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First run

Time: 4 minutes.

The first time you launch the Designer, a brief setup wizard walks you through four screens. You can revisit every choice later in Preferences.

1. Pick a theme

The wizard previews the five built-in themes side by side:

Theme Vibe Best for
Light Clean white surfaces Daytime work, screenshots
Dark Charcoal surfaces, soft accents Evening work, low ambient light
OLED Pure black background OLED displays, max contrast
Midnight Glass Blurred dark glass with violet glow Live demos, presentations
Frost Cool white frosted glass Long sessions, gentle on eyes

Click any preview to apply. The wizard switches the live UI to that theme so you can see the effect on tab labels, the canvas grid, and the Channel Box. You can also toggle dark mode later via View > Toggle Theme or with Cmd+Shift+T / Ctrl+Shift+T.

2. Grant input permissions

The wizard requests pen and touch input. The flow differs by OS:

macOS

The Designer asks for Accessibility permission so it can read pen pressure from Wacom tablets and the Apple Pencil. macOS opens System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility with the app pre-listed; tick the box, then return to the wizard.

If you do not have a tablet, click Skip instead.

Windows

Windows exposes pen and touch through the Windows.Devices.Input API which the Designer reads without an explicit prompt. The wizard shows a "ready" tick once it detects the system has Windows Ink enabled. If you see "not detected", open Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Pen & Windows Ink and ensure Use your fingertip as input is on (if you have a touchscreen).

Linux

X11 and Wayland both expose tablet input via libinput. The Designer verifies the kernel modules wacom, evdev, and hid_uclogic (for non-Wacom tablets) are loaded. If you see a warning, install your distro's tablet driver package (xserver-xorg-input-wacom on Debian-family, xf86-input-wacom on Arch) and re-run.

3. Choose a default project location

The Designer asks where to put new projects. The default is ~/Documents/Elysium Projects/. You can change it now or later in Preferences > Projects.

The Designer never writes outside this folder unless you explicitly choose File > Save As to somewhere else.

4. Connect AI providers (optional)

The Designer's AI workflows (Generate Skin, Magic Polish, Aether chat) need a model provider. The wizard shows four options:

Provider Setup Notes
Anthropic Paste an API key Recommended for highest quality. Pay-per-use.
OpenAI Paste an API key Solid quality. Pay-per-use.
Ollama (local) Pick a host (default http://localhost:11434) Free, runs entirely on your machine. Slower.
Skip Click Skip All non-AI features still work; AI menus are greyed out until you configure a provider.

Choose Skip if you only want to follow the Blue Morpho butterfly tutorial, which does not require any AI features.

Done

The wizard closes and the main Designer window comes up with the Project Explorer empty. You are ready to:

Where the settings live

File Location
Preferences ~/Library/Application Support/Elysium Designer/preferences.json (macOS)
%AppData%\Elysium Designer\preferences.json (Windows)
~/.config/elysium-designer/preferences.json (Linux)
Recent projects same folder, recent_projects.json
AI provider keys OS keychain (macOS Keychain, Windows Credential Manager, Linux Secret Service)

Delete or edit these to revert any first-run choice. The Uninstall and reset page covers a full wipe.