Raycast’s Glaze is a comprehensive application platform for active programmers

Artificial intelligence tools Like Claude Code It allowed users to create programs without any programming knowledge at all. 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 peripheral works, how to deploy and maintain software, and handle a lot of other associated tasks. Raycasta launcher app that is particularly popular among Mac users, believes it can make the process simpler. The company is launching a new product called Glaze It attempts to make it easier to create, use, share, and discover new encrypted software. It’s currently only available for Mac, but Raycast is planning to bring it to Windows and mobile phones over timeThe company believes it can change the way you think about your apps.

“Glaze is our take on personal computing,” says Thomas Paul Mann, co-founder of Raycast. He likes the idea of ​​letting users build small utilities for themselves, or highly specific applications to fit their team’s very specific needs. You can use Glaze to build your own, or browse the directory of apps created and shared by others. Or better yet, Mann says, get someone else’s app and then tweak it to your liking.

Glaze’s process is more straightforward than most dynamic programming tools: just type a prompt, and the tool attempts to build an application in one go. Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex are the platform’s core archetypes, so the build process may seem familiar to existing activation programmers — a few upfront questions and some validation along the way — but so far in my testing, I’ve found that Glaze tries too hard to finish the job the first time.

Mann confirms that’s the goal: “We want to make sure you can claim anything you want,” he says. “If you have to dive into the code, we’ve done something wrong.” Glaze aims to take care of things like cloud storage, following basic principles of good design, and managing any necessary APIs and integrations. These are features that most users take for granted in software, but require real knowledge and effort to build, even in Claude Code. Glaze tries to wave them all away again.

Over Zoom, Mann showed me a collection of apps he had created. There is one that creates an emoji from any photo you select. There is a simple spending tracker. There’s one to record Zoom meetings and highlight key moments. There are data dashboards, project trackers, tweet analyzers, logo generators, and much more. Each one is designed very simply, follows all of Apple’s Liquid Glass rules, has a somewhat retro-styled holographic icon, and resides in a menu called “My Projects” within the Glaze app.

Glaze isn’t technically a Raycast feature, but it’s deeply integrated with the player. When you create Glaze applications, Mann says, “You can think of them as coming with a bundled extension, which Raycast can pick up and make itself.” Raycast’s job in this case is to coordinate things across apps, help you find the apps you’re looking for, and act as the player it truly is.

The idea here starts out simple, but quickly gets complicated. When you create an app with Glaze, and someone else installs it from the Glaze store, does someone else install it? for you app, or does it look like they’re downloading some code from GitHub to run it themselves? In other words, who is responsible for the application working properly? Can someone else add a feature to your app and call it their own? Can you charge money for your app? If something goes wrong, who is to blame?

Mann says he doesn’t know all the answers. He’s not sure exactly how much he should charge for Glaze, or who would likely pay for it. (So ​​far, the plan is to get a free version, then a few $20-$30 paid tiers based on usage.) No one really knows this stuff; The entire software ecosystem is so new that no one has been able to figure out how it works. So far, Mann’s theory is that most people will want to build fairly simple tools that run natively on their devices. Glaze doesn’t seem to aspire to be home to the next big social network or the next Salesforce, just lots of little ways to improve those things.

But that doesn’t mean Raycast’s ambitions aren’t huge. They are: Mann told me that he thinks we’ve reached the “iTunes moment” for software, where suddenly everything you want is available in one place. “I think it’s a fundamental change in software,” he says. Over time, he sees this type of paid app changing the entire app economy. “In some ways, we’re competing with the App Store on Mac and Windows,” Mann says. “Who knows? Maybe we can capture them.”