zero-native

Zero-native is Vercel Labs building genuinely native desktop apps with no browser inside them. You write views in a `.native` markup file and your logic in TypeScript or Zig, and it compiles to a native binary that ships no WebView, no Chromium, and no JavaScript runtime. That is the whole departure from Electron: native rendering (Metal on macOS) instead of a web page in a window. Apache-2.0, free.

Under the hood it is mostly Zig, built on an explicit model, message, and update loop so state changes stay inspectable and easy to reason about. macOS has the deepest support; Linux runs through a software renderer, Windows through Win32, and iOS and Android are experimental. It is pre-1.0, around v0.5, with APIs still moving. One useful trick: AI agents can drive a running app through built-in automation servers for accessibility snapshots and deterministic testing.

For solo developers and small teams who want real native performance and will trade the web stack to get it, this is an interesting early bet. Large teams shipping commercial desktop software should wait; Tauri and Electron have the mature plugin ecosystems and tooling depth today.

The catch is that this asks you to leave the web-UI world entirely. No HTML, no CSS, no npm UI ecosystem, just a Zig-flavored markup and a message loop you have to learn. The payoff is a small, fast, truly native app. The cost is being an early adopter of an unfinished and unfamiliar stack.