Show HN: Dyad, local, open-source Lovable alternative (Electron desktop app)
23 points
1 day ago
| 8 comments
| dyad.sh
| HN
Hi HN!

I left Google earlier this year and created Dyad, a local, open-source AI app builder made with Electron.

The motivation: I tried one of the popular cloud-based AI app builders, but when I pulled down the app to run locally and debug in Cursor, it just didn’t work. So I created Dyad, an app builder that runs fully on your computer, making it easy to switch between Dyad and coding tools like Cursor or Claude Code.

Source code: https://github.com/dyad-sh/dyad/

Download (free, no sign-up): https://www.dyad.sh/

I've gotten questions about how it works under the hood so I wrote an architecture doc explaining how it does tool calling using XML tags, etc: https://github.com/dyad-sh/dyad/blob/main/docs/architecture....

Let me know what you think and happy to answer questions about building an Electron app, etc!

JeffKazzee
8 hours ago
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Thanks for all of your hard work and commitment, Will! You've put everything into it, but its turning into something far more than some other companies that are much larger.

Thanks for being such a kind, caring guy. I have been here for a long time now, using Dyad. It's often becoming my main choice for designing and prototyping on things when I have a bit of inspiration.

I hope you find all the success out there, man. You're a genuinely good guy and it really shows in the way you do business. Have a wonderful time. Reach great heights.

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omneity
1 day ago
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Congrats for launching and awesome work, I will try it out soon!

Question, I have my own persistence and auth services, all well documented, that I would like to build apps against. Is there a recommended way to do this other than pasting the docs in the prompt each time I create a new app?

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willchen
22 hours ago
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Thanks! Check out our Prompt Library feature: this way you can create reusable prompts across your apps: https://www.dyad.sh/docs/releases/0.18.0
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aitchnyu
16 hours ago
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My Kagi-fu fails me, but I recall a builder generated code use Supabase row level security, and it fails open, and no longer filtering out data from other users. Is this guaranteed to protect your data?
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willchen
9 hours ago
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we have an extensive system prompt to instruct the Supabase to follow RLS best practices: https://github.com/dyad-sh/dyad/blob/de2cc2b48f2c8bfa401608c...

What you're describing as the fail-open behavior is from the Supabase platform (and not specific to any app builders): https://supabase.com/docs/guides/database/postgres/row-level...

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thekevan
21 hours ago
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I have been using it and I love it. It's isn't my main driver because I have to work on a lot of Bootstrap sites, it didn't like them the last I checked because they weren't a js framework. But I have made a few playthings with it that were and it was good.
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johnisgood
16 hours ago
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> All source code remains on your machine. Use your preferred IDE (VS Code, Cursor, etc.) and seamlessly integrate Dyad into your existing workflow.

The fact that it has to be said... :D

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freakynit
1 day ago
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These things does work (up to a max few thousand lines of code), but, they eat tokens like f*ng monsters.
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willchen
22 hours ago
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we have features like manual context management https://www.dyad.sh/docs/guides/large-apps#manual-context-ma... which lets you select files to use in your context window
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freakynit
13 hours ago
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Hey, could the tool do this itself? Like using code embeddings?

https://www.trynia.ai/ seems to be doing sometihing similar.

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willchen
9 hours ago
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very interesting - when we ship MCP support you should be able to use nia!
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willchen
1 day ago
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I'm working on adding MCP support to Dyad soon! What's your favorite MCP servers? (trying to curate a list of recommended MCPs)
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SOLAR_FIELDS
20 hours ago
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There is a project I’ve been playing with called claude-code-templates that keeps curated lists of things Claude code can use, one of which is MCP servers: https://github.com/davila7/claude-code-templates
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willchen
9 hours ago
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neat! thanks for sharing
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JeffKazzee
8 hours ago
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Context7 or Deepwiki are a must-have. They are also relatively secure, unless those sources of information become compromised in some way.
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atmanactive
15 hours ago
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Can it run with Ollama?
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willchen
9 hours ago
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atmanactive
9 hours ago
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Thank you!
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