minirend – Cross‑Platform Web App Runtime

⚠️ EXPERIMENTAL – This project is under active development and APIs may change without notice. Use at your own risk.

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The tiny web ecosystem

Minibun - A tiny javascript bundler implementation.

minima-js - A tiny, fully-featured, zero-dependency JavaScript framework.

LLM Tiny Web - Optimized LLM instructions for writing tiny web code

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You build one native binary that:

• Opens a desktop window on major OSes
• Loads your HTML/CSS/JS app
• Provides a DOM‑like API, localStorage, fetch (basic), and WebGL hooks
• Bundle custom C libraries with JS interop

Requirements

• Git
• Node.js (for the configurator UI)
• PowerShell (Windows)
• A C toolchain is bundled via Cosmopolitan's cosmocc (downloaded automatically)

Dependencies

• Cosmopolitan Libc – build‑once, run‑anywhere C runtime
• Sokol – cross‑platform graphics abstraction (handles D3D11, Metal, OpenGL, WebGPU backends automatically)
• QuickJS – embeddable JavaScript engine
• Modest – HTML/CSS rendering (planned integration, needs input detection)

Feature Comparison

Feature	minirend	Neutralino.js	Electron	Wails
Rendering backend	Custom C DOM	OS WebView	Chromium + Node.js	OS WebView + Go
App size / footprint	Tiny	Tiny	Large	Medium
Win, Mac, Linux Builds	✅	✅	✅	✅
Built‑in dev tooling	✅	✅	✅	✅
JS, HTML, CSS Support	✅ + C	✅	✅	✅ + Go
Single Cross-platform Binary	✅	❌	❌	❌
Custom Browser	✅	❌	❌	❌
Native UI integration	❌ (wip)	✅ (basic)	✅	✅

Folder Layout

minirend/
├── app/              # Your web app (HTML/JS/CSS)
├── build_scripts/    # Build scripts & configurator UI
│   └── configurator/ # Web-based build configurator
├── src/              # Runtime source code
│   ├── minirend.h    # Public API header
│   └── platform/     # Platform-specific implementations
├── third_party/      # Dependencies (auto-downloaded)
├── minirend.js       # Development server
└── Makefile

Quick Start

1. Start the configurator

node minirend.js

This opens the configurator UI in your browser at http://localhost:4173/.

Or build from command line

# Unix/macOS/Git Bash
./build_scripts/build

# Windows
build_scripts\build.cmd

Create Your App

1. Put your web sources in app/:

   • app/index.html – main HTML file
   • app/main.js – main JavaScript entry

2. Use browser‑style JS APIs provided by the runtime:

   • console.log, localStorage, sessionStorage
   • requestAnimationFrame, performance.now
   • fetch (basic http:// support)

Build Output

After building:

• dist/minirend (Unix) or dist/minirend.exe (Windows) – the runtime executable
• dist/app/ – copied from your root app/ directory

You can distribute dist/ as a portable package: run the binary next to the app/ folder on any supported OS.

Run Your App (Dev Mode)

For rapid iteration you can also run directly from the project root (after building):

./minirend                 # Unix/macOS/Git Bash
./minirend app/index.html app/main.js

On Windows PowerShell/cmd, run minirend.exe from the build directory.

Status

minirend is experimental and intentionally small:

• DOM APIs are minimal and focused on common UI use cases
• WebGL is exposed via Sokol's cross-platform graphics abstraction
• Networking and storage are thin wrappers over the host OS via Cosmopolitan

See src/ and Makefile for deeper integration details.