Runway Solaris: An AI That Draws Working Apps as You Use Them

Runway unveiled Solaris on August 31, an AI that generates app and website interfaces frame by frame as you interact, instead of running code. In a 250-person study, raters preferred it over a Claude-coded interface 71% to 21% for natural behavior.
artificial-intelligence
software-engineering
Author

Kabui, Charles

Published

2026-09-08

Keywords

runway-solaris, interface-world-model, generated-interfaces, code-free-software, real-time-rendering, computer-use-agents

Download as PDF

On August 31, Runway unveiled Solaris, the first of what it calls “Interface World Models.” Software normally turns a visual design into code, then runs that code. Solaris skips the step: it renders the interface itself, frame by frame, and treats each click, drag, or typed request as the instruction for the next frame. The result is a working app or website with no code underneath. Solaris adapts Runway’s Gen-4.5 video model, distilled to hold 720p quality at interactive speed, while a language model decides how the scene should change and a world model draws each state.

Runway tested Solaris against a coding model. A user study of 250 people across 30 tasks collected roughly 7,500 pairwise judgments, comparing Solaris with an interface that Claude Opus 5 coded from the same starting image. Raters preferred Solaris in 61% of comparisons for following the requested action versus 24% for the coded version, and in 71% versus 21% for behaving naturally inside the scene. Those are Runway’s own numbers. Solaris is early access for partners, with stable text, long-session coherence, trust, and screen-reader support listed as open problems.

If Solaris holds up, the generated picture becomes the software, and the code step between a design and a working product stops being the bottleneck. Coding agents write interfaces as source code, while Solaris draws them instead, so the open question is whether generated apps can earn the trust and accessibility that coded ones already have.

Read More: the opposite approach, where an agent builds the interface by writing and refining code, Cursor’s Composer 2.5 coding agent.

Sources:

Disclaimer: For information only. Accuracy or completeness not guaranteed. Illegal use prohibited. Not professional advice or solicitation. Read more: /terms-of-service

Reuse

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE v3.0(View License)

Citation

BibTeX citation:
@misc{kabui2026,
  author = {{Kabui, Charles}},
  title = {Runway {Solaris:} {An} {AI} {That} {Draws} {Working} {Apps}
    as {You} {Use} {Them}},
  date = {2026-09-08},
  url = {https://toknow.ai/posts/runway-solaris-interface-world-model-no-code/},
  langid = {en-GB}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Kabui, Charles. 2026. “Runway Solaris: An AI That Draws Working Apps as You Use Them.” https://toknow.ai/posts/runway-solaris-interface-world-model-no-code/.