The Construct 2026 keynote was overly-long, consistent with custom. However there was some excellent news for Home windows builders, too, and that’s been uncommon within the trendy period.
Amongst that excellent news was one thing known as Windows Developer Skills, a group of WinUI brokers and AI expertise for Home windows app growth. Relying on the place you’re at, that both means one thing or it doesn’t. And to be honest, I’m nonetheless catching up on the ever-evolving language of AI, so it took me a bit to comprehend the implications right here. However the time period “expertise” signifies that this factor is a means to make use of AI brokers to vibe code a contemporary Home windows app utilizing WinUI.
Attention-grabbing timing.
This previous April, I accomplished a years-long coding challenge known as WinUIpad (initially .NETpad) and I used to be solely in a position to get it over the end line because of AI; on this case Anthropic Claude and Stardock Clairvoyance. And this yr has seen the fast evolution of vibe coding, initially a misunderstood pipe dream, into one thing that builders and, more and more, even regular folks can use to create customized, private apps of their very own. Two weeks in the past, Google introduced a serious replace to AI Studio that permits you to create native Android apps utilizing this web-based IDE. I went on to make use of this software to create a web-based Markdown app, an Android Markdown app, after which, sure, extra Markdown apps of assorted varieties utilizing AI Studio, Android Studio, and Anthropic Claude.
What can I say, these items excite me. However the place Google made its AI Studio announcement alongside roughly 1700 different bulletins at Google I/O 2026, the most recent installment of its annual developer present, Microsoft introduced Home windows Improvement Abilities alongside roughly 1700 different bulletins at Construct 2026, the most recent installment of its annual developer present. And as with the Google announcement, I shortly went from curious to distracted after which to needing to strive it out, and as shortly as potential.
However first, let me clarify what’s taking place with Home windows Improvement Abilities and, extra broadly, with all of the vibe coding enhancements we’re seeing this yr.
2026 is the yr of CLIs
Command line interfaces, or CLIs, are making an unbelievable comeback this yr because of AI and the convenience with every autonomous AI brokers can work together with them. To be clear, this isn’t about winding again the clock, as people will proceed to work together with apps and providers utilizing GUIs and, more and more, pure language. It’s a part of a broader push industry-wide to get us from the way in which issues are to the way in which issues might be.
Transitions take time. Laptop use performance in AI chatbots is like display scraping, a low-tech strategy to get on the performance in apps or at information wherever it’s saved. However conventional GUIs in your computer systems, telephones, and different gadgets, together with apps, are evolving to satisfy the wants of this new period too, and that can ultimately diminish if not eradicate the necessity for pc use in AI. That is the world of so-called “semantic apps,” which I form of consider as programmatic apps, a means for GUI-based apps to reveal particular person bits of performance quite than forcing you, or some AI, to run the entire app and navigate by means of the interface.
Microsoft is doing this in Home windows 11 by way of App Actions, and for a easy instance, you may right-click a picture file in File Explorer after which select AI actions from the context menu to see app-based actions like “Erase objects with Images” and “Blur background with Paint.” And Google has an analogous system for Android it calls AppFunctions. Each of these items are bridges, a means for apps to reveal performance that AI can eat. They’re to apps what MCP (mannequin context protocol) is to AI interconnectivity. They usually’re required as a result of apps have lengthy been these standalone interfaces utilized by folks.
However again to CLIs. A lot of the latest CLI exercise, whether or not it’s Google’s Android CLI, the Microsoft Retailer CLI, or no matter else, is occurring as a result of it’s wanted by AI. Sure, you should utilize the Retailer CLI to put in an app from the command line, however it’s actually not for you. And a few of the newer CLIs, just like the Home windows App Improvement (WinApp) CLI that Microsoft introduced this previous January, are actually about connecting AI on to lower-level interfaces, like developer-oriented utility programming interfaces (APIs) in software program growth kits (SDKs).
This wasn’t apparent to me at first. When Microsoft introduced the WinApp CLI in preview, I didn’t fairly get it. It was described as concentrating on two use circumstances, builders utilizing cross-platform frameworks and builders working exterior of Visible Studio. However it has since improved to assist .NET initiatives for WinUI, WPF, WinForms, and .NET console apps. And now, the WinApp CLI is usually obtainable. And we are able to see what it’s actually for. It’s for AI, and extra particularly for AI brokers.
It’s additionally extensible by way of plugins that present AI brokers with direct entry to particular capabilities, together with these present in SDKs and APIs. Yesterday, Microsoft introduced one such plugin, known as Home windows Improvement Abilities, with Microsoft vp Pavan Davuluri describing it as one thing that “provides brokers structured data to construct nice native Home windows apps end-to-end utilizing WinUI3 expertise and WinApp CLI.”
Now in early preview, the Home windows Improvement Abilities is thus a WinApp CLI plugin particularly designed for CLI-capable, agent-based AI pair coding options like GitHub Copilot, Anthropic Claude Code, and OpenAI Codex. It does every kind of issues, amongst them utilizing the WinApp CLI to put in, run, signal, bundle, and automate the creation of Home windows App SDK/WinUI 3 apps. Throughout this course of, the WinApp CLI outputs debugging info, which may be learn by these brokers after which acted on. That is way more seamless than (I do know) conventional AI pair coding options, which both work inside an IDE (like GitHub Copilot in Visible Studio) or exterior an IDE, during which case you want to inform the AI what’s incorrect throughout debugging.
It’s not simply that. Whichever AI agent/pair programmer you select, it should use WinApp CLI to confirm that the APIs within the Home windows App SDK, Home windows SDK, Home windows AI SDK, and different APIs it needs to make use of are, the truth is, appropriate and can work earlier than it even writes any code. Conventional AI pair coding options will usually confuse APIs–utilizing one thing, say, from WPF once you imply to make use of the Home windows App SDK, resulting in tedious loops of troubleshooting and making an attempt to repair issues the AI launched into the code base.
In any occasion, the talents within the Home windows Improvement Abilities plug-in perceive XAML, Fluent Design, MVVM architectural patterns, and plenty extra to, in Microsoft’s phrases, “keep within the WinUI 3 lane end-to-end.” That’s, they floor the AI within the appropriate documentation and different info in order that it might clear up issues precisely and never simply guess primarily based on no matter web-based info, some related, some not, that it might in any other case have interaction with. Given my earlier experiences making an attempt to make use of GitHub Copilot and Anthropic Claude to assist me repair points with .NETpad/WinUIpad, I immediately understood how essential this grounding is.
And that, of us, is why these CLIs exist. It’s for agentic AI pair programming coding options.
However how nicely does it work?
Establishing
Getting began with Home windows Improvement Ability shouldn’t be for the faint-hearted and this isn’t a mainstream person answer by any imply. It’s additionally, as famous, in early preview, so there might be tough edges.
However I made the case in Switcher 2026: The Zen of Linux ⭐ that understanding command line interfaces, or CLIs, is essential for anybody who makes use of a pc, a baseline ability all of us want. That is true regardless of which platforms you employ, be they Linux, Home windows, Mac, or ChromeOS. It’s essential whether or not you’re technically inclined or not. However it’s particularly essential for builders, and much more so on this agentic AI period for those who intend to maintain up-to-date.
Most mainstream customers don’t actually take into consideration this. You possibly can entry Claude, ChatGPT, and different AI chatbots from the net or you may set up apps on desktop and cellular. Much less clearly, every additionally features a CLI you may set up individually. And you have to to put in one among these, plus different CLIs, if you wish to use the Home windows Improvement Abilities. No a part of this course of may be accomplished with a GUI. It’s all CLI-based.
Microsoft has directions for doing this on the GitHub page for the Windows Development Skills, and there are a number of totally different strategies, and totally different directions for the three AIs it now helps. I’m nonetheless paying for Anthropic Claude courting again to that WinUIpad work, so I configured and used it with that. Right here’s what I did.
Step one was to determine whether or not I had the Anthropic CLI, Claude Code, put in on the PC I used for this. I did have the Claude app for Home windows 11 on Arm put in, however once I opened Terminal and tried the claude command, I acquired an error. So it was time to get that going. With …
winget set up –silent Anthropic.ClaudeCode
Then, I restarted Terminal and gave it a shot to verify it was working.
Utilizing Microsoft’s directions, then I added Home windows Improvement Abilities to the Claude Market.
claude plugin market add microsoft/win-dev-skills
After which put in the plugin.
claude plugin set up winui@win-dev-skills
And that’s it. Now it was time to create an app.
The Home windows Improvement Abilities vibe-coding expertise
When Microsoft first introduced what turned Copilot in February 2003, Yusuf Mehdi mentioned how he was going to Mexico Metropolis quickly for a marriage and he requested the AI to create a five-day itinerary for the journey. For the subsequent two years or so, I repeated this check on each AI, and each AI replace, that I got here throughout as a result of I do know the town so nicely and will gauge how nicely it was doing and the way all of them improved over time. Which they did.
For this primary experiment with CLI-based vibe coding, I made a decision to begin with one thing equally acquainted. I’ve spent years constructing numerous variations of my Notepad clones, .NETpad and WinUIpad, the latter of which relies on the Home windows App SDK and WinUI 3, the identical applied sciences that the Home windows Improvement Ability makes use of. So it made sense to stay with one thing I do know nicely.
First, it’s a must to floor Claude Code with:
claude /winui-setup
Then, I simply typed the only immediate possible, purposefully not giving it an excessive amount of to go on.
construct me a WinUI 3 app that’s similar to Notepad in Home windows 11 visually and functionally
As a result of this was the primary time I attempted this, I needed to set up some stipulations. I already had the .NET 8.0 SDK put in, however Claude Code advised me that it might want to put in the WinApp CLI and a few WinUI templates, and allow Developer Mode (which tells me I by no means constructed and ran a Home windows App SDK app on this PC but, as it’s a must to try this the primary time).
I gave it my permission to put in and allow these issues, and after a lot of forwards and backwards, it accomplished these duties and I used to be able to go. And we have been off to the races. Claude Code requested my permission extra instances than I can rely, and I permitted them one after the other for about 20 minutes earlier than lastly giving in and tapping 2 to only permit all edits in the course of the session.
All the course of took over 45 minutes. Throughout this time, Claude Code carried out a now-familiar routine during which it seemed to be speaking to itself, reasoning out why one thing didn’t work, making an attempt different issues till no matter it was began working, after which repeated the method many, many instances. I might see C# and XAML code fly by, disappear, and fly by some extra. It created and edited information, made an MVVM construction and views and look at fashions, and, sooner or later, it lastly tried constructing the app it was making. This failed till it didn’t, after which, magically, on the 48 minute mark, an app appeared on-screen.
It’s … not unhealthy. The Notepad11 app, as Claude named it, helps a number of paperwork and tabs. It has just about all of the anticipated menu objects, minus something associated to printing (which the post-creation report defined shouldn’t be an obtainable API for the Home windows App SDK). There’s no settings web page, and font choice is by way of a small dialog and never persistent between app runs.
And I’m fascinated that Discover/Exchange is applied as panes that seem above the textual content field, which is exactly the design I created again once I was working with WPF as a result of that framework doesn’t assist the native content material dialogs that will be preferable; an early vibe coding experiment had created the identical UI. This has to have been stolen, or impressed, by my very own code in GitHub. Has to.
The app isn’t notably polished. And I can see why it switches the areas of menus and the tabs (in comparison with how Notepad works) as a result of doing this accurately may be very troublesome and one thing I labored to repair in my very own app for months (earlier than succumbing to Claude/Clairvoyance and watching it simply use my answer). However it does work. And I might definitely proceed “modifying” it by interacting with Claude Code and the Home windows Improvement Abilities, although I don’t see the purpose: I already made a extra polished and have full model of this app, in spite of everything.
That mentioned, I’m curious whether or not this app has any helpful code I’d acceptable as a result of it’s extra environment friendly or elegant, or maybe solves some drawback I didn’t. So I opened the challenge related to the code in Visible Studio and took a glance. It compiles and runs high-quality in each x64 and Arm varieties (I did this on a Home windows 11 on Arm PC), and it seems to be structured usually.
It can take a while to undergo all of this. However what I’ve seen to this point is smart. There’s no native standing bar management within the Home windows App SDK, so it used a primary grid, similar to I did. I create two converters to accommodate information binding, similar to I did. It makes use of MVVM with separate views and look at fashions in their very own sub-folders, which I didn’t do, however it’s easy sufficient. I feel the one factor that’s stood out to this point is that the code it generated is commonly extra concise however much less readable than what I might need written as a non-professional developer. Nothing main.
Given how lengthy this took, I used to be curious if I had blown by means of some utilization limits and maybe triggered a further cost from Anthropic. However taking a look at Settings > Utilization within the Claude app this morning, it says that I’ve solely used 1 % of my weekly restrict and that I’ve not used an utilization credit. This I can not clarify.
Given my earlier experiments vibe-coding Markdown editors for the net and Android, I could do one thing related with the Home windows Improvement Abilities and see how that goes. Both means, this functionality is getting fascinating, and I’d like to see a common function vibe-coding answer that may make actually cross-platform apps, maybe with Flutter and even React Native. Making a single app that works all over the place is interesting. However even as-is, it’s spectacular, and a step to a future during which apps and in no way like they’re immediately.