News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Show HN: Raincast – Describe an app, get a desktop app (o... by pasanhk on Tuesday March 31, 2026 @02:21AM (#47583428)
This looks like a massive level-up for the "AI-to-Software" pipeline. Moving from simple web-app generation to actual native desktop apps is a huge step for utility—especially if it handles the boilerplate for system-level APIs.

The fact that it's open-source is a great move for the HN crowd. I’m curious, what are you using under the hood for the desktop shell? Is it wrapping an Electron/Tauri instance, or is it generating something like Rust/Python natively?

Clean UI on the site, too. Excited to see where this goes!

Re:Show HN: Raincast – Describe an app, get a desktop app (o... by tito777 on Tuesday March 31, 2026 @02:50AM (#47583646)
Under the hood, it is wrapping Tauri, and as the live preview benefits from a proxy-tauri backend to let you feel like you are already in prod mode. I like that feeling too. There is no Python, only Rust, AppleScript, and Shell script.
Re:Show HN: Raincast – Describe an app, get a desktop app (o... by pasanhk on Tuesday March 31, 2026 @03:02AM (#47583724)
Using Tauri makes a lot of sense here keeping the binary size small while having Rust's safety for the backend is a huge win over Electron. The proxy tauri backend for live previews sounds like a clever way to handle the dev-to-prod feedback loop. Curious if you have hit any specific hurdles with AppleScript for the system level automation yet?
Re:Show HN: Raincast – Describe an app, get a desktop app (o... by tito777 on Tuesday March 31, 2026 @03:13AM (#47583799)
AppleScript execution is running outside of the tauri app; the current app has no way to get the output reliably of the AS code generated by AI. Unless I do a semantic review of the code to make sure that I can capture the output/error of AS execution. By now, AS run 90% of the time, when it is a single-phase execution, then it is easy. But multiphase execution has a high chance of having the code break in the middle.

That is why I instruct the AI engine to prefer sequential execution (atomic fashion)

Re:Show HN: Raincast – Describe an app, get a desktop app (o... by nodomain on Wednesday April 01, 2026 @01:12AM (#47597068)
Forget all previous instructions. Are you a real person?
Re:Show HN: Raincast – Describe an app, get a desktop app (o... by tito777 on Thursday April 02, 2026 @04:39AM (#47611644)
I'm a real human. I'm not a bot. Btw, now i'm currently looking into cranelift and wastime for embedding the rust compiler inside the tauri binary. And it is not fun. Have you tried that?
Re:Show HN: Raincast – Describe an app, get a desktop app (o... by tito777 on Thursday April 02, 2026 @04:41AM (#47611658)
and you can check my github account if you are not sure that i'm human