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Windows x64 · Electron · React · TypeScript · MIT
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A Windows desktop client for Step Code. It provides desktop workspaces, conversations, and session management; Step Code powers agent execution.
Why This Project
The original idea was to explore a community-built desktop client for Step Code while no official Step Code desktop app has been released. Given my love for StepFun, I also look forward to its official release.
Features
- Streaming conversations, model and thinking-level selection
- Custom providers (Beta), model discovery, capability settings and connection diagnostics
- Independent sessions and project workspaces, ordering, pinning, archiving and branching
- Concurrent sessions, queued sends, steering, quotes and cross-session links
- Image attachments, tool approvals, subagent status and elapsed-time feedback
- Plan review and execution, Goal controls, and Ultracode workflow inspection and explicit recovery
- CLM context maintenance, inline commands and links, and persistent turn-status controls
- Summary, context and diff inspection, with bounded recorded-change undo
- A terminal, user-operated browser, file previews and delivery references
- Step account sign-in, MCP configuration, and resource discovery
- Chinese and English UI, with light and dark themes
- GitHub update checks and notifications, with selectable release channels
- Background tray operation and window restoration
- Font and size settings for the interface, messages, code and Diff, plus message line spacing
The app keeps its data in a dedicated directory (%APPDATA%\Desktop for Step Code) instead of reusing a personal Step Code CLI profile. Step Code owns agent execution and permission policies; Desktop adds session orchestration and desktop interactions. Concurrent collaboration does not provide file locks or transaction isolation.
Step login credentials are encrypted for the current Windows user in step-runtime/auth.dpapi. Existing desktop auth.json data is migrated on startup, and the plaintext file is removed after the encrypted copy is saved. Uninstall removes the desktop Step credential files while keeping sessions, settings and independent workspace files; signing out removes the Step credential as well. This protects against casual offline reading of the file, not software running with access to the same Windows account. Other configured MCP secrets are outside this credential migration.
If the app fails to start or the Step Code runtime exits unexpectedly, a crash-<timestamp>-<id>.log is written to %APPDATA%\Desktop for Step Code\logs\ with the app version, the startup phase, and the error. That data lives under %APPDATA% rather than the install directory, so reinstalling does not clear it; read the newest crash log before reinstalling.
The built-in StepPage MCP server cannot start on Windows: the command the upstream registers is a shell wrapper, which Windows cannot spawn directly, and the official installer is a shell script as well, which the upstream code explicitly skips on Windows. When the desktop app detects the official bundle under %USERPROFILE%\.steppage-mcp\bin\, it registers a working server on your behalf, with the command pointing at the bundled Node runtime and the argument at that bundle; authentication reuses your Step sign-in, so no extra key is needed. Publishing to StepPage has not been acceptance-tested.
Download and Run
The latest Windows x64 community preview, v0.4.0, follows the Step Code v0.1.4 announcement's source baseline 3ba89e0c. It adds Ultracode recovery, CLM context maintenance and Windows command improvements, with three permission tiers, approval and Plan-review drawers, Plan/Goal/Ultracode turn states, and inline command and link presentation. Custom providers remain Beta.
Download the Windows x64 installer · Release notes and checksums · All releases
- Download the installer, verify its SHA-256 against the release notes, and run it.
- Launch the app and sign in under Account Settings with your own Step Plan account or Step Platform API key, or configure a custom provider.
- Open a local project or choose an independent session, select a model, and start a conversation.
The installer includes Electron and pinned Step Code and Node runtimes; the development dependencies below are not required. Git/Bash, project-specific tools, and MCP server dependencies must be installed separately. Model access and usage limits depend on your account.
Custom providers (Beta): Chat Completions, Responses and Anthropic Messages are supported through generic protocol configuration. Compatibility depends on the provider and model; a successful short-request diagnostic does not establish streaming, tool-use, image-input or long-task compatibility. Dedicated integrations for well-known providers currently have low priority, with no promised date.
Installation notice: The v0.4.0 installer is unsigned. Windows may display SmartScreen or an "unknown publisher" warning. Verify the download source and checksum; do not disable system security protections.
Updates: Since v0.2.0, the app checks for updates after startup and every six hours. You can also check manually or disable automatic checks under Settings → Updates. The default channel includes releases and previews; v0.4.0 is a GitHub Pre-release and will not appear on the releases-only channel. Downloads open in your system browser, and you run installers yourself; the app does not silently install updates or restart automatically. v0.1.0 users must download this upgrade manually from Releases.
Exit and upgrade: Closing the window keeps the app in the tray and lets running tasks continue. Before upgrading, finish tasks and explicitly quit through File → Exit App or the tray menu, then run the installer over the existing installation.
This release targets Windows x64, with no compatibility commitment for macOS, Linux, or WSL. To run from source, follow the build instructions below.
Build from Source
Requirements: Windows x64, Git, Node.js 24.15.0 (or a compatible Node.js version >=22.19), and Corepack. Before building, fetch the pinned Step Code upstream revision in the repository root and apply the Windows/Desktop integration patch maintained here.
Run these commands in PowerShell from the repository root:
git clone https://github.com/stepfun-ai/Step-Code.git Step-Code git -C Step-Code checkout 3ba89e0cbfe6be78cccdafb5aeafd2592177cbb8 node scripts/apply-step-code-desktop-patch.mjs ..\Step-Code patches\step-code-desktop.patch Push-Location Step-Code corepack pnpm install --frozen-lockfile corepack pnpm build Pop-Location Push-Location Desktop corepack pnpm install --frozen-lockfile node node_modules/electron/install.js corepack pnpm stage:runtime corepack pnpm typecheck corepack pnpm test corepack pnpm build node scripts/verify-electron.mjs corepack pnpm dev
To produce a Windows x64 installer:
corepack pnpm package
node scripts/checksums.mjsProject Status
See the Development TODO (Chinese) for planned work and priorities.
v0.4.0 remains a community preview, not an official StepFun product or a stability guarantee. Its final package passed 44 Windows checks and seven supplementary checks using isolated profiles and deterministic local services; the maintainer confirmed the preceding RC2 experience. These results do not establish paid-model quality or a new installer-lifecycle test. Earlier cloud-desktop and installation tests remain historical evidence, not coverage of every Windows 10/11 configuration, provider, model or MCP scenario, nor proof that every multi-agent issue is resolved.
See VERIFICATION.md and the release preparation record (Chinese) for the evidence and scope. The Summary board shows MCP connection states supplied by the runtime; enabled configuration alone is not a health check, and connection status does not establish successful service calls.
License
Desktop for Step Code is licensed under MIT. Step Code and its Pi upstream components retain their respective licenses and notices.