Guide

How to move a Lovable app to VS Code on your own computer

Your Lovable project is real code. This guide copies it onto your computer and runs it in VS Code, the free code editor most developers use. It takes about 30 minutes, and you don't need to know how to code.

1. Connect your Lovable project to GitHub

GitHub stores your code online and keeps its history. Lovable syncs with it both ways, so changes made in Lovable and changes made on your computer end up in the same place.

1. Create a free account at github.com if you don't have one.
2. In Lovable, open your project and go to Settings, then Connectors, then GitHub, and click Connect GitHub.
3. Click Connect project, add your GitHub account when asked, and let Lovable create the repository (the project's folder on GitHub).

Lovable's own instructions are here if the screens look different: Sync your Lovable project with GitHub.

2. Install Git, Node.js and VS Code

These are the three standard, free tools that run your app on your computer.

• VS Code, the editor: code.visualstudio.com/download
• Node.js, which runs the app: nodejs.org. Choose the version marked LTS.
• Git, which copies code from GitHub. On a Mac, open the Terminal app, type git --version and press Enter. If Git isn't installed, your Mac offers to install it. On Windows, download it from git-scm.com.

3. Copy the project to your computer

1. On GitHub, open your project's repository, click the green Code button and copy the address that starts with https://.
2. Open VS Code. Open the terminal inside it from the menu: Terminal, then New Terminal.
3. Type git clone, a space, paste the address, and press Enter:

git clone https://github.com/your-name/your-project.git

Then open the new folder: File, then Open Folder, and choose your project's folder.

4. Install the project's packages

Your app uses ready-made building blocks, called packages. In the VS Code terminal, run:

npm install

This takes a minute or two and prints a lot of text. That's normal.

5. Start the app

npm run dev

The terminal prints a local address, such as http://localhost:8080. Hold Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows) and click it. Your app opens in the browser, running on your own computer.

If something fails: copy the red error text and paste it into any AI chat with the question "what does this mean and how do I fix it?" Most first-time errors are a missing install or a typo in a command.

What next

Your code is now on your computer and in your own GitHub. To change it, you can add an AI coding agent to VS Code and ask for changes in plain English, the same way you do in Lovable. To put it online yourself, you'll need hosting, a live database and your secret keys set up correctly.