Locally, tools and code live on your machine under macOS, Windows, or Linux. The setup app installs missing tools, clones your projects, and opens them in your editor; the machine requirements are under Requirements. Without installing anything, you work the same way in a remote workspace, a prepared Ubuntu VM in the cloud.
How the setup goes
You download the setup app from the downloads page, sign in with your Application Platform account, and run the Developer setup, which installs whatever is missing, from Git and the runtimes to the ap CLI. Then you clone a project in the Projects area; the app fetches all repositories, creates the shared configuration, and opens the project in your editor or AI tool with a click.
The project folder
All repositories of a project sit under ~/Documents/application-platform/<organization>/<project>/: one directory per component, local-configuration for editors and AI agents, and gitops-configuration for deployment.
~/Documents/application-platform/<organization>/<project>/
├── backend/ # one folder per repository
├── <app>/
├── homepage/
├── local-configuration/ # shared editor and agent configuration
├── gitops-configuration/ # deployment configuration
├── AGENTS.md → local-configuration/AGENTS.md
├── CLAUDE.md → local-configuration/CLAUDE.md
├── .cursor → local-configuration/.cursor
├── .claude → local-configuration/.claude
├── .codex → local-configuration/.codex
├── .vscode → local-configuration/.vscode
└── …
The entries pointing to local-configuration are symlinks created by the setup app when cloning; the same editor settings and rules for AI agents therefore apply to every repository. Always open this project folder in your editor or AI agent, not a single repository, so backend, app, and homepage are visible together and the shared configuration applies.
Working in the project
You start each application from its repository root with ap run-local, which depending on the type starts Docker services and a development server, Flutter web, or Hugo with the matching environment files; ports, stopping, and typical errors are covered in Starting applications. Runtime versions are pinned per repository in .tool-versions, provided by asdf on macOS and Linux and by FVM, NVM, and HVM on Windows. Configuration values live in env/*.generated.env (platform) and env/*.custom.env (your own values), see Environment variables; a push to main starts the pipeline from Git workflow and deployment.