Guide

Desktop app setup

What the app still needs to own.

Your app repository should stay boring: source code, package metadata, and runtime update checks.

ReleaseKit owns hosted builds, signing secrets, artifacts, feeds, approvals, and rollback.

App Responsibilities

Area	What to keep in the app
Source	Desktop app code and package metadata
Updates	Use the ReleaseKit app integration to check for promoted releases
UI	Show update availability, download, install, and restart states
Telemetry	Send update lifecycle events if you want release health

ReleaseKit Responsibilities

Area	What ReleaseKit owns
Builds	Checkout, install, build, sign, notarize, and upload
Secrets	Apple signing and app build secrets in the vault
Lanes	Production, Nightly, and Preview policy
Releases	Artifacts, feeds, approvals, promotion, and rollback

Production approval also publishes the final Production build on the Nightly channel. That gives Early Access users the shipped version, and the next release-kit publish nightly starts from that baseline.

Do not hand-wire builder endpoints or release-control APIs in the app. The app should only know how to ask ReleaseKit whether an update is available.

Apple Signing Credentials

Apple signing setup has one dashboard-guided path:

Open the Apple signing setup in the ReleaseKit dashboard.
Download the one-time setup credentials.
Run npx -y @sandbox-technologies/release-kit@latest apple setup on your Mac.
Follow the terminal while it creates the certificate request, opens Apple Developer, validates the returned .cer, and uploads encrypted credentials.

ReleaseKit keeps the matching private key in the vault and prepares the temporary signing identity for hosted builders.

Start

preview

npm install -g @sandbox-technologies/release-kit
release-kit login
release-kit preview

When you are ready to ship, run:

production

release-kit publish production

Production and Nightly wait for approval before feeds change. Preview is artifact-only.