Guided by clarity. Designed for comfort.
Launchpad has a fresh look — and it’s called Pyxis.
Named after pyxis nautica, the mariner’s compass, Pyxis represents clarity, direction, and ease of navigation for developers. It brings a cohesive design language that extends seamlessly from launchpad.io to login and product workspaces, ensuring a consistent, accessible, and modern experience across the platform.
Pyxis 1.0 — The foundation: dark theme
Our journey began with Pyxis 1.0, the first complete Dark theme for Launchpad. It was built to improve comfort and focus for developers who spend long hours in the Studio.
Highlights of Pyxis 1.0
- Enhanced readability: Balanced contrast ratios and improved focus indicators.
- Reduced eye strain: Optimized for extended sessions and low-light environments.
- Accessibility-first: Fully compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA standards, tested across common workflows such as search, diffs, and logs.
Above: The new Pyxis Dark theme brings focus and balance to extended work sessions.
🌞 Pyxis 2.0 — light theme and Theme Toggle
Building on this foundation, Pyxis 2.0 introduces a new light theme and the much-awaited Theme Toggle, giving users full control over their visual experience.
What’s New:
- Light theme: A fresh, modern look designed for users who prefer a brighter workspace.
- Theme Toggle: Instantly switch between Light, Dark, or System preference. By default, Launchpad now adapts to your OS theme automatically.
- Improved accessibility: Contrast refinements and resolved visual inconsistencies from earlier releases.
- Consistent theming in external tools: Atlasmap JSON Transform and CodeMirror JSON Editor now fully align with the Pyxis design system.
Above: Switch themes instantly — no refresh, no lost work.
Unlike conventional implementations, the new theme toggle works without page reloads, preserving your session and unsaved changes for a seamless experience.
💡 Why Pyxis Matters
Pyxis is more than a visual update — it’s a strategic move toward a coherent, product-led SaaS experience that serves both users and the broader goals of Launchpad.
How Pyxis aligns with Launchpad’s goals
Delivering a unified end-to-end product experience. Pyxis ensures consistent visual and interaction patterns from sign-in to Studio and product workspaces, reducing cognitive load and making workflows more predictable.
Supporting thousands of companies building agentic and conversational apps. A reliable, accessible UI is essential for the broad range of customers who depend on Launchpad to build production-grade conversational agents and agentic applications.
Enabling vibe coding and blueprint-driven development. By providing a stable, expressive visual system and predictable theming across components, Pyxis supports rapid iteration, collaborative design, and blueprint-driven workflows that accelerate product delivery.
Benefits at a glance
- Unified experience across Launchpad’s login, Studio, and product surfaces.
- Increased comfort for different lighting and working conditions.
- Improved accessibility through consistent contrast and hierarchy.
- Scalable design system that enables future enhancements across components.
Above: Consistency from sign-in to Studio: one design system across the platform.
⚙ The engineering behind Pyxis
The beauty of Pyxis lies not just in its appearance but in its foundation.
Behind the scenes, the engineering team built a scalable and efficient system designed for performance and maintainability:
- Dynamic theme switching without page reloads or data loss.
- Centralized design tokens for color, typography, and elevation.
- Optimized rendering to ensure smooth transitions and minimal performance impact.
💬 Designed from real feedback
The evolution of Pyxis was shaped directly by user feedback.
After the launch of Pyxis 1.0, some users requested a lighter interface. The team responded by developing a light theme, introducing the Theme Toggle, and enabling system-based preference detection — all implemented quickly while preserving usability and accessibility.
This collaboration between users and the product team reflects Launchpad’s ongoing commitment to responsive design and user-led innovation.
Above: Pyxis evolved with direct input from users — from dark beginnings to complete control.
🚀 Available now
The Pyxis theming experience is live across Launchpad.
Users can access the new Theme Toggle in Studio Settings and switch between Light, Dark, or System mode in just a few clicks.
Feedback continues to play a vital role — we welcome insights around color contrast, readability, and comfort to help us continuously improve the experience.
Above: Personalize your workspace directly from Studio Settings.
🌟 In summary
Pyxis represents a significant milestone in Launchpad’s journey toward a unified, accessible, and user-focused product experience.
It ensures that every developer — regardless of preference or environment — can work comfortably, confidently, and with visual clarity.
A modern theme for modern developers — Pyxis brings harmony, consistency, and choice to the Launchpad experience.
🔗 Explore Pyxis Today
👉 Log in to Launchpad Studio and try out the Theme Toggle in your environment
About the Author
Vijay serves as the Senior Software Architect, UX Engineering, for Launchpad and is passionate about crafting visually engaging and empathetic user experiences. He leads Launchpad's overall theme architecture, shaping the intersection of design and technology across the platform.