Build Holochain Apps: Develop Decentralized Applications
Holochain makes it easy to build decentralized applications, also known as hApps. So if you are interested to develop your own hApp you will find all the information you need here. Indeed we are constantly gathering here all the best resources to help you develop on top of the Holochain framework.
The official Holochain developer portal is the place to begin. Its Get Started guide walks you through setting up your development environment with Nix and Holonix, then building and running your first hApp. You will also find the core concepts (agent-centric architecture, source chains, the DHT, validation), step-by-step build guides for DNAs, zomes, entries, links and capabilities, and the reference documentation for the HDK and HDI, the Rust libraries you use to write your zomes.
The scaffolding tool, hc scaffold, is the fastest way to start a new project. From the command line it generates a complete working hApp: the Nix development environment, the DNA with its integrity and coordinator zomes, a web UI in the framework of your choice, and tests. You then add entry types, links and collections one command at a time, and the tool writes the Rust zome code, the UI components and the tests for you. It is the recommended starting point before you customize anything by hand.
Developing a Holochain hApp has never been easier. With an AI coding assistant such as Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, opencode or Gemini CLI, you can describe the app you have in mind and let the AI help you design the DNA, write the zomes, test and package it. The catch: general-purpose AI models often know an outdated version of the Holochain API. Two open source community tools fix that by giving your assistant up-to-date Holochain knowledge, so it writes code that actually compiles.
An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that plugs the official Holochain developer documentation and the HDK and HDI Rust documentation straight into your AI assistant. Your AI can search across all of these sources, read full documentation pages, look up a specific HDK function or a Holochain concept, and browse the HDK modules. Its answers are then grounded in the real docs instead of guesses. It works with Claude Desktop, Claude Code and any MCP-compatible client.
A skill package built on the Agent Skills open standard, so it works in Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, opencode, Gemini CLI and every other tool that supports the format. It teaches your AI the whole hApp lifecycle for Holochain 0.7, with verified examples: architecture (integrity and coordinator zomes, DNA, workspaces, Nix), DHT data modeling and validation rules, scaffolding with Holonix, implementation with the HDK (CRUD, cross-zome calls, signals), testing with Sweettest, and deployment with Kangaroo-Electron and .webhapp bundles.
The fastest way to learn Holochain is to read and reuse code that already works. Several open source communities publish real, actively maintained hApps and reusable modules on GitHub, kept up to date with the latest Holochain releases. Pick a project close to what you want to build, clone it, run it locally, then adapt it: you start from a working DNA, working zomes and a working UI instead of a blank page.
Lightningrod Labs builds collaboration tools on Holochain. Its flagship is Moss, a desktop app where a group shares a space and plugs in small collaborative tools. The organization hosts many of those tools as complete open source hApps: Acorn (peer-to-peer project management), Converge (criteria-driven decision making), Vines (group conversations), Presence (privacy-preserving video calls), Files, Notebooks and more. They are excellent references for multi-agent collaboration, and if you build your own tool for Moss you instantly reach every group already using it.
Holochain Open Dev is the community library of building blocks. Instead of writing everything yourself, you add a ready-made zome together with its UI components: profiles (nickname and avatar for every agent), file storage in the DHT, notifications, peer status, invitations, prefix-based search indexes and more. It also provides templates and common infrastructure to scaffold hApps in a consistent style, plus tools such as Tryorama for testing and a .NET / Unity client for Holochain.
The Holochain Apps organization gathers compact apps that are easy to study from end to end: Kando (real-time Kanban boards), Talking Stickies (sticky-note boards), Gamez (board games) and Emergence (event coordination). Many are built on Syn, a generic DNA and UI library for real-time shared state, the go-to choice when you need several people editing the same document at the same time. You will also find Kangaroo templates to package your hApp as a cross-platform desktop application.
Volla Messages is the private peer-to-peer chat app of the Volla phone ecosystem, running on Android and desktop. It is one of the best examples of shipping Holochain on mobile: a Holochain back end packaged with Tauri and a SvelteKit, Tailwind and Skeleton front end, built in a reproducible Nix environment. Study it to see how a real consumer app handles packaging, signing and releases on Android.
Learn in video with Arthur Brock, Willem Olding or Jimmy Lipham!
Find here all the information gathered during all the Holochain events like Hackathons, DevCamps, Intensives, Code review, Tech Deep Dive...
Find here all the useful links to know for a developer. If you are new here please don't hesitate to take a look at each of these resources below and please feel free to join us on the chat to discuss about hApps development.
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