Machine, account, and Docker
You need a machine running macOS, Windows, or Linux on which you have administrator rights, because the setup app installs tools.
You also need your Application Platform account. The setup app signs in with it and loads the organizations and projects you have access to. If you do not have an account yet, register in the web interface.
If your project contains a backend, you need a Docker environment such as Docker Desktop. ap run-local uses it to start the database and the other backend services as containers. You set up Docker yourself; the developer setup only checks whether it is present. Projects that consist only of apps or homepages work without Docker.
What the developer setup installs
The Developer setup in the setup app checks every tool, shows its status, and installs what is missing. You can install tools individually or all at once, and you do not need to download any of them yourself.
The basics are Git and a version manager for runtimes. On macOS and Linux that is asdf; on Windows, FVM for Flutter, NVM for Node.js, and HVM for Hugo take that role. On top of that, the setup app installs the runtimes your projects expect: Node.js, Flutter, Java, Hugo, Python, PHP, and Ruby, each in the version listed in the repository’s .tool-versions file. That way the whole team works with the same versions.
For the platform itself, the ap CLI and the Application Platform extension for VS Code, Cursor, and Antigravity are added. The CLI starts applications and connects to the platform, and the extension brings start buttons and a project overview into the editor.
Optionally, the developer setup installs tools for mobile development, namely the Android SDK and, on macOS, Xcode and CocoaPods, as well as the AI tools Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Antigravity and the editors VS Code and IntelliJ IDEA. They appear as separate entries that you install only when you need them.