Download RAI — The R AI IDE

Step 1 · Required

Install R first

RAI drives R over a process and never bundles the R binary. Check whether R is already on your machine; if not, install it free before downloading RAI.

Already have R?

Run the check below. If it prints a version number, skip straight to the RAI download.

R --version ✓ prints a version

Skip to Step 2 ↓

Don't have R yet?

R is free and open source. Download the official build for your OS and run its installer. XQuartz is optional on macOS — RAI's plot device falls back automatically.

How to install R →

cloud.r-project.org · macOS / Windows / Linux

Step 2

Choose your platform

macOS Version

macOS · DMG

Mount the DMG and drag RAI.app into Applications. A single self-contained app — the frontend and analysis manifests are embedded in the binary.

RAI-macOS.dmg 28 MB

Windows Version

Windows · portable exe

Double-click to run — there is no installer step. One self-contained executable, with the frontend and manifests embedded just like the macOS build.

rai.exe 18 MB · portable

Linux

Prebuilt Linux packages are not published yet. Build a self-contained executable on a Linux machine using the release script in the repository (see README).
The resulting single binary embeds the frontend and manifests, just like the macOS and Windows builds.

Step 3

Run RAI

1

Open RAI

macOS: launch RAI.app from Applications. Windows: double-click rai.exe. On Windows, nothing else is required.

2

Your browser opens

A local session opens in your browser. Its details stay on this machine for later use.

3

R auto-detected

If R or a required package is missing, the launch log prints an install.packages(...) command. Paste it into R, then reload RAI.

Local-first & authenticated

The backend binds 127.0.0.1 only — never exposed to the LAN. Files, the R session and the workspace stay on this machine.
AI is opt-in. With a cloud model, prompts and attached context go to that provider and RAI shows the destination. Local runtimes stay on loopback, and the offline lock refuses every non-loopback request. Keys are stored locally per provider and never returned to the browser.
A persistent local credential keeps external agents working across restarts. Every request is authenticated and bound to the local origin.
CORS allows loopback origins only — never Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *.
Embedded frontend and manifests are obfuscated at build time and decoded on launch; the binary carries no plaintext frontend code.

Compliance: GPL isolation

R is GPL-2/3, but the license governs distribution, not use. RAI calls R over inter-process communication — loose coupling that does not trigger copyleft, so the frontend and Rust code can be fully closed-source and commercial.
Never bundle the R binary into the installer: that is why RAI asks you to install R yourself and detects an existing R on launch.
Running RAI as SaaS (users run your server's R, downloading nothing) does not trigger GPL at all — GPL, not AGPL.