I built a desktop app where the AI agent can see your running app, not just your code

Piye is live on Mac and Linux. One project. Build it visually, or write the code.

After more than a year of building, Piye is live on Mac and Linux.

Piye is one desktop app where you build software visually or write the code, on the same project. This post is about the code side, because that's where most of the hard work went.

The problem I kept hitting

AI agents read your files, but they can't see what's actually happening: the error in the terminal, the breakpoint you hit, the crash on the phone simulator, the dev server that died. So they guess, explore the project again and again, and burn tokens doing it.

What Piye Code does differently

Piye Code is a full code editor, built from scratch rather than forked from another editor. Its own tools report to the agent:

• Terminal: commands and their output, with exit codes
• Debugger and Problems: breakpoints, errors and type issues
• Simulators: the iPhone and Android simulators your app is running on
• Operations: live status of your dev server, git and connected services

Because the agent gets these reports directly, it spends less time searching and more time fixing the real problem. In one of our tests, it found the two causes of a performance bug in Piye's own code in 12 minutes, for about €2 of AI.

The agent never acts behind your back: commits, pushes and deploys each need your explicit approval.

Your models, your keys

• Claude, GPT, Grok, Gemini and Mistral
• Your own API keys
• Local models through Ollama

On Piye's own credits, code work is charged at the AI's cost, so you're not paying a markup to write code.

Piye Studio

A separate window for running many agents on many projects at once, showing which are running, done or waiting on you.

The visual side, briefly

Founders can describe an app in Piye Visual and get a real website or a native iPhone, iPad and Android app, see it on real simulators, and publish to the web, the App Store and Google Play.

When they need a developer, Handoff creates a private GitHub repo and branch and writes a HANDOFF.md briefing: what's built, what's missing, which keys are needed. You open it in Piye, or in any editor you like. The project is a normal folder on your computer, with no lock-in.

What's next

• Piye Live: founders and developers working on the same project live, with visual before-and-after for every change
• Windows, together with Piye Arcade for building games

Try it

Free on Mac and Linux, with 750 credits to start (no card): piye.dev

I'd really like honest feedback from developers: what's confusing, what breaks, what you'd need before using it every day.