How We Built Errand with One Developer in One Week

Errand is an open-source macOS desktop application positioned as an alternative to Grok Bot and Muse, designed to let users delegate tasks to AI teammates that continue working in isolated cloud computers after the user closes the app. Its developer says the initial 4,000-line TypeScript client was built in about a week because it relies on Runta’s prebuilt infrastructure for persistent runtimes, browser and desktop control, agent execution, live VNC access, task persistence, event replay, artifacts, and API-managed state. Runta provides isolated machines with shells, browsers, and durable filesystems, while its Cloud Agents API maps directly to Errand’s user interface concepts such as teammates, tasks, activity, and files, leaving the app to focus on product decisions, desktop architecture, credential handling, attachments, packaging, and user-facing states. The author contrasts the rapid development of Errand with the roughly six months required to build Runta’s underlying platform, arguing that ready-made execution infrastructure allows developers to concentrate on the application experience rather than provisioning, job queues, event logs, and runtime lifecycle management. Errand remains early-stage, requires a Runta account and a user-provided model provider, supports swappable models and agent harnesses, and plans to offer a bring-your-own-cloud deployment option.

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