stackblitz

webcontainer-core

Web Development2021–2024

stackblitz / webcontainer-core

webcontainer-core

Dev environments. In your web app.

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11Mentions

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4.6KGitHub stars

REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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What it is

Dev environments. In your web app.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 11:56:56 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year11 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2021-05-20 18:29:24 UTC to 2024-07-13 14:58:31 UTC.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

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Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Submissions	Comments
2021	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	7	1	6
2022	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1	0
2023	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	0	2
2024	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	0	1

What Hacker News says

11 sources

libming_·Jul 13, 2024

StackBlitz has always struck me as a solution in search of a problem. Buyer beware: WebContainers is closed-source and there are hundreds of open issues from users. Most of them are ignored for weeks and months at a time as the company pivots from one thing to the next: https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core/issues

In WebContainers: Dev environments. In your web app

benatkin·Feb 15, 2023

It's an irritating name, like PlanetScale. It both makes it sound more official (it's not official at all) and more high-tech than it is. What WebContainers doesn't do is provide container tech. WebAssembly is similar to a Docker container, so much so that Docker now supports WebAssembly. WebContainers also uses a subdomain and the browser's security model. In fact the browser is the main thing that limits what stuff inside the WebContainer can do in WebAssembly. WebContainer runs whatever JavaScript the WebAssembly code spits out. Like DotCloud one of the great things about WebAssembly is that it can run a wider variety of code performantly than a JavaScript engine can - not just code that can compile to JS but anything that can be compiled to its bytecode. This is what WebContainer takes advantage of - not the sandboxing of a WebContain

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er, which is also excellent but isn't the right fit for a code sandbox like jsbin/CodePen/CodeSandbox/etc, which needs to be able to run whatever can be run in a browser tab. What WebContainers does is use some hacks to sort of run node apps in the browser, so instead of using something like the browser version of rollup, you can use something like vite. You can also see the console output that vite would provide. When vite installs esbuild I think it probably specifies the non-WASM esbuild. So it's likely running patched vite and running WASM esbuild. It uses a fake npm and yarn and shows npm and yarn in the output. This explained in this FAQ under "Do you support yarn or only npm?": https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core#faqs It has an iframe sandbox with same-origin which means in order for it to be contained, you need a subdomain. This is something other major sandboxes do like jsbin and CodeSandbox. This is why IMO it doesn't provide container tech. That's lucky, because custom container tech on the web winds up being like Google Caja which was a marvelous accomplishment but not nearly as robust as Docker, MicroVMs, WASM, or the browser security model (<iframe sandbox>, CSPs, and more): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caja_project https://devd.me/papers/LeastPrivileges.pdf

In WebContainer API

scoopertrooper·Feb 14, 2023

They are aiming to develop a standard... of sorts... https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core

In WebContainer API

0xedb·Jan 17, 2022Submission

Stackblitz/Webcontainer-Core

2 points · Open discussion

themgt·Nov 8, 2021

I find this technology story a bit weird. Afaict stackblitz is based on WebContainer™ which has a "working group" and is supported in Chrome/Edge so far: https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core But the FAQ says: Is there a developer API? Not yet. Once we reach General Availability for WebContainer we plan to release an API surface. Is this open source? Today no, but the API will be open source to developers at GA. The closest I can find from Stackblitz is this Github issue where the Stackblitz founder 4 years ago responds to "By any chance, are you open-sourcing the codebase?" with: Definitely! We're planning on open sourcing the core tech behind stackblitz (which is what this repo is for), but there's a lot that needs to happen between now & then. I'm going to fill out the readme a bit which should answer this in detail — will c

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ircle back shortly. https://github.com/stackblitz/core/issues/28#issuecomment-32... To what extent is the Stackblitz or even underlying WebContainer tech open source / documented?

In Hydrogen: React-based framework for building custom storefronts

luispa·May 28, 2021Submission

Key WebContainer Components

2 points · Open discussion

bestest·May 20, 2021

Quoting https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core: > We're limited by the browser's ability to make network requests, so connecting to processes like MongoDB, Redis, PostgreSQL, etc. are not currently possible

In WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser

brabel·May 20, 2021

node.js, as any other native Linux/Windows/Mac application, talks to the OS via a system API. You can emulate that API using WASM, mapping I/O to browser APIs, which is why they mention network is implemented via service workers, for example. File I/O can be mapped to IndexDB... Threads can also be mapped to service workers, I guess... and so on. emscripten[1] did this a long time ago for C, which is how a bunch of native applications have already been ported to run on the browser. webcontainers[2] seem to do a similar thing but focused on exposing the browser API to the native apps in a way that integrates well with the JS environment. [1] https://emscripten.org/ [2] https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core

In WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser

ericmsimons·May 20, 2021

Great question :) We have some additional technical info in our core WG repo: https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core We also did an hour long podcast a few months back that goes into pretty deep detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F9qH-ea5Qk

In WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser

ericmsimons·May 20, 2021

Great questions- we have some additional technical info in our core WG repo: https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core We also did an hour long podcast a few months back that goes into pretty deep detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F9qH-ea5Qk

In WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser

ericmsimons·May 20, 2021

We'll be open sourcing core parts of WebContainer as we move towards GA. We have some additional technical info in our core WG repo: https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core We also did an hour long podcast a few months back that goes into pretty deep detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F9qH-ea5Qk

In WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser