RT cores for 3–11× on intersection-heavy scenes. GLYPHAE_DENOISE=1 lets 128–256 samples read like 2000 if OIDN is installed.

Something else

Every change lands in the changelog, and glyphae --help-ai is always the manual matching your exact binary.