nicbarker/clay

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

17998 stars · 715 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Clay is a high-performance 2D UI layout library in C, distributed as a single zero-dependency header file. It provides a flex-box-like declarative layout model that outputs renderer-agnostic rendering primitives, with support for compiling to WebAssembly for browser use.

Use cases

• build game UI layouts in C or C++
• create responsive flexbox-style layouts without a browser engine
• compile a UI layout engine to wasm for the browser
• lay out native desktop application interfaces
• avoid malloc and heap allocation in embedded UI code
• render UI with any custom renderer or 3D engine

When to choose

• you need microsecond-level layout performance in C/C++
• you want a single-header, zero-dependency layout solution
• you're building UI for games or custom renderers and need renderer-agnostic primitives
• you need wasm support with a tiny binary footprint

When to avoid

• you need a full widget toolkit with built-in controls, theming, or input handling
• you want immediate-mode GUI rather than retained declarative layout
• your project is not in C/C++ or a language with C FFI
• you need accessibility features or native platform widgets

Facets

library · maturity active

ui-components graphics graphics web-development cross-platform cpp c wasm cross-platform browser flexbox-layout single-header zero-dependencies renderer-agnostic declarative-ui immediate-mode-adjacent game-ui layout game-development desktop

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