Kanam Forge

A self-hosted, AI-powered app builder (fork of Adorable, MIT). Describe what you want, and Kanam Forge builds it — with live preview, terminal, and a pipeline tuned to a fullstack workflow.

What this is

Kanam Forge takes Adorable's solid conversational app-building foundation (chat → AI agent → sandboxed execution → live preview → commit) and replaces the cloud sandbox with local Docker containers, making it fully self-hosted and personal.

Long-term vision: a Lovable-class builder that creates complete projects (not just landings) following a disciplined pipeline — opinionated stack, persistent memory, accessibility built-in, multi-agent review.

Status

MVP (local Docker, single user). Fase 1: decoupling Freestyle cloud sandbox → local Docker containers. See projects/kanam-forge/.knowledge/ for the full plan.

Features (from upstream)

• Conversational app building — Chat with an AI that writes, edits, and runs code inside a sandboxed VM
• Live preview & terminal — See your app update in real time with an embedded browser and terminal
• Persistent projects — Every project is backed by a git repo; conversations and history are preserved across sessions

Tech Stack

• Framework: Next.js (App Router, TypeScript, Turbopack)
• AI: Vercel AI SDK with OpenAI and Anthropic support
• Chat UI: assistant-ui
• Sandboxing: local Docker containers (per project)
• Styling: Tailwind CSS + shadcn/ui

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+ and npm
• Docker (Desktop on macOS, or any daemon) - required for the sandbox
• Ollama running locally (for the default local LLM provider)

1. Install dependencies

npm install

2. Configure environment

Copy the example and edit it. For local use with Ollama:

cp .env.example .env.local

Then edit .env.local:

LLM_PROVIDER=ollama
OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://localhost:11434/api   # note the /api suffix
OLLAMA_MODEL=deepseek-v4-flash:cloud

Note: do NOT set KANAM_FORGE_DATA_DIR to a literal ~ path - Node does not expand it and existsSync will fail. Leave it unset to use the default ~/.kanam-forge/projects.

3. Start Docker

Make sure the Docker daemon is running (e.g. open -a Docker on macOS). The sandbox image is built automatically on first project creation.

4. Run the dev server

npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000 to start building.

5. Create a project

Describe what you want in the chat. Kanam Forge provisions a Docker container per project, installs deps, and starts a live preview. The agent writes code, runs checks, and commits changes to the project's own git repo.

Troubleshooting

• "No API key configured" - make sure .env.local exists with LLM_PROVIDER=ollama (Ollama needs no key).
• "Repository metadata not found" - the project container was removed; create a new project.
• Preview shows the orchestrator home instead of the project - the project preview is a separate port (dynamic), shown in the UI. The agent is instructed not to report the orchestrator port (3000).

Upstream

• Original: freestyle-sh/Adorable (MIT)
• This fork: gonzoblasco/kanam-forge