@shiplightai/devtools-assets

The Chrome DevTools frontend, built from this repository and published to npm as static assets. shiplightai's local debugger serves the package's dist/ directory at /devtools and loads inspector.html in an iframe.

Why this package exists

The CLI needs DevTools as built, servable files. Upstream's own npm package (chrome-devtools-frontend) ships TypeScript source, not a build, so it cannot be served to a browser as-is. This package fills that gap: the publish workflow builds this repository and packs the output.

Why it lives here rather than in the CLI repository

This repository is a Chromium DevTools fork carrying Shiplight's own additions — the locator picker, the panel toggle, and websocket auto-reconnect. Publishing from here means the published artifact and the source that produced it share a commit, so "which source built this tarball?" is answerable by looking at the release. It also keeps ~120 MB of BSD-3-licensed build output out of the MIT-licensed CLI repository.

dist/ is never committed. It exists only inside the publish job.

Layout contract

The CLI resolves this package and joins "dist":

path.join(path.dirname(require.resolve("@shiplightai/devtools-assets/package.json")), "dist")

So the build output must land at dist/ in the published tarball. If it lands anywhere else the CLI reports "Required peer package … is not installed", which is a misleading error for a layout mismatch.

dist/ is not a straight copy of out/Default/gen/front_end. That is a build directory, and about two thirds of it — sourcemaps, .d.ts and .prebundle.* intermediates, and fixtures/ test traces — is byproduct the browser never requests. The workflow deletes those before packing, which is what keeps the package near 120 MB instead of 378 MB. Removing that filter would push the tarball past the size gate.

Publishing

Run the Publish devtools-assets workflow (workflow_dispatch). It builds this repository, packs the output, compares the tarball against the live npm version, and publishes via npm trusted publishing.

The version is not auto-bumped — unlike the CLI and MCP release workflows. Bump version in package.json by hand, in a PR, when you publish a new build. The assets are pinned across many shiplightai releases so npm's content-addressed cache can reuse the unchanged tarball; automatic bumps would defeat that.

Licensing

The build output is overwhelmingly Chromium's, under BSD-3-Clause, and LICENSE accompanies it. Some files adapt Playwright code under Apache-2.0. Shiplight's own additions live in this repository's front_end/ sources.