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Install

What you need before you can run Prototyper locally. Five things: a package manager, a Rust toolchain, Tauri system libraries, optionally a local AI model, and the project itself.

Prerequisites

  • Bun — package manager and JS runtime (any recent version).
  • Rust — rustc + cargo (stable toolchain, edition 2021).
  • Linux system dependencies — at minimum libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev and libappindicator3-dev. See the Tauri v2 prerequisites for the full per-distro list.
  • Ollama (optional) — local AI provider running on http://localhost:11434.
  • OpenAI or Anthropic API key (optional) — for cloud AI providers.

Install dependencies

bun install

This installs all frontend dependencies. The Rust toolchain is managed by rustup; you don’t need to install anything extra for the backend beyond cargo.

Verify

bun --version    # any recent Bun
cargo --version  # stable Rust

If cargo is missing, install via rustup. Bun installs with the one-liner on its homepage.

Optional: Ollama setup

If you want to use a local model:

# Install Ollama from https://ollama.com
ollama serve                 # start the local server (default :11434)
ollama pull qwen2.5-coder    # or any other model

Then in the app, open Settings → AI and pick the local Ollama host. The model list auto-populates via the list_ollama_models Rust command.

Optional: cloud providers

For OpenAI or Claude, drop your API key into Settings → AI → API Key. Keys are stored in settings.json via tauri-plugin-store and never sent anywhere except the configured provider.

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