refyard

A browser workbench for a Git repository on this machine. It starts a local service that serves a web UI and talks to the git you already have, against repositories you explicitly approve. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no hosted component.

Requirements

• Node 22 or newer (engines: >=22 <27). Development and releases run on 26.8.2. The packaged CLI serves, pairs, reads, previews and stages correctly under 22.11.0, 22.23.2, 24.10.0, 25.2.1 and 26.8.2 — and under 20.19.0 as well, which the range leaves out only because Node 20 is past end of life.
• git 2.43 or newer for the full operation set. Older Git still works for most of it: refyard doctor --json reports featureVersionSupported and lists which probes your Git supports, and the service then omits the operations it cannot run instead of failing later.
• macOS, Linux or Windows.

Run it

# Open a repository in the browser (picks the default port, opens the page for you).
npx refyard open /path/to/repo

# Or start it without opening a browser and print a pairing URL yourself.
npx refyard serve --repo /path/to/repo --no-open --ticket-ttl 600

The first run prints a pairing URL — open it to connect the page to the service. Each ticket is single use; serve can print another (press p then Enter) and --ticket-ttl extends how long one lives (60 seconds by default).

Installed globally, the command is just refyard:

npm install --global refyard
refyard open /path/to/repo

Check the installation with:

refyard doctor --json     # node, git, and one probe per Git feature the service gates on

How it behaves

• Loopback only. The service binds 127.0.0.1 and refuses foreign Origin/Host headers. There is no flag that widens this.
• Everything is authenticated, reads included. Pairing exchanges a single-use ticket for an in-memory bearer token that never touches disk.
• It runs your git, as you. Hooks, filters, credential helpers and your SSH configuration all apply. Destructive operations (discard, worktree removal, stash drop/pop, branch delete) ask for confirmation, back up what could be lost first, and refuse to run when a precondition cannot be verified.
• Repositories are approved explicitly. The service can only reach directories you handed it.
• Unknown is reported as unknown. If Git's outcome cannot be determined, the operation is reported as needing attention rather than as succeeded, and it is never retried automatically.

What it does not do

No hosted or remote service, no built-in terminal, no plugin host, no credential storage. The complete set of operations this build implements is whatever GET /api/v1/capabilities returns from your installation — anything absent from that list is not implemented, not hidden.

License

UNLICENSED — this package is proprietary. Publishing it here makes it installable, not usable: no license is granted to use, copy, modify or redistribute it. See the package metadata.