Raycast launched Glaze today, a product that lets Mac users build native desktop applications by typing plain-language prompts into an AI chat interface. The platform, now in private beta, uses Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex as its underlying models and includes a public store where users can share, discover, and install apps built by others.
"Glaze is our take on personal computing," cofounder Thomas Paul Mann told The Verge. The pitch is simple enough. You describe what you want, Glaze tries to build it in one pass, and the result lives on your dock like any other Mac application. Keyboard shortcuts, menu bar integration, file system access, background processes. Real desktop software, not a browser tab pretending to be one.
Raycast has spent six years building a launcher that hundreds of thousands of professionals open every day. Thousands of developers wrote extensions for it. Glaze pushes that further, into full applications you never need a terminal to create.
The Breakdown
- Raycast launched Glaze, an AI-powered platform for building native Mac desktop apps through chat prompts
- Uses Claude Code and OpenAI Codex as underlying models; includes a public Glaze Store for sharing and forking apps
- Free tier with daily credits; paid plans start at $20/month with private team stores for organizations
- Mac-only at launch with vibe coding's security and sustainability questions still unanswered
The vibe coding gap Glaze is trying to close
Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex app proved you can build working software without writing code. What they didn't solve is the rest of it. Terminals, deployment pipelines, debugging at 11 p.m. when a dependency breaks. For anyone outside the developer class, that stuff is a wall. Most people hit it and walk away.
Glaze strips that layer away. The entire workflow happens inside a single Mac application. Prompt it, watch the app materialize, drag it to your dock. If the result isn't right, tell Glaze what to change. Mann says the goal is zero friction. "We want to make sure you can just prompt anything you want." No caveats attached.
Internally, Raycast has been running Glaze on its own teams for weeks. The support team built a Glaze app connected to GitHub that now runs their entire extension review workflow. Other employees churned out dozens of internal tools and personal utilities. When you can mold software around how your team actually operates, the gap between "we need a tool for this" and "here's the tool" collapses to minutes.
A store for software that didn't exist yesterday
The Glaze Store is where this gets interesting, and where the real bet lives. Public and private team stores let users browse what others have built, install apps with a click, and fork them. Grab someone else's expense tracker, rip out the parts you don't need, add a Slack integration. Mann describes it as remixable software.
That store model addresses a problem every vibe coding platform has struggled with. People build clever little tools, and those tools die on their hard drives. Nobody else benefits. Nobody discovers them. Glaze turns each creation into something findable, installable, and tweakable by strangers.
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Pricing follows a familiar SaaS structure. A free tier offers daily credits for building apps, and everything on the public store is accessible to all users. Paid plans start at $20 a month with larger credit bundles, and teams can create private stores to share apps across an organization.
Building on shaky ground
Timing matters here, and the timing is complicated. Vibe coding usage crashed hard after an initial surge in 2025, with Google launching tools into a market that had already peaked. That early momentum cratered inside a year. People discovered that AI-generated code works for simple utilities and falls apart under anything complex.
Security remains the elephant nobody wants to feed. Andrej Karpathy rebranded vibe coding as "agentic engineering" in February, but the industry's security track record suggests the name change was cosmetic. When AI-generated apps get shared across a store and installed by thousands of users, every unreviewed dependency and unchecked API call becomes a shared vulnerability. Raycast hasn't detailed its moderation, testing, or quality assurance process for the Glaze Store. That silence is conspicuous for a company launching a marketplace.
The competitive field is crowded and getting more so. Replit, Bolt, v0, and OpenAI's own Codex app all want to be the place where non-developers build software. Each has staked out different territory. Replit owns collaborative coding, Bolt pushes instant deployment, and v0 specializes in UI generation. Glaze's angle is desktop-native simplicity and a distribution channel baked into a launcher that already sits in hundreds of thousands of Mac docks. That's an emboldened bet for a company watching the same usage data everyone else can see.
Mac-only, for now
Glaze launches exclusively on macOS. Windows and Linux support will come later, Raycast says, along with mobile. For a company whose Mac launcher already established brand loyalty among exactly the power users who would try this first, the constraint makes strategic sense even if it limits reach. Raycast raised a $15 million Series A in 2022 and has built its reputation on obsessive Mac-native polish. That design sensibility carries over. Every Glaze app follows Apple's Liquid Glass design language and ships with skeuomorphic icons that look like they belong. Polished by default.
The deeper integration arrives in April, when Raycast releases a major update. Glaze apps will plug directly into the launcher, searchable and launchable alongside everything else in your Raycast workflow.
Whether Glaze finds solid ground or sinks with the rest of the vibe coding platforms depends on two things Raycast hasn't answered yet. Can AI-generated apps shared at scale stay safe? And will people keep building after the novelty fades?
The waitlist opened today. Existing Raycast users get priority access.
Frequently Asked Questions
What AI models power Glaze?
Glaze uses Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex as its primary underlying models. Users type a plain-language prompt describing the app they want, and the AI attempts to build a complete desktop application in a single pass.
How much does Glaze cost?
A free tier includes daily credits for building apps and full access to the public Glaze Store. Paid plans start at $20 per month with larger credit bundles. Teams can create private stores. One-off credit top-ups are also available.
Is Glaze available on Windows or Linux?
Not yet. Glaze launched exclusively on macOS. Raycast says Windows, Linux, and mobile support will follow, but has not announced a timeline for any platform beyond Mac.
How does the Glaze Store work?
Users can publish apps they build to a public store or a private team store. Others can browse, install with one click, and fork apps to customize them. Raycast describes it as remixable software.
How is Glaze different from using Claude Code or Codex directly?
Claude Code and Codex require terminal access, deployment knowledge, and debugging skills. Glaze wraps the entire process in a Mac application with no terminal involved. Built apps land on your dock as native desktop software, not web apps.
