Dyad
An open-source, local desktop AI app builder — describe an app and get a real codebase you own, with bring-your-own-key model access on the free tier and no vendor lock-in.
About Dyad
Dyad is an open-source AI app builder that runs on your desktop rather than in a hosted sandbox, and the three things it leads with are all consequences of that choice: use whatever models you like, own the code outright, and carry zero lock-in. You describe an app in natural language and Dyad builds it, but the generated project is a normal codebase on your own machine — you can open it in any editor, commit it anywhere, and keep working on it if you stop using Dyad tomorrow. That is a meaningfully different proposition from the hosted builders it competes with, where the project lives inside the vendor's environment. The free tier requires no sign-up at all: download it for macOS or Windows, bring your own API key, and build. Because model access is bring-your-own on the free tier, cost scales with the provider you already use rather than with a credit meter you cannot inspect. Existing projects can be imported rather than only started from scratch. The paid tiers exist for people who would rather not manage keys and who want the modes tuned for larger codebases, and they are metered in AI credits with the option to reload at the same rate rather than being pushed up a tier. At verification the project had roughly 20,000 GitHub stars.
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