Nice idea! Can I add one feature suggestion, from my experience of working regularly with designers on software projects? Adding the ability of cloning a git project and checking out a branch directly in-app (in addition to using a directory as input) would allow someone with very little to zero coding expertise to use NDesk as a "preview" tool for in-progress work. Think PM or designer who wants to check out the progress or QA a feature branch. If you register a custom protocol on the OS to launch NDesk you could even create badges for READMES "Open in NDesk", that would directly launch the app and start cloning.

Thanks for hunting @katmanalac 🙌 Hello PH, I'm Dave, previously I've worked on ToDesktop and ToDesktop 2.0 on Product Hunt. This time around, @rbt and I are launching NDesk and it's free. NDesk is a friendly desktop app for installing/running/dev'ing any Node/JS/TS project, including backend and frontend stacks (React, Webpack, Vue, Angular, Gatsby, Next...). ❓ Why? There are a lot of meta-skills (i.e.. command-line voodoo) needed to even get started with web development and app development. These skills don't really have anything to do with building great products. NDesk is an attempt to step-over that part of the process and get straight to the good stuff — building great products. Anybody can use NDesk but hardcore software devs might prefer the command-line. There are a ton of talented non-devs who use Javascript and Node.js daily. NDesk is for them: - 👩‍🎨 Graphic designers - 🧪 QA/testing engineers - 🎓 Academics (e.g. Sciences, Math, Stats). - 📝 Documentation/Technical writers - 🦾 People doing robotics - 🤖 People doing IOT - 👩🏻‍🏫 Product managers - 🚲 Beginners 🌍 Making Node.js accessible NDesk lowers the barrier to entry for installing and running Javascript/Node.js projects: - 🛠 No messing around with the command-line. - ⬇️ No need to install Node or npm. They are bundled with NDesk. - 🖱 Drag and drop any Node.js or javascript project onto the NDesk window. - ✅ Install any project in one-click. - 🙂 Our installer has recognizable icons for popular dependencies. - 📊 Install shows a friendly progress bar as it's installing dependencies. - 💨 Project scripts like 'start' and 'export' are discoverable on the NDesk UI. - 🏃‍♀️ Project scripts/commands can be run in one-click. 👩‍💻 It's free This is a fun little experiment right now and it's completely free. I'm excited to hear what you think. If you run into issues or want to share feedback privately then please email me at dave@todesktop.com or post an issue here.

Wow! Are you dog-fooding NDesk too?

This is sweet!

Looks nice but I can't register