Gimbal is a little framework for civilized web app development and deployment. Mostly, it lets you build and run nontrivial apps that are made entirely of inspectable browser-side code. Some unique things this structure allows are:
- For end-users, to directly see and modify their own data within the web app they're using, without having to go through the app's official UI
- For end-users, to modify the code of a web app they're using, if the existing functioning doesn't suit them
- For developers, to clone, modify, or rehost someone else's app, or "self-host" an app on someone else's server without needing any type of backend setup
- For admins, to run a lean backend, hosting arbitrary apps, with most of the load and vulnerability surface of the apps borne by the client instead of the backend
The system that accomplishes this is two cooperating pieces:
- "Grits" is the backend. It is, more or less, a networked filesystem oriented around cached and access-controlled content, and a web server for authenticated access to that content.
- "Gimbal" is a little in-browser working environment (similar to a Unix desktop) which runs atop Grits. It's designed to create and work with apps which are defined entirely in the browser, and which are inspectable and controllable by the end-users running them.
Note that this is all still a work in progress. This code is not production ready or close to it. Some things work in useful form, but also it's still heavily in flux. It's a hobby project. It works on my machine except when it doesn't. This is mostly just a demo of the intended direction of the system, for people to mess with and give feedback on.
If you want a quick online demo of the system's current capabilities, see DEMO.md. For a detailed reference and explanation of how all this works, see REFERENCE.md. If you want to set up your own backend instance, see INSTALL.md.
Live instance: https://gimbal.melanic.org/
Matrix: #gimbal:matrix.org
Comments, questions, feedback? Let me know.
Cheers and enjoy.