Open source · public beta · built in public
Open-source workspace · built for the IC
Pulse HR pulls it out. Open-source workspace for the IC — three lines in Status Log, a kudos that sticks, a growth trail that doesn't live in someone else's spreadsheet. Self-host in 90 seconds with `docker compose up`, or pay us to host. The demo is the sales call.
Status check
Pulse HR is currently a frontend-only mock. We deliberately ship it before the backend so the people who use HR software every day can shape what we build first. Click around, break things, then tell us what's missing — feedback is the only piece that talks to a real backend, and that's the piece we want to hear from you on.
Every employee, project, document and request lives in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server.
No signup needed to explore — spin up a workspace, pick a role, click around for as long as you like.
Leaving a comment, voting on a Labs feature or posting on the feedback board needs a free account so we can follow up.
Sample workspace names — not real customers
Featured on Product Hunt
People-first, open-source HR — Recognition & Growth.
Why Pulse
Whichever app your company pays for, your best work still scrolls off the team channel by Friday. Pulse is the only workspace where the source, the roadmap, the changelog and the prices are public, built around the IC instead of the org chart — see what we improve on.
The IC is the user. The manager is a witness. Every feature is judged on whether it makes your first ten minutes better, your proof of work stronger, your next conversation easier. Raw chat stays with you — only aggregates cross the line up.
Status Log · Kudos · Growth
Full source on GitHub — read every line, self-host in 90 seconds with `docker compose up`, fork if we let you down. No demo gate. No enterprise tier with extra features.
LICENSE · self-host · contribute
The roadmap is shaped by pull requests, not product managers. Davide and Niccolò run Pulse on themselves every day — if a friction lasts more than a week, it gets fixed. "Feature request" and "pull request" are two paths to the same roadmap.
Roadmap · PRs · feedback board
Your data, your infra, your exit. Self-host on Docker, Helm or Terraform. Export everything in a clean format, without asking. The strongest signal we're doing this right is that leaving Pulse is easy.
Self-host · export · no lock-in
What we believe
The IC is the user. The manager is a witness. Every feature is judged on whether it makes your first ten minutes better, your proof of work stronger, your next conversation easier. If a feature makes the manager more powerful without making you more visible, it's wrong.
The whole platform is on GitHub, open source. Read the code, run it yourself, fork it if we ever let you down. The OSS is the whole product. No enterprise tier with extra features.
The roadmap is shaped by pull requests, not product managers. The maintainers use Pulse for their own work every day. 'Feature request' and 'pull request' are two paths to the same roadmap, and both are first-class.
Self-host on your own box if you want. Export everything in a clean format any time, without asking. No proprietary binary formats, no contractual exit stalling. The strongest signal we're doing this right is that leaving Pulse is easy.
What's inside
Pulse is narrow on purpose. Every surface is about how a person is doing — what they're working on, what they're celebrating, where they're stretched. Payroll, timesheets and project allocation belong in tools built for them. We don't compete there.
Async morning standup in writing. Three lines per person, public team feed, manager-safe sentiment recap — the raw chat stays with the employee. No meetings, no AI, no chat threads.
Achievements, challenges, skill paths and kudos coins on one canvas. Continuous signal, not yearly reviews. The score is built from what people actually do, not from a manager filling in a form.
Peer recognition with reasons attached. Coins between teammates, confetti on send, leaderboards that reset weekly, monthly and yearly. Lives inside Growth.
Birthdays, work anniversaries and the kudos ticker on one continuous feed. Company memory rendered as a screen.
One tap each Friday — light / balanced / heavy / overloaded. Eight-week sparkline trend. Your manager sees the trend, not the individual answers. Hours and project allocation live in your other tool.
Personal record of the days off you took. No approval workflow, no pending state — you log it, it's logged. Balance visible to you alone, for your own picture.
Anonymous weekly vibe heatmap. Shows only when at least three people answer. Embedded inside Status Log so it stays part of the conversation, not a survey to dread.
Engagement, sentiment, kudos volume, growth trend, Pulse vibe over time. Reports about how people are doing — not about cost per hire or margin.
Keyboard-first
⌘K opens a fuzzy palette — jump to any teammate, page or setting.
⌘J opens the command bar — type what you want in plain language, a local parser turns it into a runnable action. No LLM call, no cross-tenant training, works offline.
Command bar ⌘J
Parsed · intent=send-kudos · confidence 0.96
Send kudos to Marta, note demo.
local parser · no network call works offline
→ 01
Three lines a day in Status Log builds the trail. Walk into review week with proof — kudos, status, growth artefacts the IC owns.
→ 02
Three lines, public feed, ⌘⏎ to publish. Six minutes once a day beats thirty minutes every morning, and the manager-safe recap means the manager still has signal.
→ 03
`docker compose up` — 90 seconds to a workspace on a €25 Hetzner box. Source on GitHub. Leaving is a `pg_dump` away.
Shipped recently
Two frontend-fluent developers, building in public. Agent-driven development is how two of us compete — we don't sell it, we just ship more than our headcount should allow. The product is the main character; we sign our commits.
Davide Ghiotto
Maintainer
Frontend-fluent, tired of HR software. github.com/davide97g · linkedin.com/in/davide-ghiotto
Niccolò Naso
Maintainer
Frontend-fluent co-maintainer. github.com/LordNik10 · linkedin.com/in/niccolò-naso-888039178
You?
Open to contributors
The roadmap is shaped by pull requests. If the codebase fixes a pain you live with every week, land a PR — we credit every contributor in the changelog.
Questions we get a lot
Self-host the open source on your own infra in 90 seconds, or pay us to run it. No demo gate. No enterprise tier with extra features. Export everything in a click — always.
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