WEb IDE
Putting the WE in WEb IDE.
A self-hosted, collaborative web IDE in a single Go binary.
Real-time multi-user editing, shared terminals, VS Code-grade git, and chat — all in your browser.
Vulos — rooted in vula, the Zulu and Xhosa word for open.
Part of the Vulos OS suite 
wede is a single ~10 MB Go binary that serves a full collaborative web IDE straight from your machine. No cloud dependency, no Docker, no subscriptions, no database. Deploy it on a server, a NAS, a Raspberry Pi, or just run it locally — then code from any device through your browser, alone or with your whole team.
One host serves many people: open multiple projects as workspaces, invite others with share links, edit the same files with multiplayer cursors, share the same terminals, and talk in per-workspace chat — all with no accounts and no external services. It runs standalone or embedded as a first-class app in the Vulos OS shell via frame_ancestors iframe integration.
Website · Quick start · Docs · Changelog · Roadmap
IDE main view — editor + file tree |
 Git panel — staging with inline diff |
 Git commit graph — branches, merges & refs |
 Built-in API client (Postman-style) |
 Terminals as movable windows (synced across collaborators) |
 Live chat — public & private channels |
 Comprehensive search (regex, globs, replace) |
 Settings — editor, LSP, themes, tunnel |
 Command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) |
 Built-in browser preview |
See docs/SCREENSHOTS.md for the full gallery and how to regenerate.
wede turns one machine into a shared workspace for your whole team — no accounts, no cloud, no external services.
- Share links + roles — the owner mints invite links (
?invite=…) scoped to a role: editor (full access, including terminals) or viewer (read-only — no terminal, file writes, or git mutations). Tokens are hashed at rest and compared in constant time; the owner can list and revoke them anytime. - Workspaces — open multiple independent projects on one host and switch between them from the top bar. Everyone connected sees the same set of workspaces.
- Multiplayer presence & cursors — see who else is in a workspace and which file they're viewing, with live cursors. Collaborative editing is CRDT-backed (pure-Go reearth/ygo, Yjs-compatible).
- Shared terminals — everyone in a workspace shares the same PTY sessions: open a terminal and your teammates see the same output in real time.
- Workspace chat — per-workspace chat with two channels: public (committed to
.wede/chat.mdso the repo — and any LLM working on it — can read the conversation) and private (stored in.wede/private/, which wede auto-gitignores). Git activity (commits, uncommitted-change counts) is posted into the chat automatically. - Public tunnel — one-click expose a loopback-bound wede to the internet via your own sovereign Vulos Relay server (owner-only). wede embeds the relay agent — it dials your relay over a single outbound connection and shows the live public URL — no third-party binary, inbound ports, or static IP needed.
Security — editor links grant full host shell access. An editor share link gives the recipient a login shell (
$SHELL -l) running as the OS user that started wede, with the complete process environment and no filesystem sandbox. The same session also opens the LSP and DAP sockets, which spawn language-server and debugger processes as children of the wede process. Treat editor links like SSH keys — share them only with people you trust with a shell on that machine. Viewer links are safe for read-only access. See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for the full role model and security model.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Real-time Collaboration | Multi-user editing with multiplayer cursors and presence ("who's viewing what"), CRDT-backed via pure-Go reearth/ygo (Yjs-compatible). |
| Workspaces | Open multiple independent projects on one host and switch between them; everyone connected shares the same set. |
| Share Links + Roles | Owner mints invite links scoped to editor (full) or viewer (read-only) roles. Tokens hashed at rest, constant-time compare, listable and revocable. |
| Workspace Chat | Per-workspace chat with public (committed .wede/chat.md, LLM-readable) and private (auto-gitignored) channels, plus automatic git-activity messages. |
| Public Tunnel (Vulos Relay) | One-click expose wede to the internet via your own sovereign Vulos Relay server (owner-only) — embedded relay agent dials out and shows the live URL. No third-party binary, inbound ports, or static IP. |
| File Explorer | VS Code-style project tree with git status colours. Context menu: copy, paste (recursive), rename, delete with confirmation. File-watching via SSE auto-refreshes on disk changes. |
| Code Editor | CodeMirror 6 with syntax highlighting for JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Python, Rust, and 10+ languages. Multi-cursor (Alt+Click), column select (Alt+Drag), bracket matching, code folding. |
| Auto-save | 1.5 s debounced save after each edit. Status indicator in the top bar. Toggle per-session in Settings. Manual Ctrl/Cmd+S always works. |
| Project Search | Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+F — workspace-wide search with ripgrep (Go walker fallback). Case and regex toggles. Replace across files. Results grouped by file; click to jump to exact line. |
| Command Palette | Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P — fuzzy-search over all IDE commands: save, new file/folder, toggle terminal, git ops, theme switch, logout, and more. |
| Web Terminal | Full PTY terminal emulator via xterm.js and WebSocket. Multiple terminals per workspace (dockable or floating windows), shared live with collaborators. Run shell commands, SSH, Docker — anything. |
| Tasks | Named build/test/run commands from ~/.wede/tasks.json, listed in a Tasks panel and run in a terminal (docs). |
| Git Client | VS Code-grade: visual commit graph with branches & merges, blame, side-by-side diff, staging + per-hunk staging, cherry-pick / revert / reset / merge, tags, branch management, push/pull/fetch, stash, merge-conflict resolution. |
| Comprehensive Search | Workspace-wide search with regex, case & whole-word toggles, include/exclude globs, context lines, and a filename mode — plus search & replace across files. |
| Built-in Browser | Preview your running web app in an embedded browser tab without leaving the IDE. |
| API Client | Postman-style HTTP client: methods, params, headers, auth (bearer/basic/api-key), JSON/form/raw bodies, environments with {{variables}}, and a server-side send (no CORS). Requests are saved as files under .wede/requests/ — committable and shareable. |
| LSP | Language Server Protocol proxy for diagnostics, hover, completion, and go-to-definition. Ships with gopls, typescript-language-server, pylsp, rust-analyzer — and any other LSP server can be added without recompiling via ~/.wede/lsp.json (see Adding languages). |
| Syntax highlighting | 25+ languages out of the box — Go, JS/TS/JSX, Python, Rust, C/C++, Java, PHP, C#, Kotlin, Scala, Swift, Ruby, Lua, shell, PowerShell, SQL, YAML, TOML, JSON, Markdown, HTML/CSS, Dockerfile, INI, and more. |
| Format on Save | Auto-formats on Ctrl/Cmd+S: gofmt for Go, prettier for JS/TS/CSS/JSON/HTML/Markdown, black for Python — and any other formatter via ~/.wede/formatters.json (docs). |
| Image & Binary Preview | Images render inline with a checkerboard background; other binary files show a size notice instead of garbled editor content. |
| Editor Settings | Font size, tab width, word wrap, minimap, auto-save — all live-applied without reopening files, persisted to localStorage. |
| Dark & Light Themes | Midnight (dark) and Daylight (light) colour schemes with Space Grotesk / Inter / JetBrains Mono font stack. |
| Mobile Friendly | Fully responsive UI for tablets and phones. |
| Secure Access | Owner password with 3-attempt lockout (persisted across restarts). Per-user share tokens with viewer/editor roles, hashed at rest + constant-time compare. Session TTL, server-side logout, WebSocket token in subprotocol (not URL), WS origin checks. |
| Single binary | Go embeds the entire frontend — one ~10 MB file to deploy anywhere. |
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vul-os/wede/main/install.sh | bashThe installer downloads the binary, generates a random password, and prints it. Then:
wede /path/to/your/projectOpen http://localhost:9090 and log in.
Or download a binary directly from GitHub Releases.
wede reads a single wede.config.json. It searches, in order: the working
directory and its parents, ~/.config/wede/, then next to the binary. A
password is required; everything else has a safe default.
{
"password": "your-strong-password-here",
"port": "9090",
"host": "127.0.0.1",
"frame_ancestors": ""
}| Key | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
password |
(required) | Login password. Brute-force lockout after 3 failed attempts, persisted across restarts. |
port |
9090 |
HTTP port. Override at runtime with --port / -p. |
host |
127.0.0.1 |
Bind address. Loopback only by default; set to 0.0.0.0 to expose on the network. |
frame_ancestors |
"" |
CSP frame-ancestors allow-list for iframe embedding. Empty denies all cross-origin framing; set to e.g. https://vulos.org to embed in the Vulos OS shell. |
The config file holds your password and is gitignored by default — never commit
it. Start from wede.config.example.json.
wede binds to 127.0.0.1 by default. To reach it from elsewhere you can bind to
the LAN ("host": "0.0.0.0"), run it as an app inside Vulos (the Vulos
gateway handles routing and auth — no exposed port), or put it on the public
internet via your own Vulos Relay
server — wede's embedded relay agent dials out from your machine, so no inbound
ports or static IP are needed.
See Exposing wede over a network
for setup.
CLI flags: wede [path] opens a workspace directly; --port/-p overrides the
port; --version prints the version. See docs/CONFIGURATION.md
for the full reference.
wede extends through configuration, not a binary plugin host — you add
capabilities by pointing it at tools already on the machine, with no recompile.
Each registry lives in ~/.wede/ (or a trusted project-local .wede/) and is
merged over the built-ins at startup:
| Extend | Config | Built-ins |
|---|---|---|
| Language servers (LSP) | ~/.wede/lsp.json |
gopls, typescript-language-server, pylsp, rust-analyzer |
| Debug adapters (DAP) | ~/.wede/debug.json |
dlv (Go), debugpy (Python) |
| Formatters | ~/.wede/formatters.json |
per-language defaults |
| Tasks / runners | ~/.wede/tasks.json |
— |
LSP brings completion, diagnostics, hover and rename; DAP brings breakpoints, stepping, the call stack and variables — both speak the same standards as VS Code, so any language server or debug adapter drops in. See docs/GETTING-STARTED.md for copy-paste configs.
VS Code
.vsixextensions are not supported — they require a Node.js extension host, intentionally outside wede's single-binary design; LSP + DAP are the portable, editor-agnostic equivalents. A native WASM plugin API (sidebar panels + editor commands) is planned — see ROADMAP.md — with no extension marketplace by design.
| Document | Description |
|---|---|
| docs/GETTING-STARTED.md | Installation, first steps, network exposure |
| docs/ARCHITECTURE.md | Internal structure, API surface, security model |
| docs/CONFIGURATION.md | All config keys, iframe embedding, CLI flags |
| docs/SCREENSHOTS.md | Screenshot gallery + how to regenerate |
| ROADMAP.md | Planned features by milestone |
| CHANGELOG.md | Full version history |
Prerequisites: Go 1.25+, Node.js 18+
Frontend (React + Vite, hot reload):
npm install
npm run devBackend (Go):
cd backend
go run ./cmd/wede .The Vite dev server proxies /api and WebSocket requests to the Go backend at port 9090.
Production build (single binary with embedded frontend):
npm run build:all
# outputs ./wedeTests and lint:
cd backend && go test ./...
npm run lintRegenerate screenshots:
npm install # installs playwright devDep
npx playwright install chromium # one-time chromium download
npm run screenshots # auto-starts wede on scripts/demo-workspace/The screenshotter starts the ./wede binary pointed at scripts/demo-workspace/ automatically. See docs/SCREENSHOTS.md for environment variables and route details.
Security reminder: Always set a strong, unique password in
wede.config.jsonbefore exposing wede over a network. The example config uses a placeholder — change it before use. Theinstall.shinstaller auto-generates a random password; if you configured manually, updatewede.config.jsonnow.
Contributions are welcome!
- Fork the repository
- Create a feature branch:
git checkout -b feat/my-feature - Commit your changes:
git commit -m 'feat: add my feature' - Push to the branch:
git push origin feat/my-feature - Open a pull request
Please keep the Go tests and lint clean (go test ./... + npm run lint) before submitting.
MIT — free to use, modify, and distribute.
wede is a free, open-source, self-hosted collaborative web IDE and remote development environment.
Built as an alternative to code-server, VS Code Server, Gitpod, and GitHub Codespaces.
Keywords: collaborative web IDE, self-hosted IDE, real-time pair programming, multiplayer code editor,
shared terminal, browser code editor, remote development, online terminal, git client,
open source IDE, developer tools, Go web server, single binary IDE.