makepad

Makepad Builder

Makepad apps are delivered as source code, and so is the Builder. It downloads one program, Rust's official compiler from rust-lang.org, and uses it to build the apps on your own computer, where your coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, Grok) can change them.

macOS

curl -fsSL https://makepad.nl/builder/unix | sh

Open Terminal (in Applications › Utilities), paste this line in and press Return. A shell script you can read if you want to. It needs Apple's command line developer tools and offers to install them.

Linux

curl -fsSL https://makepad.nl/builder/unix | sh

Paste this line into a terminal and press Return. A shell script you can read if you want to. It asks before installing the development packages it needs.

Windows

Download for Windows Open the download and double-click makepad-builder.bat. When Windows asks, choose Extract all first, then run makepad-builder.bat from the extracted folder. It compiles the Builder from the included source, then opens it.

By downloading and using the Builder you agree to the Makepad Commercial License for the apps you have access to. Please read it: you may change the apps for your own use, not share or sell them.

How it works

When you run it, the Builder:

asks for the email address you bought a Makepad app with, such as Scope or Amp, and shows your licenses (commercial or beta), plus the open source Makepad experiments that anyone can build;
installs Rust's compiler into its own folder after you accept its license agreement (on Windows you can switch to Microsoft's C++ tools later, which NVIDIA CUDA's AI acceleration needs);
downloads, compiles and runs the apps you pick, and keeps them up to date. When an update arrives for an app you changed, your changes are saved so your coding agent can merge them back in.

Everything stays in one folder. You can run the Builder again at any time to update, rebuild or clean up.

Why it works this way

Source, not a finished app: You get the full source of what you licensed, plus the compiler to build it. That is what lets your coding agent read, change and rebuild the app for you; a finished binary would leave it nothing to work with.
Built on your computer: Everything is distributed as source: the apps, and the Builder itself (a shell script on macOS and Linux, Rust source it compiles on Windows). The only program it downloads and runs is Rust's official compiler, so you can read every line of what else runs.
One folder, nothing global: The compiler, the sources, the build output and the apps all live in one folder, so the rest of your system stays clean. Only Apple's developer tools on macOS and development packages on Linux come from the system, and the Builder asks first. Deleting the folder removes everything.
Your changes survive updates: Updates arrive as fresh source. If you changed an app, the Builder first saves your changes as a diff, then installs the clean new release, and your coding agent merges your changes back in. No tangled merge conflicts, and nothing of yours is lost.
Your email is your license: There are no keys to copy. You log in with your email inside the Builder; it is stored only in the Builder's folder, so running or reinstalling there remembers it.