What is Lodekit?

Lodekit is a local, self-hosted platform where you — working with an AI coding agent — build and run your own personal web apps. Small, personal, yours.

You describe the app you want in plain language. Your agent writes it. Lodekit runs it on your Mac, and you open it in your browser like any other web app.

What you can build

Personal software — the apps big products won’t build for you, because only you need them:

A reading tracker that logs books exactly the way you think about them.
A garden-care app, like the Greenhouse app that comes bundled with Lodekit.
A household inventory, so you finally know where the spare charger went.

Each app is shaped around one person: you. No accounts, no pricing tiers, no feature request waiting in someone else’s backlog. When an app isn’t quite right, you ask your agent to change it.

How it’s different

It runs on your machine. Lodekit is a small program on your Mac, not a website you sign into. Your apps run entirely on your Mac and answer to no one else’s servers.

Your data stays in one folder. Everything your apps store lives in ~/Documents/Lodekit. Back up that folder and you’ve backed up everything.

No subscriptions, no cloud. There’s nothing to rent and nowhere your data gets sent. The apps and their data are yours in the plainest sense: files on your disk.

Apps are real web apps. Each one opens in your browser at a local address, looks polished out of the box, and works like the web apps you already know.

Who does what

Building on Lodekit is a three-way split:

You describe what you want, try it, and ask for changes — in plain language, no code required.
Your agent writes the code, using building blocks Lodekit provides.
Lodekit takes it from there: it notices new code, builds it, serves the app, and keeps its data safe.

You never run a build, manage a server, or touch a terminal unless you want to.

What’s in the box

Installing Lodekit puts five things on your machine:

The manager — a menubar app that starts everything and shows its health.
The engine — the one local program that hosts and serves your apps.
The dashboard — Lodekit’s own web page, where you see every app, its status, and its settings.
The SDK and UI library — the building blocks your agent uses, so every app gets storage, scheduling, and one shared look without extra work.
Two starter apps — Welcome, a one-page orientation, and Greenhouse, a full garden-care app you can explore and learn from.

Next, get the mental model in How Lodekit works — or jump straight to Install Lodekit.