Installation

Verve targets Zig 0.16.0 or newer. Verify your toolchain first:

zig version
# 0.16.0

Get Verve

Clone the framework — a Verve application is a copy of the framework source tree, so the checkout doubles as your scaffolding source:

git clone https://github.com/sirhco/verve
cd verve
zig build

A clean zig build produces three things:

Artifact	Purpose
`zig-out/bin/verve-server`	the demo app's HTTP server
`zig-out/bin/verve-cli`	project scaffolder (`verve-cli new`)
`client.wasm` + island chunks	hydration runtime, embedded into the server

Scaffold your first project

./zig-out/bin/verve-cli new myapp        # web app (default)
./zig-out/bin/verve-cli new mydesk --desktop   # native desktop app
cd myapp
zig build run

The dev server listens on http://127.0.0.1:8080.

The scaffold copies build.zig, src/, and tools/ into the new directory — your application code lives in src/app/ and the framework builds the server, the WASM client, and per-island chunks around it. See Project structure for the full tour.

Platform requirements

Web apps need nothing beyond Zig. Desktop apps embed the OS webview:

macOS — Cocoa + WebKit, no extra dependencies.
Windows — the WebView2 header and WebView2Loader.dll are vendored in-tree; runtime needs the WebView2 Evergreen Runtime (preinstalled on Windows 11, bootstrapper on Windows 10).
Linux (GTK3, default) — sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev (Fedora: gtk3-devel webkit2gtk4.1-devel).
Linux (GTK4) — sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev libwebkitgtk-6.0-dev, build with zig build -Dgtk4=true run.

Build options

Flag	Effect
`-Dpublic-dir=<path>`	embed a static-asset directory, served at `/public/*` with cache-busted URLs
`-Di18n-dir=<path>`	directory of `<locale>.json` catalogs (default `i18n/`)
`-Di18n-default=<tag>`	default locale for the lazy catalog

Next: Hello world (web).

Next →Hello world — web