This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/opensource by /u/Wavesonics on 2026-07-25 04:50:39+00:00.

Hey r/opensource, I’m the solo dev behind Hammer. I’ve been working on it for about four years, and think it’s time I start getting some feedback on it.

What it is: Hammer is a free, open source (MIT) app for writing novels and building the worlds they live in, Scrivener-style, but multiplatform and offline-first, with a self hostable sync server.

hammer.ink

Why I built it: A few years back I was living in a van, mostly off-grid with no signal, and broke. Most good writing apps were paid, or web apps, or Electron wrappers that “worked offline” right until they didn’t, usually about a week in, miles from the nearest cell tower. Then I watched people on forums lose whole manuscripts in certain electron based writing apps, and eventually it happened to me.

So I set three rules for the thing I wanted to build:

  • Offline-first, forever: A native program, not a web page in a trenchcoat.
  • Transparent data: Everything is human-readable text files in plain folders, if Hammer vanished tomorrow, you could open your work in any text editor and keep going.
  • Never lose data: Paranoid about it by design.

I tried several tech stacks but landed on Kotlin + Compose Multiplatform. One codebase for both the server, and desktop clients (Linux/Mac/Windows), Android, iOS.

License / money: MIT and genuinely free, no ads, no telemetry. The only paid thing is the optional “official” sync server instance that I host. As I said, the sync server is open source and self-hostable, so you never have to pay me to sync.

Platforms: Linux, Mac, Windows, Android (Play + F-Droid), iOS

Repo: github.com/Darkrock-Studios/hammer-editor

It’s four years in and far from done, but I thought it was about time to start showing it to people. See if it’s a project that interests anyone other than my self. Happy to get into the Compose Multiplatform side too if anyone has questions; there wasn’t much prior art when I started. Longer origin story here if you want it: hammer.ink/blog/news/what-is-hammer