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Kiln

Kiln is the IDE for the age of AI-generated code.

Agents can write more code than ever, but humans are still accountable for what ships. Kiln helps you understand, direct, validate, and ship code you didn't write by hand, pulling code comprehension, plan-to-ship workflows, and proactive agent orchestration into one tool. Software has moved from writing code to steering agents, and Kiln is where you stay in control of it.

Under the hood it's a native macOS app built with SwiftUI and AppKit. No Electron, no web view. A calm, fast place to read code, run your real shell, and think alongside an assistant that can run entirely on-device. It's part of the marginal-utility suite, alongside Marginalia.

macOS 26+ (Tahoe), Apple Silicon. Built from scratch, no VS Code or Electron under the hood.

The Kiln project front page: a serif title, a README headline, a live status board, and the start-here reading path.

These docs are the public companion to the app. The same feature pages render inside Kiln itself (⌘3), so what you read here matches what ships. The usual deal is docs as code: you drag the docs up to the rigor of the code, version them, review them, build them in CI. Kiln leans the other way, toward code as docs. The code is the source of truth and each page is a view onto it, kept honest by living right next to the thing it describes.

Where to start​

  • New to Kiln? Start with install, then running Kiln.
  • Setting up an assistant? Providers covers on-device, cloud, and your Kiln account.
  • Want the full tour? The features section has one page per surface, kept current as behavior changes.
  • Curious who it's for? Positioning lays out the call: built for directors, not typists.

The shape of it​

Kiln has three reading modes (CODE, NOTES, DOC), a chat panel called Potter, and a squad of named agents that work the project alongside you. The inbox, plan, agents, and diff thread into one piece of work. Everything that can run locally does, and cloud is a one-click switch when you want more power.

Read the feature tour for the detail.