Show HN: Run GUIs as Scripts
by zero-st4rs on 4/10/2026, 7:28:29 AM
Hi there, Zero Stars here.<p>I recently published some new work to Hokusai Pocket, which is a cross-platform binary made on top of raylib and MRuby that runs GUIs from ruby scripts.<p>License?<p>MIT!<p>How does it work?<p>The binary is available on the GitHub releases page: <a href="https://github.com/skinnyjames/hokusai-pocket/releases/tag/0.6.1" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/skinnyjames/hokusai-pocket/releases/tag/0...</a><p>You can download the binary on x86 Windows, OSX, or Linux, and run your GUI application with<p>hokusai-pocket run:target="<your_hokusai_app.rb>"<p>For a little bit of a hello world, I started a photoshop clone<p><a href="https://github.com/skinnyjames/hokusai_demo_paint" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/skinnyjames/hokusai_demo_paint</a><p>Also a little game<p><a href="https://github.com/skinnyjames/pocket-squares" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/skinnyjames/pocket-squares</a><p>Docs / Help?<p>The docs are in progress, but the old docs for the CRuby version express some of the basic ideas around the project. <a href="https://hokusai.skinnyjames.net/docs/intro" rel="nofollow">https://hokusai.skinnyjames.net/docs/intro</a><p>(I'm also available to answer questions in between slinging pizza)<p>Deps?<p>Hokusai pocket currently uses<p>* libuv for offloading cpu intensive tasks to a worker pool to prevent blocking the UI thread, and I plan to integrate some libuv networking as well.<p>* raylib for backend graphics / I've also built with SDL on arm64 to run applications on my pinephone<p>* NativeFileDialog for the lovely integration into filesystem.<p>* MRuby for running or embedding the scripts<p>* tree-sitter for the custom template grammar (Although templates can be built with ruby)<p>Anyway, I hope you get a chance to try it. If you make something cool AND have docker installed, you can also publish your work as single binary<p>`hokusai-pocket publish:target=<your cool program.rb>`<p>Would love feedback, apps, and help with documentation and more build targets.<p>urs truly,<p>@ ᴗ @
https://github.com/skinnyjames/hokusai-pocket
Comments
by: alienbaby
I see aot if these kinda of links to GitHub repositories with the user obviously keen on showing people, but they then describe what it is / does using specialist / domain language which can make it quite hard to get just what it is I'm looking at, or what I can do with it, and where / why it would be useful. I do wish people would consider their audience after posting 'look at this thing' links, and that people might not quite be as familiar with acronyms and domain specific terminology without a bit more of a plain speaking background description as to what is being shown off! Maybe even some screenshots too.<p>I mean, I can follow ops intent to a general degree, it sounds interesting, but ..
4/14/2026, 3:56:59 PM
by: apitman
This is potentially very interesting to me, but I'm having a hard time under exactly what it is. Could you give a little background on what motivated it, and what the core features are?
4/14/2026, 2:37:16 PM