Build an app in the desktop app

The desktop app opens on a first screen with four choices. Build an app is Adminium Designer on your own computer: you describe an app, a model you bring writes it, and Adminium checks it, applies it and shows it. Nothing is installed besides the app itself: it carries its own Node and its own npm.

Use my own database is the desktop app as it was before: screens for a database you already have. See First run.

A project is a folder

“Build an app” asks for a name and makes a folder for it, by default under ~/Adminium. Everything about the project lives in that folder: its apps, its data and its key. You can copy it, back it up, or open it in a terminal with adminium design.

The app refuses a few places and says why: your home folder itself, a folder that belongs to the system, a folder inside another project. It warns before it uses a folder that a sync service watches (iCloud Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive): a live database does badly there.

Making a project downloads the packages it is built with. That needs the internet once and takes from a few seconds to a few minutes. If it fails, the app says which of four things happened: no connection, a proxy that refused, the registry answering with an error, or a full disk.

Projects you opened are listed on the first screen under Recent projects. A row opens the project in the Designer; Open dashboard opens the project’s own dashboard instead.

A model, once per computer

The Designer writes your app with an AI model, and you bring the model: a key from a provider, or a model that runs on your computer with Ollama. Add a model on the Designer’s first page tests what you enter before it keeps it.

In the desktop app a model is kept by the app, not by the project: once for every project on this computer, encrypted by the system’s key store (Keychain on macOS, Windows’ own on Windows, your desktop’s key store on Linux). It is never written into a project’s .env, so a project you export or share carries no key. On a Linux desktop with no key store the key is kept as plain text in a file only you can read, and the screen says so.

If a project’s .env names a model (it was made on a terminal, or by an older version of the app), the app does not use that line and says so. A terminal still reads it.

Versions

After every change the Designer keeps a version, so you can go back. It uses git for that. If your computer has none, the Designer’s first page offers to download git (about 62 MB, from its publisher, checked against a fixed hash) or to wait. On a Mac it also names Apple’s own developer tools. Nothing is downloaded until you say so, and versions come on without restarting anything. What you built before is kept as the first version.

Open a folder

Open a folder is for a project that is already there: one you made earlier, or one someone sent you.

Opening a project runs its code on your computer, with your access to your files. So the first time you open a folder the app asks, and shows the folder’s path. It asks again if the folder’s code changed while the app was not holding it — for example when a ZIP was unpacked over it. Nothing of the folder is run before you answer.

After that the app reads the folder and may show you one of these, once:

What the folder holds	What the app does
The project, its data and its key	Says it found them, and opens it.
The project and no data	Makes an empty database (and a key, if there is none) and says so. The apps’ own tables are made again; rows that were in the old data are not there.
Data, but no key	Stops and asks. You can pick the .env file you still have, start the data fresh (the old data is moved to a folder named data.before-<date>, never deleted), or go on with a new key (saved connections and API keys in the data stop working).
No packages, or packages from another kind of computer	Offers to get them.
Accounts made on another computer	Lists how many people, API keys and public keys came with it.
A project made with an older Adminium	Offers Update this project. If you decline, it still opens.
Data last changed by a newer Adminium	Does not start it, and offers to update the app.
A project a terminal is running	Says on which port, and waits for you to stop it there.

An app’s own build commands are approved per computer. A list of approved commands that arrives inside a folder is not believed.

Build or share

A project is either built or shared, never both at once.

While it is built, it answers on your computer only, and the Designer is on.

Share puts it on your network so a phone or a colleague’s computer can use it, with the Designer off. Before the first share the app asks you for an email address and a password: on your own computer you never needed them, but another device has nothing else to sign in with. A project is never shared without an owner password.

That password is for other devices. On your own computer the app goes on signing you in as the project’s owner, while you build and when you open the dashboard of a shared project. This holds for a project made in the app or with adminium design; a project whose first account was made on the setup page asks for that account’s password here too.

While it is shared the app shows the addresses to open on another device (the one marked Best uses your computer’s name and survives a change of network number), a QR code for a phone’s camera, and keeps your computer awake. The port is kept per project, so a bookmark keeps working the next time you share.

A shared project answers only to the addresses the app shows: your computer’s .local name, its addresses on the networks it is on, and localhost and 127.0.0.1 on the computer itself, each on the project’s port. A request that asks for it by any other name is refused, so a web page elsewhere cannot reach your project by pointing a name of its own at your computer.

Sharing is plain http: traffic on your network is not encrypted. Share only on a network you trust. Go back to building ends it; people using the project on other devices are disconnected.

Export

Export this project… (in the menu under the project’s name) makes one ZIP. You choose what it holds:

• The project’s apps, its data and its key. Whoever opens it can read all of it, saved database connections included.
• The apps only. No data, no key, none of your chats with the Designer. Whoever opens it starts with empty data.

Neither holds your model keys, the downloaded packages, or backups. The project stops for a moment while the file is made.

To open an export on another computer: unpack it, then Open a folder.

Connect to another Adminium

Connect to another Adminium opens an Adminium that runs somewhere else — a colleague’s shared project, or a server — in a window of its own. Type its address; the app checks that an Adminium answers there first.

An address on your own network may be plain http, and the app says it is not encrypted before it connects. Anywhere else it must be https.