The IDE we ship, support and charge for ourselves
A cross-platform native development environment we design, build, publish and sell — the product that keeps the studio honest about what software costs after launch.
The problem
Client work has a finish line: deliver, invoice, move on. A studio that only ever builds for other people never has to live with what it ships — and never learns what software actually costs once it is installed on machines it does not control, by users who never signed the contract.
StarkIDE is how we close that gap. It is a native development environment for [who starkide is built for], and the studio's own product: we designed it, we build it, we publish it and we charge for it.
The approach
A product with no client to hand it to is judged only on whether people keep using it, so the constraints are different from the first commit:
- Native where it counts. The shell is Rust and Tauri rather than a bundled browser, because an editor that idles heavy taxes every hour it stays open.
- A paid tier, not a funnel. Charging for the product means it answers to the people who use it, not to a roadmap written for a demo.
- One codebase, three platforms. macOS, Windows and Linux ship from the same source, so a fix lands everywhere instead of becoming a port.
A client project is finished when it launches. A product you own is never finished, and living with that is worth more than the licence revenue.
The outcome
StarkIDE is live on its own site for macOS, Windows and Linux, with a paid tier and [installed base] installations. It is the studio's standing proof that the work survives after launch — because we are the ones still shipping it.