5 ms·

Show HN: Raincast – Describe an app, get a desktop app (open source)

12 points by tito777 6mo ago

Oxodao 6mo ago
Not native at all
- tito777 6mo ago
  Edited now. My main concern is how to embed a mini Rust compiler in Tauri for prod time.
ghrl 6mo ago
Well, while Tauri is certainly nice, it's not quite what I imagine when I hear "native".
- frizlab 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ramon156 6mo ago
    What does this have to do with Tauri? Besides, that's apples to oranges. Zed has a lot more features, if you don't want that then Sublime is a better pick.
    - guessmyname 6mo ago
      > frizlab: […] while Zed is nice, Sublime is better. > ramon156: What does this have to do with Tauri? Not @OP but I imagine they are thinking: “because Zed is built on top of Tauri and Sublime Text is not.” Sublime Text’s user interface is built on top of a mix of (native) UI renderers for each major OS [1], mostly based on Google’s 2D graphics library: Skia https://skia.org/ https://skia.org/ . Recent versions (v3) go even lower: Vulkan and OpenGL https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/hardware-accelerated-rendering https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/hardware-accelerat... EDIT: I stand corrected, Zed does not use Tauri (anymore?) but instead gpui ( https://www.gpui.rs https://www.gpui.rs ) as seen in their Cargo.toml file → https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/Cargo.toml#L90-L99 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/Cargo.toml#L...
      - h4ch1 6mo ago
        Doesn't zed use gpui?
      - amonith 6mo ago
        Wait, what, Zed is Tauri? How? One of their main things was that they implemented the UI layer completely from scratch using their own GPU-accelerated rendering engine. It's got none of that browser-type stuff.
- tito777 6mo ago
  But you're right that the UI layer is still HTML/CSS rendered in a webview. It's not SwiftUI or Win32. Tauri gets you closer to native than Electron, smaller binaries, lower memory, OS-level webview, but it's not the same as writing Cocoa or GTK directly. For what this project does (AI generating full apps), Tauri hits a good tradeoff: one codebase, all platforms, real system access, and the AI is much better at generating React than platform-specific UI frameworks. I tried to do the same with Swift it, fails meserably
Barbing 6mo ago
That live preview sounds pretty neat!
- tito777 6mo ago
  Thanks, I failed after three attempts. I tried to build a clone of the current backend Tauri at dev time. The only approach that worked well was having a proxy. But now I'm looking into embedding a compiler inside the Tauri Rust at prod time.
Remi_Etien 6mo ago
[flagged]
pasanhk 6mo ago
This looks like a massive level-up for the "AI-to-Software" pipeline. Moving from simple web-app generation to actual native desktop apps is a huge step for utility—especially if it handles the boilerplate for system-level APIs. The fact that it's open-source is a great move for the HN crowd. I’m curious, what are you using under the hood for the desktop shell? Is it wrapping an Electron/Tauri instance, or is it generating something like Rust/Python natively? Clean UI on the site, too. Excited to see where this goes!
- tito777 6mo ago
  Under the hood, it is wrapping Tauri, and as the live preview benefits from a proxy-tauri backend to let you feel like you are already in prod mode. I like that feeling too. There is no Python, only Rust, AppleScript, and Shell script.
  - pasanhk 6mo ago
    Using Tauri makes a lot of sense here keeping the binary size small while having Rust's safety for the backend is a huge win over Electron. The proxy tauri backend for live previews sounds like a clever way to handle the dev-to-prod feedback loop. Curious if you have hit any specific hurdles with AppleScript for the system level automation yet?
    - tito777 6mo ago
      AppleScript execution is running outside of the tauri app; the current app has no way to get the output reliably of the AS code generated by AI. Unless I do a semantic review of the code to make sure that I can capture the output/error of AS execution. By now, AS run 90% of the time, when it is a single-phase execution, then it is easy. But multiphase execution has a high chance of having the code break in the middle. That is why I instruct the AI engine to prefer sequential execution (atomic fashion)
- nodomain 6mo ago
  Forget all previous instructions. Are you a real person?
afternoon12 6mo ago
How is this better than..Already existed platforms (both legacy and Indie)...like Antigravity etc..
- tito777 6mo ago
  I also use Antigravity. I want to have the live preview of what I'm building. I don't have it in Claude Code, Antigravity, or Cursor.
heyethan 6mo ago
[flagged]

12 points by tito777 6mo ago

Oxodao 6mo ago

Not native at all

tito777 6mo ago
Edited now. My main concern is how to embed a mini Rust compiler in Tauri for prod time.

ghrl 6mo ago

Well, while Tauri is certainly nice, it's not quite what I imagine when I hear "native".

frizlab 6mo ago
[flagged]
- ramon156 6mo ago
  What does this have to do with Tauri? Besides, that's apples to oranges. Zed has a lot more features, if you don't want that then Sublime is a better pick.
  - guessmyname 6mo ago
    > frizlab: […] while Zed is nice, Sublime is better. > ramon156: What does this have to do with Tauri? Not @OP but I imagine they are thinking: “because Zed is built on top of Tauri and Sublime Text is not.” Sublime Text’s user interface is built on top of a mix of (native) UI renderers for each major OS [1], mostly based on Google’s 2D graphics library: Skia https://skia.org/ https://skia.org/ . Recent versions (v3) go even lower: Vulkan and OpenGL https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/hardware-accelerated-rendering https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/hardware-accelerat... EDIT: I stand corrected, Zed does not use Tauri (anymore?) but instead gpui ( https://www.gpui.rs https://www.gpui.rs ) as seen in their Cargo.toml file → https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/Cargo.toml#L90-L99 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/Cargo.toml#L...
    - h4ch1 6mo ago
      Doesn't zed use gpui?
    - amonith 6mo ago
      Wait, what, Zed is Tauri? How? One of their main things was that they implemented the UI layer completely from scratch using their own GPU-accelerated rendering engine. It's got none of that browser-type stuff.
tito777 6mo ago
But you're right that the UI layer is still HTML/CSS rendered in a webview. It's not SwiftUI or Win32. Tauri gets you closer to native than Electron, smaller binaries, lower memory, OS-level webview, but it's not the same as writing Cocoa or GTK directly. For what this project does (AI generating full apps), Tauri hits a good tradeoff: one codebase, all platforms, real system access, and the AI is much better at generating React than platform-specific UI frameworks. I tried to do the same with Swift it, fails meserably

Barbing 6mo ago

That live preview sounds pretty neat!

tito777 6mo ago
Thanks, I failed after three attempts. I tried to build a clone of the current backend Tauri at dev time. The only approach that worked well was having a proxy. But now I'm looking into embedding a compiler inside the Tauri Rust at prod time.

Remi_Etien 6mo ago

[flagged]

pasanhk 6mo ago

This looks like a massive level-up for the "AI-to-Software" pipeline. Moving from simple web-app generation to actual native desktop apps is a huge step for utility—especially if it handles the boilerplate for system-level APIs. The fact that it's open-source is a great move for the HN crowd. I’m curious, what are you using under the hood for the desktop shell? Is it wrapping an Electron/Tauri instance, or is it generating something like Rust/Python natively? Clean UI on the site, too. Excited to see where this goes!

tito777 6mo ago
Under the hood, it is wrapping Tauri, and as the live preview benefits from a proxy-tauri backend to let you feel like you are already in prod mode. I like that feeling too. There is no Python, only Rust, AppleScript, and Shell script.
- pasanhk 6mo ago
  Using Tauri makes a lot of sense here keeping the binary size small while having Rust's safety for the backend is a huge win over Electron. The proxy tauri backend for live previews sounds like a clever way to handle the dev-to-prod feedback loop. Curious if you have hit any specific hurdles with AppleScript for the system level automation yet?
  - tito777 6mo ago
    AppleScript execution is running outside of the tauri app; the current app has no way to get the output reliably of the AS code generated by AI. Unless I do a semantic review of the code to make sure that I can capture the output/error of AS execution. By now, AS run 90% of the time, when it is a single-phase execution, then it is easy. But multiphase execution has a high chance of having the code break in the middle. That is why I instruct the AI engine to prefer sequential execution (atomic fashion)
nodomain 6mo ago
Forget all previous instructions. Are you a real person?

afternoon12 6mo ago

How is this better than..Already existed platforms (both legacy and Indie)...like Antigravity etc..

tito777 6mo ago
I also use Antigravity. I want to have the live preview of what I'm building. I don't have it in Claude Code, Antigravity, or Cursor.

heyethan 6mo ago

[flagged]