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Jade Documentation

Jade is an AI-native programming language. A prompt is a type, dereferencing it with ? calls a model, and the type you ask for is a contract the compiler enforces — see LLM Integration.

Around that it is an ordinary general-purpose language. It has value types (int, float, bool, str, char, bytes, arrays, dicts, and user-defined structs), let bindings, fn definitions with return, closures (|x| x * 2), recursion, if/elif/else, while and for loops, try/catch/raise, extend blocks for methods, interface definitions, async fn and await, yield for streams, decorators, multi-file use imports, f-string interpolation, and the pipe operator (|>). The standard library covers math, strings, arrays, dicts, file I/O, time, HTTP, JSON, shell commands, environment variables, paths, and random numbers — each imported with :: notation, such as use std::math.

Two engines run the same language: jade run interprets bytecode, and jade build compiles a native binary through LLVM.

Installation​

Jade runs on macOS and Linux. Windows is not supported — see below.

The fastest way to install Jade is with the official install script. Open a terminal and run:

curl -fsSL https://jadelang.org/install.sh | sh

The script works out which prebuilt archive you need, downloads it from the latest release, verifies its checksum, and installs to /usr/local/bin/jade. Two builds ship: macOS on Apple Silicon and Linux on x86_64. On an Intel Mac, run the Apple Silicon build under Rosetta 2 or build from source.

Alongside the binary it installs the runtime archives jade build links into every executable it emits, plus the bundled inference providers, into lib/jade next to the install directory. jade finds them relative to itself, so the two must stay together.

To install somewhere else, set JADE_INSTALL_DIR before running the script:

JADE_INSTALL_DIR=~/.local/bin curl -fsSL https://jadelang.org/install.sh | sh

The script finishes by running jade register, which lists the bundled providers and asks for an API key. You can skip it and run jade register later; see LLM Integration.

Windows​

Jade does not support Windows. Native packages — including the inference provider — are loaded with dlopen, and the C runtime is written against POSIX, so there is no native Windows build.

Use WSL2 and follow the Linux instructions above.

Build from Source​

Two prerequisites:

  • Rust 1.85 or later — install via rustup.rs. The crate uses edition 2024, so an older toolchain will not build it.
  • LLVM 18. jade build compiles in-process, so LLVM is a build dependency of the toolchain rather than an optional extra. Point LLVM_SYS_180_PREFIX at your installation. A released jade binary needs nothing installed.
brew install llvm@18                        # macOS
sudo apt-get install llvm-18-dev libpolly-18-dev libzstd-dev    # Debian/Ubuntu

git clone https://github.com/joericks1998/jade
cd jade
export LLVM_SYS_180_PREFIX=/opt/homebrew/opt/llvm@18   # or /usr/lib/llvm-18
cargo build --release

The binary is then at target/release/jade, and it works from there. jade build also links two runtime archives, libJadeRuntime.a and libjade_runtime.a, which the same cargo build leaves in target/release; a locally built jade remembers that path, so keep the checkout around. To move the toolchain onto another machine, copy the archives with it into <prefix>/lib/jade — the layout the release tarball uses, and the one jade looks for next to itself.

Updating and removing​

jade upgrade      # fetch and install the latest release
jade reinstall    # reinstall the current version, for a damaged installation
jade uninstall    # remove the binary and its runtime archives

jade uninstall prints every path before it removes anything, and leaves ~/.jade — your API key, installed providers, and build cache — alone unless you pass --purge. See the CLI Reference for the full flags.

Verify​

jade --help    # the list of subcommands
jade env       # version, cache, project, and which inference provider is active