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ActionUI

Build SwiftUI interfaces from JSON — designed for AI-assisted development and rapid prototyping

ActionUI is a SwiftUI library that renders dynamic UIs from JSON descriptions. It replaces Interface Builder, Storyboards, or hand-coded SwiftUI with a simple, declarative format that's both human-readable and AI-friendly.

Quick Example

{
  "type": "Form",
  "properties": {
    "children": [
      {
        "type": "TextField",
        "id": 1,
        "properties": { "title": "Name", "prompt": "Enter your name", "actionID": "nameChanged" }
      },
      {
        "type": "Picker",
        "id": 2,
        "properties": { "title": "Theme", "items": ["Light", "Dark", "Auto"], "actionID": "themeChanged" }
      },
      {
        "type": "Button",
        "id": 3,
        "properties": { "title": "Save", "buttonStyle": "borderedProminent", "actionID": "save" }
      }
    ]
  }
}

This produces a fully native SwiftUI form — no Swift code, no Xcode storyboards.

Key Features

  • 50+ SwiftUI components — layouts, inputs, tables, maps, video, canvas, and more
  • Runtime flexibility — load UIs from JSON files or network without recompilation
  • Python bridge — build complete macOS apps in Python with import actionui
  • Multi-window, menu bar, dialogs — native macOS app features out of the box
  • AI-first design — predictable JSON schema that LLMs generate reliably
  • Cross-platform — macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS
  • Multiple language adapters — Swift, Objective-C, C, C++, Python, JavaScript

Example Apps using ActionUI

Python Example

import actionui

app = actionui.Application(name="MyApp")
window = actionui.Window.from_file("ui.json", title="My App")
app.load_and_present_window(window)

@app.action("save")
def on_save(ctx):
    name = window.get_string(view_id=1)
    print(f"Saving: {name}")

app.run()

Documentation

Design Philosophy

AI-First — Every API decision considers "can an LLM use this reliably?"

Fail Gracefully — Invalid JSON doesn't crash. Properties are validated, missing values get defaults, and the UI degrades gracefully.

Platform Native — ActionUI doesn't abstract away SwiftUI — it embraces it. The generated views are real SwiftUI views with full performance and capabilities.

Minimal Complexity — JSON defines the UI, your code handles the logic. No state management framework, no build toolchain, no widget hierarchy to manage.

Platform Support

Platform Minimum Version
macOS 14.6+
iOS 17.6+
iPadOS 17.6+
watchOS 10.6+
tvOS 17.6+
visionOS 2.6+

License

ActionUI is licensed under the PolyForm Small Business License 1.0.0 — free for personal projects, open source, education, internal tools, and qualifying small businesses (fewer than 100 people and under ~$1.3M adjusted revenue). Larger commercial use requires a paid license — contact me for details.

Contribution-ware

To encourage adoption, a free license will be granted to companies not meeting the small business criteria but making a significant contribution to the project. The contribution classification:

  • trivial (bug fix, minor docs),
  • non-trivial (new view/modifier, tests, examples),
  • significant (major feature, architecture, language adapter, 10+ non-trivial contributions).

Contributing

By contributing you agree that your contribution may be included in commercial license without compensation or royalties. If you cannot accept these terms, do not contribute.