Desktop app

The desktop app is Maude with no terminal. Download it, sign in with GitHub, and start designing — everything the CLI does (canvas browser, git versioning, collaboration, AI editing) lives in the UI. It keeps itself up to date in the background.

Install

1. Download the installer for your platform — .dmg (macOS), .msi (Windows) or .deb (Linux).
2. Open it. On macOS, drag Maude to Applications; on Windows, run the installer; on Linux, sudo apt install ./Maude_*.deb.
3. Launch Maude and sign in with GitHub (or open a local folder, or connect a team hub) in the onboarding wizard.
4. You land in a working project. No terminal at any step.

System requirements

Disk: ~250 MB. The optional AI editing pairs with a Claude Code you already have installed and runs on your own Pro/Max subscription — never API billing.

Media playback on Linux

Linux renders canvases through WebKitGTK, which plays a canvas's audio and video through GStreamer. Installing the .deb with apt pulls the plugin packages in for you and there is nothing more to do.

Installing any other way — a repackaged .deb, a distro package, an extracted tree — you need them yourself, because most distros ship them as optional dependencies of WebKitGTK. Without them a canvas containing audio or video takes the whole view down with no error message.

On AMD graphics, Maude also sets WEBKIT_GST_DISABLE_GL_SINK=1 for itself at startup. GStreamer's GL video sink asks Mesa's radeonsi driver for a colour-buffer format it rejects, and the pixel readback that follows faults — an upstream bug that kills the view a few seconds into playback. The workaround decodes video in software instead; the cost is some CPU. To opt out and keep the GL sink, set the variable yourself before launching:

WEBKIT_GST_DISABLE_GL_SINK=0 maude-desktop

Any value you set wins — Maude only fills it in when you have expressed no preference.

What AI editing needs

The canvas browser, version history, and collaboration work the moment you open the app — no extra setup. AI editing is the one capability that reaches outside the app: its chat panel drives your paired Claude Code.

So the paired Claude Code needs just:

• a logged-in claude (claude → /login) — the single hard prerequisite, running on your own Pro/Max subscription;
• the maude CLI on your PATH (npm i -g @1agh/maude) — needed for the full multi-step /design:* workflows (screenshots, critic passes) that shell out to it; the everyday "edit this canvas" path works without it.

You do not run /plugin marketplace add or /plugin install in the desktop app — the plugins load automatically. Those steps remain the path for the web maude design serve flow, or for driving /design:* from your own terminal Claude Code (see Getting Started).

You don't have to hunt for any of this: the first-run welcome screen has an AI editing readiness strip that checks each piece and shows a copy-paste fix for anything missing, and the chat panel surfaces the same breakdown with a Re-check button. None of it blocks the rest of the app.

Auto-update

Maude polls a signed release feed, downloads new versions in the background, and shows a non-blocking banner:

Maude updated · restart to apply — Restart now

Click Restart now and you're on the latest build. There's no npm install, no terminal. Updates are signed with an ed25519 key; the app refuses any update whose signature doesn't verify, so a tampered feed can't push a rogue build.

Unsigned builds (early releases)

Until platform code-signing certificates are wired, installers may be unsigned:

• macOS — Gatekeeper blocks the first launch. Right-click the app → Open, then confirm. You only do this once.
• Windows — SmartScreen shows a warning. Click More info → Run anyway.

Signed builds remove these prompts; auto-update artifacts are always signed regardless.

Teams

The desktop app connects to a self-hosted hub from the onboarding wizard's Advanced door — no maude design link in a terminal. Once linked, cursors, comments, and edits sync in real time with anyone on the same branch.

What's included

• Canvas browser — every screen as a live, multi-artboard canvas; Cmd+Click to edit CSS against your tokens.
• Git versioning, no git — See changes, Save a version, Publish, Get latest, browse History, compare visual before/after.
• Sign in with GitHub — device flow → OS keychain; start private projects, share by username.
• Live collaboration — branch-scoped multiplayer over your own hub.
• AI editing — a chat panel that drives your paired Claude Code (needs the Maude plugins + maude CLI in that Claude Code; the readiness strip walks you through it).