What is Glide?

Glide is a local visual design tool that sits on top of your existing frontend app. You open it in your browser, click on any element on screen, and edit its styles, layout, and position — just like Figma. The difference? Every edit is written directly back to your source code (JSX, TSX, Vue SFC, Svelte, Astro, or HTML) as real code.

No cloud. No proprietary formats. No lock-in. Just your code, edited visually.

How It Works

flowchart LR
    App["Your App\n(npm run dev · port 5173 / 4321)"]
    Server["Glide Server\n(port 7777)"]
    Canvas["Visual Editor Canvas\n(browser · localhost:7777)"]
    Files["Your Source Files\n(JSX · Vue · Svelte · Astro · HTML)"]

    App -->|"proxied into"| Canvas
    Canvas -->|"click / drag / edit"| Server
    Server -->|"AST write-back"| Files
    Files -->|"Vite HMR"| App

1. Your app runs normally (e.g., npm run dev on port 5173)
2. Glide's server connects to it and opens a visual editor at localhost:7777
3. You click elements on the canvas → Glide's In-Memory SceneGraph hits the node in sub-millisecond time
4. You change a value → Glide rewrites the source file using AST transformations and property-level LWW
5. External file changes trigger bidirectional AST synchronization → updating the canvas without reloading the iframe

Architecture: The Figma & v0 Bidirectional Model

Glide combines the spatial responsiveness of Figma with the bidirectional AST-coupling of Vercel v0:

User edits on Canvas                  External Code Edits
       │                                       │
       ▼                                       ▼
In-Memory SceneGraph (cached bounds)   Chokidar File Watcher
       │                                       │
       ▼                                       ▼
WebSocket AST Codemod Dispatch         AST Coordinate Parser (JSX)
       │                                       │
       ▼                                       ▼
Property-Level Delta Queue (LWW)       Scene Update Event (WS)
       │                                       │
       ▼                                       ▼
Source File Recast / Write-Back        Overlay Patches SceneGraph

• Spatial Hit Testing: Rather than fragile DOM lookups, the cached SceneGraph indexes bounding rectangles for O(log n) hit tests under arbitrary transforms and zoom levels.
• Surgical Codemods: Direct AST manipulation via recast and babel updates only targeted tokens, preserving user formatting, comments, and structure.
• Conflict Resolution: The PropertyDeltaQueue tracks independent logical timestamps per (nodeId, propKey), preventing simultaneous property adjustments from clobbering each other.

Quick Start

Installation & Execution

Glide is published to both the public npm registry and GitHub Packages.

Option A: Direct via Public npm (Recommended — Zero Config)

No .npmrc configuration or authentication required:

# Terminal 1 — your running frontend app
npm run dev

# Terminal 2 — start Glide targeting your app's port
npx @srivarsank/glide 5173

Or install as a local devDependency:

npm install -D @srivarsank/glide

Option B: Via GitHub Packages (npm.pkg.github.com)

If your team consumes packages from GitHub Packages:

1. Add the scope mapping to your project .npmrc (or ~/.npmrc):

   @srivarsank:registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com

2. Authenticate using a GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT) with read:packages scope:

   npm login --registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com

3. Run via npx or install normally:

   npx @srivarsank/glide 5173

Then open http://localhost:7777 in your browser.

Local Development & Source Build

If you want to run Glide from source:

# 1. Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/SrivarsanK/Glide.git
cd Glide
npm install

# 2. Build
npm run build

# 3. Start your frontend app in another terminal, then:
node dist/cli.js 5173

Open http://localhost:7777 to start editing.

Features

| Feature | Description | |---|---| | 🎨 Visual Canvas | Figma-like workspace — select, drag, resize, zoom, and pan elements | | 🗺️ In-Memory SceneGraph | Cached spatial hierarchy with sub-millisecond, zoom/transform-aware hit testing | | 🔄 Bidirectional Sync | Code-to-Canvas AST synchronization updating the scene on external edits without iframe reload | | 📐 Smart Snapping | Snaps to sibling edges, centers, and pixel grid with live guide lines | | ✍️ Universal Live Code Write-back | Real-time direct source editing across React (JSX/TSX), Vue (SFC), Svelte, Astro, and HTML — for Tailwind classes, inline styles, and text content | | ✂️ Surgical Tailwind Rewriter | AST-level surgical replacement of Tailwind tokens (bg-*, text-*, w-*, h-*, p-*, m-*, arbitrary [...]) | | 🔀 Canvas Cross-Parent Drop | Reparent and reorder elements across parent container boundaries directly on canvas | | 🔍 Component Definition Jump | One-click navigation from instantiated sub-components directly to their definition source file | | ⏱️ Property Delta Queue & LWW | Property-level Last-Writer-Wins conflict resolution preventing simultaneous edit clobbering | | 🚀 Astro Framework Support | Native support for .astro SFCs with server frontmatter preservation | | ⚡ Zero-Flicker Drag | Positions written to glide-positions.json — no HMR reload on drag | | 🗂️ Layers Panel | Hierarchical tree view of all elements with Figma-style hover controls | | 🎛️ Properties Panel | Edit geometry (X, Y, W, H), spacing, border, radius, shadows, fills, and typography | | 🌈 Color Picker | Custom popup with 16 presets and hex input — no native OS dialog | | 📱 Device Preview | Switch between device presets or set a custom width & height | | 🌿 Git Branching Mode | Safe sandbox (git: <branch> ▾) to preview changes before committing | | 🎛️ Quick Toggles Navbar | Snapping, grid, rulers, and repo view in a compact header toolbar | | ↩️ Undo / Redo | Full undo/redo history for the entire session | | 🗂️ Component Registry | Auto-scans and indexes every component into glide-components.json at startup |

Color Picker

Glide uses a custom popup color picker (not the native OS dialog). Click any color swatch to open it. You can:

• Pick from 16 preset colors
• Type a hex code directly
• Use the 🧪 eyedropper button to sample a color from the screen

⚠️ Known Bug — Eyedropper Tool: The eyedropper (🧪) is currently buggy in some Chromium versions. It may not close the color picker or register the sampled color. Use hex input or presets instead.

Keyboard Shortcuts

| Key | Action | |---|---| | V | Select tool | | H | Hand / Pan tool | | F | Frame | | R | Rectangle | | O | Ellipse | | T | Text | | C | Comment | | Ctrl+Z | Undo | | Ctrl+Shift+Z | Redo | | Escape | Deselect / Close popup |

Project Structure

Glide/
├── packages/
│   ├── cli/            # Entry point — run this to start Glide
│   ├── overlay/        # Visual editor UI (HTML/JS at localhost:7777)
│   ├── server/         # WebSocket + HTTP server that connects to your app
│   ├── core/           # Shared types, AST scanner, component registry
│   ├── ast-writer/     # Writes style changes back to source files
│   ├── adapters/       # Framework adapters (vue, svelte, astro, html, react)
│   └── vite-plugin/    # Stamps elements with source locations (data-gl-source)
├── skills/             # AI agent skills shipped with the package
│   └── glide-component-segregator/
├── docs/               # Extra documentation and design specs
├── logo/               # Logo assets
└── README.md

AI Agent Skills

Glide ships a built-in AI agent skill with every install. It teaches AI coding assistants — like Antigravity IDE — how to use glide-components.json to find and edit any component by name, without guessing file paths or re-scanning the source tree.

How it works

When Glide starts, it scans your project and writes glide-components.json to your project root. Every component — including layout wrappers and background elements — gets its own entry with file path, line number, and a list of all its HTML elements:

{
  "buckets": [
    {
      "name": "Card",
      "file": "/src/components/Card.tsx",
      "exportType": "named",
      "line": 12,
      "elements": [
        { "id": "src/Card.tsx:13:4", "tagName": "div", "isRoot": true, "classNames": ["card"] },
        { "id": "src/Card.tsx:14:6", "tagName": "h2", "isRoot": false }
      ],
      "cssFiles": ["/src/components/Card.module.css"]
    }
  ]
}

The registry auto-updates within 300 ms whenever you add, rename, or delete a source file — no manual rescan needed.

Supported frameworks

| Framework | Export types detected | Single File Component (SFC) Support | |---|---|---| | React / TSX | Named, default, arrow function, anonymous JSX | JSX AST parsing | | Vue SFC | .vue files — <template> block scanned | Full template class write-back | | Svelte | .svelte files — <script> / <style> stripped | Full template class write-back | | Astro | .astro files — Frontmatter (---) preserved | Full template class & text write-back | | HTML | <head>, <script>, <style> excluded | DOM attribute write-back |

Installation

Antigravity IDE — automatic. The skill at skills/glide-component-segregator/SKILL.md is picked up automatically when you install Glide.

Other AI tools — one command:

# Run from your project root after installing @srivarsank/glide
cp node_modules/@srivarsank/glide/skills/glide-component-segregator/SKILL.md \
   .agents/skills/glide-component-segregator/SKILL.md

[!NOTE] Add these generated files to your .gitignore:

glide-components.json
glide-positions.json

Agent workflow

Once active, the agent follows this 6-step pattern for every component edit:

1. Read glide-components.json
2. Find the bucket by component name (e.g. "Card", "Header")
3. Inspect elements — target by isRoot / tagName / classNames
4. Use element.id as the data-gl-source edit target
5. For CSS edits — open the file listed in bucket.cssFiles
6. After adding a new component — wait 300 ms, then re-read the registry

Known Issues & Limitations

| Feature / Issue | Status | |---|---| | 🎨 Eyedropper tool | ✅ Fixed (state restoration fixed; Chromium 150 freeze bug guarded) | | 📐 Element resizing | ✅ Fixed (generation sync + instant state resync) | | ⚡ Vue / Svelte / Astro editing | ✅ Fully Supported (class, style, and text writeback across all 5 frameworks) | | 🏷️ Source Stamping | By design (data-gl-source tagged automatically by Vite plugin) | | 📍 Drag Positions | By design (stored in glide-positions.json for zero-flicker live drag) |

Contributing

We welcome contributions of all kinds — bug fixes, performance improvements, framework adapters, and documentation!

• Read our Contributing Guide for local architecture details, development commands, and pull request requirements.
• Follow our conventional atomic commit guidelines.
• Explore in-depth architectural notes and CST research in docs/research/.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

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