I Built Peko to Fix Native App Deployment

TL;DR: Native desktop development has a release engineering problem. I built Peko because I think developers should spend their time building products, not learning packaging, signing, and deployment.

Full essay

The problem

Building the app isn't what slows me down anymore.

Shipping it does.

After years of building web apps, I realized turning them into polished native apps meant learning packaging, signing, screenshots, store assets, deployment, and platform quirks.

That's the problem I wanted to solve.

What Peko became

Peko started as a WebView runtime.

Today it's an all-in-one developer platform.

The runtime is only one piece.

MIT licensed Studio, CLI tools, UI library and standard library work together with the hosted platform to automate as much of release engineering as possible. Pekoscript provides the native layer while your application can remain in your favorite web framework.

The pipeline

Build app
↓
Generate icons
↓
Write demo
↓
peko deploy
↓
Signed bundles
Screenshots
Videos
Descriptions
Legal links
Release package
↓
Submit

Who it's for

Hobbyists, solo founders, AI-assisted developers, and small teams that would rather build products than maintain deployment pipelines.

Peko is still a young ecosystem, but the core ideas have been evolving for years. I'm excited to keep removing more of the work that happens after your app is finished.

I'd love feedback.

preston@pekoui.com

https://pekoui.com/contact

Where Peko Stands Today

One thing I want to make clear is that Peko isn't just an idea or a roadmap.

You can use Peko today.

Today the ecosystem includes:

• The MIT open source Peko Studio
• The MIT open source CLI (peko-tools)
• The MIT open source standard library
• The MIT open source UI library
• The hosted Peko Platform
• Cross-platform native bundling
• Remote macOS and iOS builds
• Signing
• Package management
• Deterministic app demos
• Automated App Store screenshots and recordings
• AI-assisted store descriptions
• Hosted legal document links
• Unified release packaging

Right now, deploying with Peko ends with a single ZIP file containing everything you need to publish:

• Signed application bundles
• Generated screenshots
• Generated screen recordings
• AI-drafted store descriptions
• Store metadata
• Links to hosted legal documents

From there, the remaining work is mostly creating your listing in each store, uploading the bundle, and completing the review process.

The next major milestone is a unified in-app purchase platform that wraps Apple, Google, and Microsoft payment APIs behind one API, along with hosted server-side receipt verification. That is planned for the next month.

After that, the focus is deeper App Store integration so even more of the publishing process becomes automatic. I don't expect there to ever be a completely hands-off publish button because every store has review requirements, but I do think the amount of manual work can become very small.

If this sounds like the kind of tooling you've wanted, I'd love for you to give Peko a try.

This isn't meant as a marketing stunt. I'm genuinely looking for developers who care about this problem and want to help shape the platform while it's still young.

You can get started at https://pekoui.com, email me directly at preston@pekoui.com, or use the contact form on the website.