Acrylic
The desktop AI IDE built to outgrow Cursor and Windsurf.
Real terminal, visible review, visual editing, and that stays on your machine.
The command deck interface
Built for engineering sovereignty
Tools that respect your context and your data.
Local-first
Your repository and keys stay on your machine. Acrylic treats cloud identity as access control, not as the place where active work has to live.
Real PTY
Native terminal integration. Your aliases, shell config, long-running jobs, and handoffs behave like a real workstation instead of a toy console.
Diff-first review
Every AI change becomes visible before it lands. Suggestions show up in a dedicated lane so you keep accountability.
BYOK
Bring your own key. Connect your provider directly and avoid paying an extra inference tax just to use the editor.
The Builder
Structural editing for UI work. Touch layout and components visually without throwing away code integrity.
Fleet Sync
Shared local context and collaborative runtime surfaces are on the roadmap once the desktop core is hardened.
Cursor is fast.
Cloud-first IDEs are racing to upload your development environment for convenience. We care more about preserving ownership, visible state, and local execution when the work gets serious.
Acrylic is not an AI extension stapled onto an existing editor. It is a desktop control room designed for the high-context era of software development.
We believe in radical reviewability, local execution, and the right to own every byte of your development environment.
Data boundary protocol
Total transparency on data flow.
Local hardware bound
- Project source code
- API credentials (BYOK)
- Semantic vector map
- PTY shell session
Cloud synchronized
- Account identityAuth
- Theme and profile stateSyncable
- Subscription statusBilling-ready
- Beta entitlementsCloud state
Frequently asked questions
Straight answers about how Acrylic works, what stays local, and why the desktop model matters.
You provide your own API keys for providers like Anthropic or OpenAI. Acrylic uses them from your machine instead of proxying active work through our servers.
It is a native pseudo-terminal session, not a fake web console. Shell config, long-running commands, and handoff stay grounded in the same runtime.
Identity, download access, recovery, and future billing readiness. Your local repo, files, and provider secrets do not need to leave your machine.
They proved the market. Acrylic goes after the next layer: more ownership, more visible state, and a stronger desktop-native system when the work stops being a demo.