Hi- Eric cofounder of StackBlitz/Bolt here, not sure what OP is talking about? You can cancel your subscription at any time over at https://stackblitz.com/settings/billing
Here's a screenshot I just took of my own billing page (see the "cancel subscription" link under the "Current Plan" section): https://imgur.com/a/6ZTWgEL
Bolt = StackBlitz, ie Bolt doesn't have it's own subscription plans - if you go to your stackblitz billing profile I linked above you can cancel and downgrade to the free plan!
we haven’t ever pivoted from webcontainers, not sure what you’re talking about there. it’s been our main thing since forever :)
stackblitz itself is a product suite built on top of webcontainers. note that many issues in the repo you linked are not for webcontainers specifically, but instead mostly for stackblitz specific functionality.
we have about 3m devs/mo using us for free on stackblitz.com, so we do the best we can for free public issue triage but do prioritize our paying customers (we are a business after all :)
I wish you could make WebContainers actually an open source standard library for local sandboxed client / server coding one day. I know CORS screws everything up...
We originally thought the same but a few years back started seeing increasing demand outside of stackblitz itself.
Surprisingly a very large and growing number of use cases across interactive edu tools, AI code execution (https://webcontainers.io/ai), SaaS dev envs for end users to write code, amongst others
Thanks for this feedback- we’ll definitely make it easier to land on the webcontainer.new demo from the homepage. I think our main concern initially was that without docs context it might be too confusing what’s going on, but I think we could find ways to ease that in that experience itself
My eyes glazed over the docs context and scrolled until there was a bright blue button to click. If that hadn't been there I probably would have just bounced off of the page for being too wordy in a time of infinite distraction.
Personally, I'd be direct and add something to the effect of
> The page that you see on the right is being rendered to your browser by an instance of vite, running on your laptop, npm and all, being served directly to your browser. This is what sets us apart from other web dev environments.
to the readme.md on webcontainers.new and to the copy directing people to click that blue button. As a sibling comment says, "looks like every other modern code playground", which is what it looks like, but it isn't. You and your team have put in a lot of hard work to differentiate on that specific thing.
Your target market is developers, which raises the bar for technical understanding. Respect your customers' intelligence and just give it to them straight.
imo. you didn't ask for suggestions but this is the Internet :)
Hi HN! Cofounder of StackBlitz/WebContainers here, cool to wake up and see this on the front page unexpectedly :) Happy to answer any questions!
Btw one emergent use case we've seen growing rapidly has been code execution for AI agents. Would love thoughts/questions/feedback if you’re working on things in that space: https://webcontainers.io/ai
What's the patent you mention on the site? Are any other web-based terminal, shell, or Node emulators at risk of violating it? Is it for a specific implementation technique? It's kind of scary to see in the docs, to be honest.
It's somewhat specific to our use case as you'll see when you read through. A motivation for securing this was that we've had issues (one instance in particular) where we caught a direct competitor directly copy+pasting code from our compiled builds into their own competing product. Asking them nicely to stop didn't do anything, nor getting emails from our lawyers.
The main lever a startup has to solve this is to keep innovating and being the best product in the market, which is what we have done & continue to do. But having a patent is a useful lever for general deterrence from bad actors like this. (Also want to say thanks and give credit to Vinay Hiremath, cofounder of Loom, who went through similar in the early days of Loom and helped point us down the path of securing a patent)
Technically speaking yes, but practically it turns out you often need multiple levers to actually get resolution when dealing with bad faith actors.
At some point I intend to write a blog post about what happened so other startups have a frame of reference on how to deal with this sort of thing. Truly wild stuff and can be very counterintuitive.
Hi working on agentic code execution, can you explain why you think a webcontainer is a good and useful solution to do LLM code exec over other low level container solutions
It's very reassuring to see that this is going to be open standard with working group behind it!
I was a bit confused when writing my previous comment.
I kind of meant client-side vs server-side part, but I see it may be (or should be) both. I'm impressed you answered in person, please let me elaborate.
webcontainers.io/api describes client-side ECMAScript interface (e.g. `WebContainer.boot().spawn('ls', ['src', '-l'])`).
The "StackBlitz WebContainers client" is not the only existing in-browser implementation capable of providing such interface.
For example, there is "WebVM" from Leaning Technologies, that "runs unmodified Debian binaries in the browser" using "x86-to-WebAssembly JIT compiler" and "Linux syscall emulator". It can run everything from WebContainers examples, like `ls src -l` or `npm run dev`.
One could easily make adapter that uses WebVM to implement WebContainer API.
This is what I thought "WebContainers API" should encompass.
But as I learned today, WebVM just like WebContainer also requires a web service (Tailscale) for proxying network traffic. Even JSLinux (bellard.org) uses proxy server. That's necessary because there is no "WebNetworking API" exposing local native networking trough the browser. Usage of such service is implementation detail, but including it in the "WebContainers API" standard is right now the only way to make provider-agnostic clients and I did not consider that before. It may become redundant one day if we get "WebNetworking API" for the browser but there's no such ongoing initiative.
Did I get that right now?
Is StackBlitz WebContainers web service going to proxy arbitrary network traffic, or is it about git, package management and other dev-specific protocols?
Is "WebContainers server API" going to also reflect client API methods to give optional support for thin clients and hybrids? (running all or selected commands in remote container rather than only proxying the network)
Eric (StackBlitz CEO) here- just wanted to confirm that we are indeed using VitePress! By far the best documentation site generator available right now from a DX, design, and flexibility perspective. Highly recommend.
Will be adding responsive styling shortly to it!