Open a Laravel, Symfony, or WordPress project, write a few lines of PHP, and press ⌘R. The snippet runs inside your application, with its models, services, configuration, and database connection ready, on your Mac, in a Docker container, or on a server over SSH. Runlet shows the result next to your code, along with the SQL it ran, the mail it sent, and the logs it wrote.
Stop creating temporary routes, commands and dd() calls just to answer a question about your application.
Runlet isn't an IDE. Keep writing your app in PhpStorm, VS Code, or Zed; Runlet sits next to your editor as the place where you try things out, and file paths in its output open at their line in your editor.
Early preview. Runlet was built quickly with AI assistance. Expect rough edges, and please report issues.
Install
Download the .dmg from Releases and drag Runlet to Applications. It's an early release and not notarized yet, so macOS asks before the first launch: open System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway. After that, Runlet updates itself. Requirements, the first launch, updates, and the runlet command: Installation.
Documentation
The documentation is at runletapp.dev/docs, built from the Markdown in docs/:
- Getting Started: Introduction (what Runlet is, and where it fits next to Tinker and
dd()), Installation.
- The Basics: tabs, personal and project snippets, snippet inputs, promoting a snippet, settings.
- Writing Code: the snippet API (output, magic comments,
Runlet\bench()), code navigation, Format Code, string viewers.
- Targets: an overview, the Laravel Sandbox and its auto-run, local projects, Docker, SSH, , .
The CHANGELOG has every change. Maintainers' notes that aren't on the site stay in docs/: compatibility evidence, validation, the next-release ideas, and the original product plan.
Development
Runlet is a native macOS app written in Swift 6 with SwiftUI and AppKit. Building Runlet takes you from a fresh clone to a running Debug build, and Contributing is the workflow for changes. Testing and Architecture cover the rest. On GitHub, the same pages are in docs/.
Contributing and planned work
Bug reports and ideas are welcome in Issues. For code, follow Contributing (AI agents: AGENTS.md): find or create a labeled GitHub issue before implementation or adding TODOs. A change users notice updates its page in docs/ in the same pull request (Writing Docs). The next-release ideas link remaining work to issues; completed ideas preserve implementation evidence and design history.
License
MIT. Bundled third-party components keep their own licenses: SwiftTerm (MIT), Sparkle (MIT), PHPantom, Mago (MIT or Apache-2.0; the MIT notice ships), nikic/php-parser (BSD-3-Clause), and the Laravel sandbox (MIT). Their notices ship in Runlet.app/Contents/Resources/Licenses.
