PrismLCA
Desktop software for life cycle assessment (LCA), built on Brightway 2.5: an Electron app over a local
Python/FastAPI backend, with an internal AI assistant and an MCP server built in from the start.
PrismLCA aims to be as approachable as a modern desktop app and as capable as the Brightway engine underneath.
Status: beta. Windows and Linux (AppImage, deb, rpm); macOS is planned. Website and user handbook:
prismlca.com.
Licence: AGPL-3.0-only — see Licence.
What it does
- Work with an AI assistant. A chat assistant that models, calculates and explains through the same audited,
undoable commands as you do — every change it makes lands in the audit log and can be taken back. It
researches bills of materials on the web, looks up transport distances and end-of-life statistics, and drafts
report chapters that you review and release. You choose the provider and bring your own key (OpenRouter or
OpenAI); nothing is sent until you switch it on.
- Let external agents drive it (MCP). The built-in MCP server gives agents such as Claude Code, Codex or
Claude Desktop the same tools as the chat assistant; the app sets up the client connection in one click.
- Model on a canvas. Processes and their flows as a graph, with parameters and formulas, scenarios, tags,
undo/redo and a per-model audit log.
- Calculate and read results. LCIA with the methods of your background database, contribution analysis by
process, tag or region, and comparisons across variants and scenarios.
- Write the report. ISO 14040/44-oriented study reports typeset with Typst, short reports, Excel and CSV
exports, and
.prism model bundles to pass a model on.
- Bring your data. Import inventories from SimaPro, openLCA (JSON-LD), EcoSpold and ILCD into your own
library; background data comes from ecoinvent or BAFU (see Background data).
Install
Installers are on the releases page: the .exe for
Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit), the .AppImage, the .deb or the .rpm for Linux (x64). SHA256SUMS lists the
checksum of every file, and every file carries a build provenance attestation
(gh attestation verify <file> --repo prismlca/prismlca).
- Windows: from 0.9.9 the installer is code-signed by Open Source Developer Jonas Harth (Certum). While
the certificate is new, SmartScreen may still show "Windows protected your PC": check that More info names
that publisher, compare the installer with
SHA256SUMS (Get-FileHash .\<installer>.exe in PowerShell), then
choose Run anyway. By default it installs for your user only, without administrator rights.
- Linux: check with
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing, then make the AppImage executable and start
it, install the deb with sudo apt install ./<package>.deb (Debian, Ubuntu) or the rpm with
sudo dnf install ./<package>.rpm (Fedora). AppImages need FUSE 2, which Ubuntu 22.04 and later do not install
by default: sudo apt install libfuse2t64 (24.04) or libfuse2 (22.04).
PrismLCA looks for a new version only when you click Check for updates on its About page. The Windows
installation and the AppImage update in place; with the deb or the rpm you install the new package yourself.
Privacy
PrismLCA runs on your computer and makes no network request on its own: no account, no telemetry, no crash
reporting. Every feature that reaches a server — the AI providers you key in, the routing and statistics APIs,
the news feed, the manual update check, the one-time search-model download — is listed in
PRIVACY.md with what it sends and to whom. The app shows the same text as Privacy notice on the
start page and under Settings.
Background data
PrismLCA ships the importers, not the data. A workspace needs one background database; you bring the files
and, where one is required, the licence:
- ecoinvent — you need a valid ecoinvent licence and the files of your release: the ecoSpold2
datasets
folder and the LCIA Implementation workbook (without it there are no impact methods). PrismLCA imports them
from your local disk — no online login, nothing is uploaded. ecoinvent data is never bundled with the app or
committed to this repository.
- BAFU:2026 — the free Swiss life cycle inventory database. Download it yourself from the
openLCA Nexus (free account; BAFU's terms of use apply: no resale,
and studies cite "Life Cycle Inventory database of the Swiss Federal Administration, BAFU:2026"), then import
its
ecoSpold files folder.
Import on first start, or later under Background. A workspace holds at most one database per provider; with
both, ecoinvent's flow list and methods are the reference and BAFU is mapped onto them. Every other data source
the app ships or reads is recorded in docs/DATENHERKUNFT.md.
Repository layout
backend/ Python 3.12 · FastAPI · Brightway 2.5. Managed with uv.
frontend/ Electron · React · TypeScript · electron-vite. Managed with npm.
design/ Design tokens (prism-theme.css).
docs/ Architecture (ARCHITEKTUR.md), data provenance (DATENHERKUNFT.md), the AI tool manifest.
.github/ Workflows: CI and the release build.
Development
Prerequisites: uv (provisions Python 3.12) and Node.js 22 with npm.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
