Hi DEV, we're a small team in Montreal, and we just shipped Spare for Mac: a desktop app where you describe a little tool or toy in one sentence, and Spare builds it and installs it as a plugin on your Mac.
Why we built it
Codex and Claude Code can already write a menu-bar timer or a clipboard finder for you. But you still have to build it, package it, figure out where it lives and how to run it, and then explain to a friend how to install it. For small personal things, that last mile is usually where the fun dies.
So Spare does the last mile: the plugin shows up in My Plugins, you click it, it runs.
A few things to make
- A menu-bar Pomodoro timer that reminds you to stand up
- A desktop pet that gets hungry, wants attention, and grows the longer you care for it
- A clipboard history plugin that searches your last 50 items
- A lunch wheel that decides what you eat
Sharing and the community
- One-click share: send a plugin to a friend; they open it in Spare and it's installed.
- Community works: games, desk pets and small tools other people published, each with its license shown (most are MIT). Install in one click.
Pricing
- GPT-5.6 is free to use (fair-use limits apply), covered by the Spare open-source community.
- Pro is $9.9/month and unlocks GPT-6.
Try it
macOS 14+ on Apple silicon: spare.cool/mac
On first launch, double-click Spare once, then go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway.
What would you build first? Tell us in the comments and we'll try making it.
This post was drafted with AI assistance and reviewed by the Spare team.
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