Cascade

Node-based image processing for the web and desktop

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🔩 What It Is

Cascade is a free node-based image editor. Wire nodes together to build reusable editing pipelines, then apply them to any image. It runs entirely in your browser — no install needed — and ships as a macOS desktop app for users who want native filesystem access.

✨ Features

Graph Editor

• Visual node graph — Connect typed inputs and outputs; cycles are rejected and dirty propagation flows downstream automatically
• Type-checked connections — The engine enforces connection types at the graph level, not just in the UI
• GPU-accelerated nodes — Per-pixel transforms run as wgpu compute shaders via GLSL kernel manifests; CPU fallback when GPU is unavailable

Image Processing

• Built-in nodes — Color correction, blending, filters, resize, alpha compositing, sRGB conversion, and more
• Linear color pipeline — All processing in linear f32 RGBA; sRGB conversion only at I/O boundaries
• Scripted GPU kernels — Register custom GLSL kernels via JSON manifests without writing Rust

AI Integrations

• Replicate-backed nodes — Use Replicate models as processing nodes with a user-supplied API token
• AI assistant — In-app assistant powered by a user-supplied Anthropic API key
• All AI features are optional and bring-your-own-key; ignore them entirely if you do not need them

Platform

• Web — Runs in the browser via WebAssembly; ships both single-threaded and threaded WASM bundles
• Desktop (macOS) — Native app via Tauri with filesystem access, native packaging, and Tauri shell features
• Shared core — Web and desktop targets share the same Rust engine

📦 Installation

Web

The web app is the fastest way to evaluate Cascade. No installation required — the engine runs via WebAssembly in your browser.

Deployment note: The threaded WASM bundle requires SharedArrayBuffer, which means serving the app with Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy: same-origin and Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy: require-corp. Without those headers the app falls back to the single-threaded engine automatically.

Desktop (macOS)

Download the latest signed DMG from GitHub Releases:

• Apple Silicon DMG

Requires macOS 10.15 (Catalina) or later.

Development

Local setup, build commands, and contributor-facing references live in CONTRIBUTING.md and AGENTS.md.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please:

1. Check existing issues or create a new one to discuss your idea
2. Fork the repository and create a feature branch
3. Follow the code style (cargo fmt for Rust, ESLint for TypeScript)
4. Update documentation as needed
5. Submit a pull request

For detailed development guidelines, see AGENTS.md and CONTRIBUTING.md. Please also read CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md before participating in discussions or pull requests.

📄 License

Cascade is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

🙏 Acknowledgments

Built with:

• Tauri — Rust-powered desktop framework
• React — UI framework
• React Flow — Node graph UI
• wgpu — GPU compute pipeline
• Rayon — CPU parallelism
• Zustand — Frontend state management
• wasm-bindgen — WebAssembly bridge
• Vite — Frontend build tooling