AI tools like Cloud Code have made it possible for users to create software without any coding knowledge. That doesn’t mean the process is easy, though: You may not need to write code directly, but you do need to understand how your computer’s terminal works, how to deploy and maintain software, and deal with many other related tasks. raycastThe Launcher app that has been particularly popular among Mac users thinks it can simplify the process even more. The company is launching a new product named glaze Which strives to make it easier to create, use, share, and discover new Vibe-coded software. Right now it’s only available for Mac, but Raycast plans to bring it to Windows and mobile over time, and the company thinks it could change the way you think about your apps.
“Glaze is our take on personal computing,” says Raycast co-founder Thomas Paul Mann. He likes the idea of ​​letting users build small utilities for themselves, or create ultra-specific apps to meet the ultra-specific needs of their team. You can use Glaze to create whatever you want, or browse the directory of apps created and shared by others. Or, even better, says Mann, take someone else’s app and then modify it to your liking.
The Glaze process is even more simple than most Vibe coding tools: You simply type in a hint, and the tool attempts to build an app at a time. Cloud Code and OpenAI’s Codex are the platform’s primary underlying models, so the building process may seem familiar to existing Vibe coders – a few initial questions and some checking along the way – but in my testing so far, I’ve found that Glaze works extra hard to get the job done the first time.
Mann confirms that’s the goal: “We want to make sure you can prompt everything you want right away,” he says. “If you have to dive into the code, we’ve basically done something wrong.” Glaze aims to take care of things like cloud storage, follow the basic principles of good design, and manage any necessary APIs and integrations. These are features that most users take for granted in software, but they require real knowledge and effort to build into, even in cloud code. Glaze tries to put them all away again.
Over Zoom, Mann showed me a bunch of apps he’s built. There’s one that creates an emoji from any photo you choose. Is a simple expense tracker. Zoom is one for recording meetings and highlighting important moments. There are data-ie dashboards and project trackers and tweet analyzers and logo makers and more. Each is built very simply and follows all of Apple’s Liquid Glass rules, has a somewhat retro-styled skeuomorphic icon, and lives in a list called “My Projects” inside the Glaze app.
Glaze isn’t technically a Raycast feature, but it is deeply integrated with the launcher. When you create Glaze apps, Mann says, “you can think about it coming with a bundled extension that Raycast can pick up and make its own.” Raycast’s job in this case is to organize things across different apps, help you find what you’re looking for, and act as the launcher you already have.
The idea here starts simple, but becomes increasingly complex. When you create an app with Glaze, and someone else installs it from the Glaze Store, are they installing Yours app, or is it more like they’re downloading some code from GitHub to run themselves? In other words, who is responsible for the proper functioning of the app? Can someone else add a feature to your app and call it their own? Can you charge for your app? Who is to blame if something goes wrong?
Mann says he doesn’t know all the answers. He is also not sure how much to charge for the glaze, or who is most likely to pay for it. (So ​​far, the plan is to have a free version and then some $20-$30 paid tiers based on usage.) No one really knows those things; This entire software ecosystem is so new that no one has figured out how it’s supposed to work. So far, Mann’s theory is that most people will want to create simple, largely single-player games that run natively on their machine. Glaze doesn’t seem to aspire to be the next big social network or the home of the next Salesforce, there are just lots of little ways to make those things better.
But that doesn’t mean Raycast’s ambitions aren’t huge. They are: Mann told me he thinks we’re at an “iTunes moment” for software, when suddenly everything you want can be available in one place. “I think it’s a fundamental change in software,” he says. Over time, he sees inspired apps like this completely changing the app economy. “In some cases, we’re rivaling the App Store on Mac and Windows,” says Mann. “And who knows? Maybe we can capture them.”
