A C# scratchpad for Windows, in the spirit of LINQPad. Type a few lines (or a whole program), press F5, and see the
result in a tree you can expand. It has a real editor with completion and live squiggles, NuGet packages through
#r "nuget: ...", typed database connections (SQLite and SQL Server), and a Dump()
that shows objects as tables and trees. Scripts run in a separate process, so a crash or an endless loop never takes
the editor with it.
When a script grows up, Export turns it into a normal .NET project, or Build app makes a single exe.
A minipad command-line tool runs, exports and builds scripts from a terminal, and an MCP server lets an AI
agent such as Claude Code run and check scripts for you.
Run in PowerShell:
irm https://shakytext.com/minipad/install.ps1 | iexThat downloads MiniPad, checks every file against its SHA-256, installs it for your user only
(%USERPROFILE%\MiniPad, no administrator rights) and adds a Start menu shortcut. Re-run the same line any time
to update; it says so when you are already on the newest build. MiniPad also checks once a day and offers an
Update now button. Your scripts, history and settings (%USERPROFILE%\.minipad) are never touched, not even
when you uninstall.
winget install Microsoft.DotNet.SDK.10. The installer checks for it and tells you if it is missing; it
never installs the SDK for you. Without the SDK MiniPad still starts, but running scripts is disabled and says why.
The install script is plain text you can read first: install.ps1. It has no installer program for
SmartScreen to complain about. To use the minipad command in a terminal, download the script and run it with
-AddToPath; -Uninstall removes everything it installed and puts your PATH back exactly as it was.
MiniPad is free software under the MIT license.
The current build is described by version.json.