Hail

A keyboard launcher for Windows. Press Alt+Space, type, press Enter: an app starts, a file opens, a sum is answered, a search goes to the browser, and the box is gone.

Everything Hail finds comes from a provider, and the built-in ones are written against the same plugin contract (Hail.Sdk, MIT) a stranger would use.

Download

Hail-Setup.exe, the newest release, for Windows 10 (1809) and 11 on x64 or Arm64. It installs for you alone, asks for no administrator rights, and offers to start Hail when you sign in.

The installer is not signed, so SmartScreen will say it does not recognise it: choose More info, then Run anyway. (Until the first version is released, that link finds nothing; the newest build of master below is there from the first push.) The newest build of master is there too, rebuilt on every change, for trying what is not released yet.

Uninstalling (Settings, Apps) quits Hail first and removes its start at sign-in. Your settings, history and plugins stay in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Hail until you delete that folder.

What it does

• Lives in the notification area. Alt+Space shows the box on the monitor under the mouse; Alt+Space again, Escape, or clicking elsewhere hides it.
• Apps: everything the Start menu lists, desktop and Microsoft Store apps alike. note finds Notepad, ps finds PowerShell, code studio finds Visual Studio Code. The matched letters are in bold.
• Files by name, from the Windows Search index: only the folders Windows is told to index (by default your own). Type a path (C:\Users\, ~\Doc) to list a folder instead; Tab completes the highlighted entry. Network paths and mapped network drives are neither listed nor opened: each keystroke would reach the server.
• Sums as you type: 15% of 240, 2^10, sqrt(2), 2pi, 0xFF + 1. Start with = to force it. Your region's decimal separator works (0,1 + 0,2), and so does the point.
• Web search: a keyword and a space pick the engine (g, ddg, b, yt, gh, w). The keyword leaves the box and the engine's name sits beside it, so g cats reads Google cats; Backspace at the start of the box takes it away. Every box ends with Search Google for ... when nothing else answered it better.
• Commands: Lock, Sleep, Sign out, Restart, Shut down, Hail settings, Quit Hail. Anything that can cost unsaved work asks first, in the box.
• History: what you pick is favoured the next time you type the same start, and an empty box shows what you pick most.
• Plugins: each one a folder in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Hail\plugins\. Hail asks before it runs one, and asks again if its files change. See Plugins below.

Keys

Key	Does
Up / Down, Ctrl+K / Ctrl+J	Move the highlight
Enter	The highlighted row's action (named on the row)
Ctrl+Enter, Shift+Enter, Ctrl+Shift+Enter	Other actions, listed under the rows
Ctrl+C	Copy the highlighted file's path (or the box's selected text)
Ctrl+Shift+C	Copy the highlighted file itself
Tab	Complete a path or a sum into the box
Backspace, at the start	Take away the engine (or calculator) beside the box
Ctrl+,	Open Hail's settings
Escape	Go back from a question, or hide the box

Results that arrive late never move the highlighted row, so Enter always runs the row you were looking at.

The tray

Click the icon to open the box. Right-click it for Settings, Plugins and Quit Hail. A provider Hail had to switch off (one that kept failing) is named there too.

If another program already holds Alt+Space (PowerToys Run does by default), Hail still starts and says so in a notification; click the notification to choose another shortcut, or the tray icon to open the box.

Settings

Settings in the tray, Ctrl+, in the box, or hail settings typed into it. Every change counts at once; nothing needs a restart.

• General: the shortcut (press Change, then the new keys: Ctrl, Alt or Win with a letter, a digit, Space or a function key), Start with Windows, and Keep the last search.
• Providers: switch any of the built-in five off, and see the keyword that asks each alone.
• Web search: the engines, their keywords and addresses, and which one ends every search. An address must be https with {query} in its path or query string, and is checked when you save, not when you search.
• Plugins, History (and Clear history), Updates, About.

Everything is kept in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Hail\settings.json, which can also be edited by hand while Hail is not running. A value Hail cannot use falls back to its default alone, and the log says which.

{
  "hotkey": "Alt+Space",
  "keepLastQuery": false,
  "webSearch": {
    "defaultEngine": "g",
    "engines": [ { "keyword": "g", "name": "Google", "template": "https://www.google.com/search?q={query}" } ]
  },
  "disabledProviders": [ "hail.files" ],
  "checkForUpdates": true
}

The providers are hail.apps, hail.calculator, hail.files, hail.commands and hail.web.

Updates

Hail asks once, shortly after it first starts, whether it may check for new versions. Until you say yes, it sends nothing. With checks on, it asks GitHub once a day, when it starts or when you open the box, never on a timer. The request carries Hail's version and nothing else.

A new version is a notification; click it, then Update, Later or Skip this version. The installer is checked against the checksum GitHub publishes, as it downloads and again just before it runs, then Hail quits so it can be replaced and starts again when the installer finishes. Check now in Settings, Updates asks at any time.

Plugins

A plugin adds results to the box. It is a folder under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Hail\plugins\, named after the plugin, holding its plugin.json and its assemblies. To install one, copy its folder there and choose Plugins, Reload plugins in the tray (or type reload plugins).

Nothing in a plugin's folder runs until you say so. Hail finds the new folder, tells you, and asks, showing the plugin's name, who it says it is from, which searches it joins and where it lives. It remembers your answer for exactly those files: if any file in the folder changes, the plugin is off until you answer again. A plugin is a program that runs as you, so enable only the ones you would install as programs.

Settings, Plugins (or the tray's Plugins menu) lists each plugin with where it stands, and offers Enable..., Switch off and Settings... (a form drawn from what the plugin declares; a token or password there is kept encrypted for your Windows account). Reload plugins unloads them all and reads the folder again, so a plugin author can rebuild without restarting Hail.

Everything (plugins/Hail.Plugin.Everything, MIT) is the first plugin: e report finds every file named like report on every drive, through Everything by voidtools, which must be installed and running. Build it and copy it in:

dotnet build plugins/Hail.Plugin.Everything -c Release -p:HailDeploy=true

Writing one: docs/plugins.md goes from an empty folder to a result on screen, and dotnet new install templates/hail-plugin gives you a project that builds straight into the plugins folder.

Privacy

Nothing you type leaves your machine until you press Enter on a web search. Hail fetches no suggestions and sends no telemetry. The one request Hail makes by itself is the update check, and only once you have allowed it.

These are written to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Hail:

• One log a day (logs, thirty kept), which records what Hail did and never what you typed.
• History (usage.json): the apps, files and commands you picked, and the first 16 characters of what you had typed when you picked each. Sums and web searches are never recorded. Clear history in Settings, History empties it.
• The update check (update.json): when it last asked, and a version you chose to skip.
• Your answers about plugins (plugins.json) and plugins' settings (plugin-settings.json, with secrets encrypted for your Windows account), and each plugin's own data folder if it keeps one.

A plugin is not held to Hail's promises: it can do whatever a program running as you can.

Build and run

Needs the .NET 10 SDK on Windows 10 or 11.

dotnet build Hail.slnx
dotnet test Hail.slnx
dotnet run --project src/Hail.App

The plugin contract packs on its own (dotnet pack src/Hail.Sdk -c Release); nothing else in the solution is a package.

The installer is built as the release workflow builds it, with Inno Setup 6:

dotnet publish src/Hail.App -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -o publish/win-x64
dotnet publish src/Hail.App -c Release -r win-arm64 --self-contained true -o publish/win-arm64
iscc installer\Hail.iss

Every push to master rebuilds the rolling installer; a v* tag makes a draft release.

The icon is drawn from geometry by python assets/build-icon.py (Pillow).

Layout

Project	What it holds
Hail.Sdk	The plugin contract. No dependencies, no UI types. MIT, see src/Hail.Sdk/LICENSE.
Hail.Core	Pure: the supervisor, keyword parsing, the fuzzy matcher, ranking and history, the no-jump list, the Windows Search SQL.
Hail.Providers	The built-in providers (apps, files, calculator, web search, commands), written against Hail.Sdk and host ports only.
Hail.Windows	Every Win32, COM and OLE DB call: the hotkey, the Start menu, icons, the index, launching, session commands, the Run key, the tray, and starting a downloaded installer.
Hail.Updates	The one request Hail makes itself: asking GitHub for the newest release and downloading it.
Hail.Persistence	The log, the settings file, history, plugin answers and plugin settings, written atomically.
Hail.Plugins	Finding plugins, fingerprinting their files, loading each into a collectible context of its own, and unloading it.
Hail.App	The box, the tray, the settings window, and the plugin question and settings form (WPF + WPF UI).
plugins/Hail.Plugin.Everything	The Everything plugin, built against Hail.Sdk alone.
templates/hail-plugin	The dotnet new hail-plugin template.

ArchitectureTests hold each project to its line.

Licence

Hail is source-available, not open source: free to use, including at work, but not to modify or redistribute. See LICENSE. The plugin contract in src/Hail.Sdk, the template in templates/hail-plugin, the guide in docs/plugins.md and the Everything plugin in plugins/Hail.Plugin.Everything are the exception and are MIT licensed, so plugins can be written and published under any terms.