"In particular, we plan to support React Native environments in 2026."
Genuinely curious, what is the benefit or use case of this? I thought react native runs in the web already.
I wonder if this would enable the truly "serverless" application I've been thinking about. Imagine shipping a whole Rails/Laravel/Wordpress app to the user to be run in their browser with sqlite. Technically you would only need a CDN to distribute the app.
Very interesting tech. Ephemeral, high-fidelity preview environments that require zero setup are a key enabler. They let you rapidly validate changes within the complete context of a web or mobile app, accelerating feedback loops and cutting friction for minor updates. This also empowers business users to safely implement small, self-contained UI adjustments which is particularly powerful when combined with LLM-driven suggestions.
Really excited for this product, the industry needs alternatives to WebContainers which has become more restrictive around licensing. Also great to see that non-node runtimes (ruby / python) will be supported. Having said that, really wish this was open-source, even if that meant the OSS version had more limited features then the commercial alternative.
Unfortunately when visiting the demo (https://vitedemo.browserpod.io/), the terminal just shows "/lt/npm/bin/npm.js install" and does nothing more. There does not seem to be any errors in the developer console and no network requests have failed either. This is on Chrome v140, Windows 10.
I understand that marketing your tool for AI/agents is good business nowadays, but using the browser sandbox through WebAssembly seems way over-engineered compared to even a Docker container.
That being said, this would be good as a Coder alternative for basically instant on-boarding if the UX allows for it. Not to mention the great use this would get in a classroom environment, especially when all you've got are Chromebooks.
Impressive tech anyhow. Hopefully you'll find some business model that would justify open-sourcing this someday (other than a last show of goodwill after bankruptcy, as is how I unfortunately often learn about interesting projects).
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 36.2 ms ] thread> This demo requires a Chromium-based browser (Chrome, Edge, Brave) to function properly.
> Please switch to a compatible browser to experience the full capabilities of BrowserPod.
well, that sucks.
Would love to see this open sourced at some point.
That being said, this would be good as a Coder alternative for basically instant on-boarding if the UX allows for it. Not to mention the great use this would get in a classroom environment, especially when all you've got are Chromebooks.
Impressive tech anyhow. Hopefully you'll find some business model that would justify open-sourcing this someday (other than a last show of goodwill after bankruptcy, as is how I unfortunately often learn about interesting projects).