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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 for the whole story.

Around that idea, Jade is an ordinary general-purpose language.

Values. int, float, bool, str, char, bytes, arrays, dicts, and user-defined structs, bound with let.

Control flow. if, elif, else, while and for loops, and try, catch, raise for exceptions.

Functions. fn definitions with return, closures written |x| x * 2, recursion, and decorators. extend blocks add methods to a type, and a struct can inherit fields and methods from parents it names.

Concurrency. async fn and await, plus yield for streams.

Everything else. 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. You import each one 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 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 it to /usr/local/bin/jade. Two builds ship: macOS on Apple Silicon, and Linux on x86_64. On an Intel Mac, either run the Apple Silicon build under Rosetta 2 or build from source.

Alongside the binary, the script installs two more things into lib/jade, next to the install directory: the runtime archives that jade build links into every executable it emits, and the bundled inference providers. jade finds them by looking relative to itself, so the binary and that directory have to 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 that step 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. There is no native Windows build.

Use WSL2 and follow the Linux instructions above.

Build from Source​

You need two things installed.

Rust 1.85 or later. Install it from rustup.rs. The crate uses edition 2024, so an older toolchain will not build it.

LLVM 18. jade build compiles in-process rather than shelling out to a separate compiler, so LLVM is a build dependency of the toolchain itself. A released jade binary needs nothing installed; only building from source does.

Install LLVM, then point LLVM_SYS_180_PREFIX at it. That variable is how the build finds your installation.

brew install llvm@18                                              # macOS
sudo apt-get install llvm-18-dev libpolly-18-dev libzstd-dev      # Debian and 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 lands at target/release/jade and works from there.

Keep the checkout after building. jade build 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. To move the toolchain to another machine, copy the archives with it into <prefix>/lib/jade. That is the layout the release tarball uses, and it is where jade looks next to itself.

The repository's own README covers the debug build and the extra tools the test suite needs.

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. It leaves ~/.jade alone, which holds your API key, installed providers, and build cache, 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