🚀 Overview

Brix is a high-performance CLI designed to transform modern web projects into lightweight, standalone Windows applications. By leveraging the native WebView2 runtime, Brix eliminates the overhead of Electron while providing a professional, branded host for your code.

Features include:

• Custom protocol asset serving
• Embedded backend support
• SHA-256 verification
• Installer generation

🪟 Platform

Brix is a Windows-only runtime — the native host is built on the system WebView2 engine and Win32 APIs, and the crate refuses to compile on any other OS (#![cfg(not(windows))] compile_error!). This is a deliberate stance, not a gap:

• Build from anywhere. The brix CLI is plain Node, and Brix ships a prebuilt stub.exe, so you can produce Windows .exe files from Windows, macOS, or Linux CI — only the resulting app runs on Windows.
• Run on Windows 10/11. The evergreen WebView2 runtime is already present on consumer Windows; for offline/locked-down machines pin it with webview2.fixedRuntimePath.

📁 File Directories & Project Information

When using Brix, your app's structure revolves around a .brix configuration file. After building, the compiled executable lands in a designated output folder.

Runtime files

| Location | Contents | |---|---| | %LOCALAPPDATA%\brix_<name> | WebView2 user data, backend.log + backend-error.log (sidecar output) | | %LOCALAPPDATA%\brix\brix-crash.log | Startup failures (also logged with --verbose) | | %TEMP%\brix_<name> | Server-mode extraction + backend working directory | | next to the exe | nothing — works when installed to read-only locations like Program Files |

🛠️ Quick Start

Just two commands — Brix stages, bundles, brands, and stitches everything for you.

1. Install (once)

npm install -g brixpackager

2. Build

From anywhere, point Brix at your project (the folder containing .brix — or pass the .brix file directly):

brixpack build my-project

Your branded, standalone .exe lands in my-project\Brix_Works\ — your source folder stays completely untouched (no staging folders, no stray files).

| Command | What it does | |---|---| | brixpack init [project] | Scan a project and write a .brix config. | | brixpack build [project] | Bundle project into a standalone exe. | | brixpack build [project] --out <dir> | Write the exe to <dir>. | | brixpack build [project] --list | Dry run: print every file that would be bundled. | | brixpack init installer [project] | Interactive wizard: pick an installer type. | | brixpack make [zip\|inno\|nsis\|msi] | Build the installer. |

💡 Both brixpack and brix command names work.

📘 Documentation & References

Explore the full potential of Brix, including window customization and deep framework integration.

• 👉 JSON Syntax Reference — every key of .brix and installer/installer.json.
• 👉 Features & Use Cases — scenarios, comparisons (Electron/Tauri), and testing results.

💎 Built by HaadiAli

Brix is created by a solo developer, HaadiAli, building this for fun and optimized for the modern web.

GitHub · NPM Registry