NativeDesktop

One Rust view tree that renders as native AppKit controls on macOS and through GPUI on Linux, Windows and the web.

NativeDesktop is a toolkit for desktop apps written in Rust. You describe a window as a tree of views and elements; each platform's backend turns that tree into what the OS draws for itself.

Hello on macOS — **Example: Hello.** The smallest app: a toolbar button, a count and window controls placed by coordinates. Source in examples/hello. It also runs live in the docs app.

The counter above is the whole of hello: one struct, one render, one button. The same code runs on every target:

macOS: AppKit. The toolbar is an NSToolbar, the button an NSButton, a list an NSTableView. The framework adds layout (Taffy) and a retained tree on top of them.
Linux: GPUI draws the tree with a libadwaita look. Colours come from the theme tokens and, when present, a matugen palette that reloads while the app runs.
Windows: the same GPUI backend with a Fluent skin. The code is written and has not run on a Windows machine yet.
Web: plain GPUI compiled to WebAssembly. nd serve --target web serves an app unchanged.

An app never names a backend. scaffold(), toolbar() and button() say what the window is, and the backend decides how that looks on its OS. Where a platform has no native version of something, the framework draws it from the same theme tokens.

Built for agents

The framework is shaped so that a coding agent produces a good app on the first pass and can prove it works. nd new writes a project with a CLAUDE.md, a tier 1 test and an appearance audit. nd check fails on literal colours, text under WCAG contrast, unwrap and framework lints, and nd test runs the same view with no window. The agent pages list the patterns to copy and the mistakes to avoid. People use the same pages; nothing in them is agent-only.

Where to go next

Getting started: install the nd CLI, create an app, run it, test it.
Programming model: views, entities and the retained tree.
Elements, state and actions and keys: the vocabulary you write every day.
Components and the examples: what ships and how it looks.