How Lodekit works
You don’t need to understand Lodekit’s insides to use it. But a rough map helps you know where your apps live, where your data goes, and what your agent is actually doing. Here’s the whole picture.
One process, one folder
Section titled “One process, one folder”Two facts carry most of the mental model.
One process. The engine is a single program on your Mac. It hosts every
app you build, plus the dashboard, all served in your browser at
http://lodekit.localhost:7777. The manager — the menubar icon — starts the
engine, watches over it, and restarts it if you ask.
One folder. Everything you’d ever want to keep lives in the Lodekit root,
~/Documents/Lodekit. Inside it sit three trees, side by side: apps/ holds
each app’s source files, data/ holds what each app stores, and gateways/
describes the outside providers your apps can reach. That one folder is the
thing you back up.
Two doors
Section titled “Two doors”The engine has two doors, one for each of you.
The dashboard is yours. It shows every app with its live status, and it’s where you tune settings, browse logs, and manage secrets — all in your browser.
Your agent has its own door. Through a separate connection, the agent can create apps, open them for you, and read an app’s logs and data on your behalf — so it can answer “show me all my recipes” or debug an app it built. You’ll set that connection up in Connect your agent.
How an app gets built
Section titled “How an app gets built”When your agent creates or changes an app, all it does is write files into
apps/. Lodekit’s watcher notices the change, builds the app with its own
build tools, and serves the result:
You never run a build. Save (or let your agent save), and the app’s card on the dashboard flips to building…, then ready. If something goes wrong, the card shows the error instead — and your agent can read the details and fix it.
Where your data lives
Section titled “Where your data lives”Each app keeps what it stores under data/ in its own space, right next to the
apps/ tree — so an app’s records, files, and settings are ordinary contents
of your Lodekit folder, and backing up that folder preserves all of it. The
full layout is in Your Lodekit folder.
The services
Section titled “The services”Apps don’t reinvent the plumbing. Lodekit provides services every app can use: a database for records, a small memory for quick notes, file storage, events, scheduled tasks, safe doors to outside providers (like the weather forecast), secrets, settings, and logs. Your agent builds with these, which is why even a quick app gets durable storage and a settings page for free. Meet them in the Services overview.
That’s the map. Time to put Lodekit on your machine: Install Lodekit.