The local platform for agent-built apps
Cloud batteries for your local apps.
Ask your agent for an app and it will build one. Lodekit gives it everything it needs from a cloud — on the computer you already own. One menubar app, your data in a folder. No accounts, no subscriptions, nobody else's computer.
A conversation with an agent:
- You: Build me something to manage my greenhouse based on my local weather forecast.
- Agent: I can build that a few ways:
- Options: Single file — works until it needs to remember anything. No storage, no schedule. / Cloud app — an account, a subscription, your data on someone else's computer. / Lodekit — runs on your Mac. Real database, scheduled tasks, yours forever.
- You: Lodekit.
- Using skill: Building with Lodekit
- lodekit_scaffold: Scaffolding new Lodekit app "greenhouse"
- greenhouse/src/db.ts: Creating the greenhouse database
- greenhouse/src/gateways.ts: Connecting a gateway to the weather forecast
- Agent: Your app is ready at http://lodekit.localhost/greenhouse — it checks the forecast every morning and takes it from there.
The problem
The making got easy. The keeping didn't.
The choice
Ask for an app and your agent will offer ways to build it — a single file, a framework, a host. Weighing them is a technical call, and it lands on you.
The gap
The options run small to large with nothing in between: a file that can't remember anything, or containers, dependencies, and a stack you now operate.
The sprawl
A tool for an audience of one still ends up on third-party services — holding your private data, billing monthly, load-bearing. And once your data lives in their formats, leaving costs more than staying.
The graveyard
Kept local instead, the app has no home. It forgets everything between runs, breaks silently, and joins the folder of half-working things you stopped opening.
The options run from a single file at one end to containers, dependencies, and a stack to operate at the other — with an empty gap in the middle.
Is it for me?
It's for you if…
- You ask agents for tools — or you're about to.
- You track real things — habits, house projects, money — in tools shaped almost right.
- You run a home server, and don't want one more thing to maintain.
- Your data staying yours is a requirement, not a preference.
Not yet, if…
- You need to share apps with other people, or work multi-user.
- You want a hosted URL on the open web.
- You're not on a Mac. (Windows and Linux are open questions — honestly.)
That's the current truth. This page changes when it does.
What is Lodekit
One menubar app. A whole cloud inside.
Lodekit runs on your computer: one menubar manager, an engine holding five local services — database, files, secrets, schedule, gateways — apps served to your browser, and everything stored as files in ~/Documents/Lodekit.
Lodekit is one menubar app that runs a local engine. Your agent builds apps against it; the engine runs them like real software — a real database, file storage, secrets, scheduled tasks, gateways to the outside. Everything worth keeping is files in one folder.
Batteries
A real database, file storage, secrets, schedules, gateways — local services of one engine.
The folder
Apps and data are files in
~/Documents/Lodekit. Copy it and it's yours forever.The dashboard
Every app's state, data, and scheduled work — visible in one place.
Guardrails
Apps run isolated and see only their own data. Secrets never enter app code.
One theme
Every app shares one UI library and one theme. Ten apps feel like one product.
How it goes
That's the setup. Lodekit brings everything it needs, down to its own Node. No terminal, nothing to configure.
“Something to manage my greenhouse from the weather forecast.” Your agent scaffolds it and wires up the services it needs.
lodekit.localhost/greenhouse — a URL on your machine. Want it different? Ask again; it rebuilds on save.
Still running. The forecast check fired every morning, and the data is in your folder. That's the keeping.
Lodekit vs
Ways to keep an agent-built app.
single file
- good at
- instant and free
- storage
- none
- schedules
- none
- accounts
- none
- cost shape
- free
- still yours next year
- the file, maybe
hosted builder
Lovable · Replit · v0
- good at
- zero setup, shareable
- storage
- theirs
- schedules
- on a paid tier
- accounts
- required
- cost shape
- subscription
- still yours next year
- at the vendor's pleasure
no-code tool
Airtable · Notion · Glide
- good at
- forms and tables, fast
- storage
- theirs
- schedules
- included, up to a point
- accounts
- required
- cost shape
- subscription
- still yours next year
- behind an export button
Lodekit
- good at
- apps that live at home
- storage
- yours — a real database, local
- schedules
- built-in, local
- accounts
- none
- cost shape
- your own hardware
- still yours next year
- a folder you can copy
Why we built Lodekit
Software finally comes in your size. For the first time, you can describe a tool and have it exist by lunch — shaped exactly to your life, no bigger than it needs to be.
But the places it can live all belong to someone else. The platforms are rented, the data sits in silos, and the meter runs on things you made. The alternative — keeping it yourself — has meant becoming your own ops team.
We think the tools you ask for should be yours. On your computer, in your folder, in formats you can read. Running whether or not anyone is selling you anything.
So we built the home. When software is personal, it should live with you.
— the Lodekit makers
- Renting generic tools that fit almost
- A set of small apps shaped exactly like your life
- Your data spread across silos you can't open
- Your data in a folder you can copy
- A subscription per need
- One platform, no meter
- Scripts that die when you look away
- Apps that are still running, still yours, next year
Give your apps a home.
The alpha ships soon, macOS first. The docs are ready when you are.
For the curious
Under the hood: a single Node engine hosting TanStack Start apps in per-app workers. SQLite per app. shadcn/ui components under one shared theme. Agent-driven over MCP. Buildless — the platform owns the toolchain, down to its own pinned Node.