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Create a project

Scaffold

Section titled “Scaffold”
Terminal window
npx @dotcarbon/create-app my-carbon-app
cd my-carbon-app

The interactive flow asks for a frontend, language, and package manager. For scripts or CI, provide the choices explicitly:

Terminal window
npx @dotcarbon/create-app my-carbon-app \
  --template vue \
  --lang ts \
  --pm pnpm \
  --yes

Supported templates are react, vue, svelte, solid, preact, and vanilla. TypeScript is the default; pass --lang js for JavaScript. Use --no-install when another process owns dependency installation.

The scaffolder pins current compatible DotCarbon packages when it creates the project. Update the CLI and rerun dependency updates normally when moving an existing app to a later release.

Run the desktop app

Section titled “Run the desktop app”
Terminal window
carbon dev

Carbon starts the configured Vite command, waits for build.devUrl, starts the .NET host with dotnet watch, generates carbon.d.ts, and syncs local app commands into the main capability file.

Add a command

Section titled “Add a command”
public record SumArgs(int A, int B);


public partial class AppCommands : IPlugin
{
    public string Namespace => "app";


    [CarbonCommand("sum")]
    public int Sum(SumArgs args) => args.A + args.B;
}

Call it from the frontend:

import { invoke } from '@dotcarbon/api'


const total = await invoke('app:sum', { a: 20, b: 22 })

carbon dev notices the new command and refreshes the generated TypeScript declarations.

Build

Section titled “Build”
Terminal window
carbon build

The production build compiles the frontend, embeds it with carbon.json, and publishes a self-contained desktop application into out/<target>/. Add --bundle for a native installer.

Next, learn how Carbon maps a project to each native host or review the development workflow.