HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
WICG
webpackage
Go2017–2026
WICG / webpackage

webpackage

Web packaging format

32Distinct people
53Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.3KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Web packaging format

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 3:30:57 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 year53 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2017-07-13 03:26:41 UTC to 2026-02-15 19:43:26 UTC.

051015202017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 2 submissions, 1 comments20172018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 20 mentions; 4 submissions, 16 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 2 submissions, 4 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 1 submissions, 9 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

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

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC321
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC20416
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC624
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1019
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Packaging Websites Not to be confused with webpack, this repository holds a collection of specifications aimed at packaging websites. These specifications replace the W3C TAG's Web Packaging Draft and will allow people to bundle together the resources that make up a website, so they can be shared offline, either with or without a proof that they came from the original website. A full list of use cases and resulting requirements is available in draft-yasskin-wpack-use-cases (IETF draft). Explainers Use cases Maintaining security and privacy constraints Specifications Building this repository Building the Draft Packaging tools Signed HTTP Exchanges Web Bundles Isolated Web Apps (signing with integrity block) Explainers The explainers walk through how to use these specs to achieve the use cases. Use cases Packaging whole pages or sites: can be signed or unsigned. Serving signed subresources of a signed top-level HTML page Navigating to top-level unsigned pages Packaging subresources. This can include groups of JS modules, stylesheets, images, or fonts. This is also getting fleshed out at https://github.com/littledan/resource-bundles/ Maintaining security and privacy constraints How to avoid third-party tracking What origin does an unsigned bundle have? Specifications The specifications come in several layers: Signed HTTP exchanges (a.k.a. SXG) (IETF draft): These allow a browser to trust that a single HTTP request/response pair was generated by the origin it claims. As we implement and test signed exchanges, we're publishing periodic snapshots so that browsers, publishers, and intermediates can synchronize on the same format. The current implementation snapshot is an Internet Draft, and a draft of the next snapshot is in this repository. Web Bundles (previously called Bundled HTTP exchanges): A collection of HTTP resources, each of which could be signed or unsigned, with some metadata describing how to interpret the bundle as a whole. This specification has an initial draft in a PR, but isn't finished yet. This work may proceed through either the IETF or the W3C/WHATWG. Update: This work was moved to the wpack-wg/bundled-responses repository (Web Bundles (IETF draft)) . Loading: A description of how browsers load signed exchanges. This is initially specified here, and will eventually merge into the appropriate specs, e.g. Fetch, that live in either the W3C or WHATWG. Currently this only covers signed exchanges. Subresource Loading (Explainer): A description of how browsers load a large number of resources efficiently with Web Bundles. This is initially specified here, and will eventually merge into the appropriate specs. A previous draft of the format combined layers 1 and 2 into a single format for signed packages: draft-yasskin-dispatch-web-packaging (IETF draft). The DISPATCH WG at IETF99 recommended the current split. Building this repository Building the Draft Formatted text and HTML versions of the draft can be built using make. $ make This requires that you have software installed as described in https://github.com/martinthomson/i-d-template/blob/main/doc/SETUP.md. Packaging tools Signed HTTP Exchanges Install this with go install github.com/WICG/webpackage/go/signedexchange/cmd/... (Golang 1.18+). See go/signedexchange for the usage of the tool. Web Bundles There are several tools. Go (Reference Implementation) Install this with go install github.com/WICG/webpackage/go/bundle/cmd/.... See go/bundle for the usage of the tool. Node There is a npm package, wbn. Plugin for bundlers (Experimental) Rollup plugin Webpack plugin Rust (Experimental) google/webbundle Isolated Web Apps (signing with integrity block) Go (Reference Implementation) See go/bundle#using-integrity-block-sub-command for more. Node There is a npm package, wbn-sign. Also same plugins as for Web Bundles can sign the bundles.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

20 sources
Google's answer to this is a trifecta of AMP [1], Contributor [2], and Funding Choices [3] -- to deliver content signed by the publisher [4] from Google's CDN and display less-annoying ads in the meantime, or purchase an ad-free pass to the publisher through Google. This venture is predicated on the assumption that Google and the publishers both need each other: publishers want revenue from ads, revenue whose amount is proportional to the number of viewers, while Google wants quality destinations to which it can direct traffic and/or quality sources of content which it can display in a captive newsreader. This is a reality in a world where paid newspaper subscriptions are down, media makes money with just-in-time auctioned online display ads, and paywalls interfere with the positive effects of wide distribution, like the likelihood of new
Read the rest
In The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy
> If it was as robust as you make out then we wouldn't have a need for the cookie consent law We _don't_ need that law. All it's resulted in is tons of annoying pop-ups all over the web (which I block with an extension). Browsers already have the ability to grant or deny cookie usage per-domain, which is much more user-friendly and effective. > nor GDPR No technically-enforceable permissions system in the world will let you control what a company does with data you've already voluntarily given them, so I don't see how better permissions would eliminate the need for GDPR. > But one idea I have is where sites have to send metadata down (as part of the headers if like?) with each page stating what permissions that page requires to function Sounds like you're describing [Content Security Policy][1] and [Feature Policy][2]? Obviously those are
Read the rest
n't required by default, for backwards-compatibility reasons, but they _do_ exist. > That way users can see what each page is doing just be looking at the requested permissions even before any popup appears Can you clarify what you mean by this? Most of the permissions you described are very low-level; not the sort of thing most users would want to concern themselves with (and certainly not for every site they visit). > Further to that, you can define in the browser which permissions to allow by default - this is a little like what is available already but more granular (eg the self-modifying page example earlier). Again, most of this seems like the sort of thing users wouldn't want to concern themselves with. What benefit would result from users being able to prevent a page from modifying its own DOM, for example? For permissions that actually impact the user's security or privacy (e.g. Camera, Mic, Clipboard, Cookies, Third-Party Cookies) this already exists. (See chrome://settings/content) Could you give some more examples of permissions you believe would be valuable to include here? Preferably stuff that has a clear, concrete impact on the user's security or privacy. > Further to that, some interactions (the exploitable ones) will be logged. eg calls from one domain to another. So some of the more experienced users have the ability to scan for suspicious behaviour without having to trawl through thousands of HTTP get / post requests. Is this really such a common use case that you think this needs to be built-into the browser rather than handled via an extension or Dev Tools? I'd also like to point out that in the case of cross-domain calls, a site which wants to hide their behavior could simply proxy calls to third-party sites through their own server. > I'd also like reminder prompts. eg if a service you allowed to make location requests does it frequently, I'd want a banner across the bottom of the page reminding users that this is happening frequently and that can only be mitigated by "trusting" that service with that API (an additional manual action on top of allowing it initial access to a particular browser feature). Already exists. Browsers show an icon in the address bar and on the tab when a page is accessing sensitive information like your mic, camera, or location. Mobile browsers display a persistent notification. > Another cool feature would be if versioning was built into webpages. Each page would be versioned and that version number would stored with a checksum of the page. Thus if the page changes between refreshes, the browser knows and resets all the permissions on that page to the user defaults (ie any previous prompts would then have to be re-prompted again). So every time a site make some minor update to their code, I'd have to re-authorize all permissions on that site? Seems rather inconvenient to me, and might lead to warning blindness (which would decrease overall security). That said, the upcoming [Web Packaging Standard][3] might do the "versioning" part of this at least. > It would also be nice to have some definable CPU and memory caps too - since each tab is basically now a virtual machine. I'm not sure this is something the user really wants to micromanage. If a tab I'm using needs to use 100% of my CPU to do its job, I don't think I'd want it to bother me with a prompt; I'd much rather just see an indicator or something indicating high resource usage so I can intervene if necessary. With the recent rise of JS-based cryptocoin miners; something like this may end up getting implemented in the near future. > Thus all I ask is you respect the spirit of what I'm saying rather than taking the points literally as a written gospel I'm suggesting we implement tomorrow. There will be problems implementing that verbatim but my point is to illustrate just how little protection the web offers and how much further we need to go given its current nature is basically just allowing anyone to run any untrusted application on their local machine. Thanks for the reminder. I've gone back over all my points in this post and tried to re-imagine your suggestions in the most constructive way possible. Sorry if I still seem skeptical. You have some good ideas, but keep in mind that these problems have already been considered in detail by numerous standards committees and browser vendors, so it's no surprise that a lot of the things you've suggested either already exist, or have good reasons for not existing. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CSP [2]: https://github.com/WICG/feature-policy [3]: https://github.com/WICG/webpackage
In New in Chrome 70
This is a remarkable deep-dive into the history of RSS and the ideas and vision behind it, and how those camps diverged. But despite beginning the article with Kevin Werbach's prediction that syndication was going to become a dominant business model on the web, this never quite came to pass, and RSS took on the role of moving media between aggregators and consumers, rather than between authors and aggregators as originally intended. With the shift in usage to the edge, RSS found itself in the company of adhoc webpages that disseminated the same content but supported scripted adtech to enable just-in-time display advertising -- advertising which, over time, became a significant source of publisher revenue. RSS was often surfaced in a different user-agent and unable to clearly accommodate scripted ads, so first-party RSS feeds were practica
Read the rest
lly giving away the content for free. With time, this greatly contributed to the waning appetite of commercial publishers for RSS, despite it remaining popular in circles were the content was meant to be spread wide at no cost. Although many news organizations still offer RSS feeds, they're not really marketed prominently, and remain a loss leader to make savvy readers happy. Since alternate business models never achieved the same uptake, efforts like Google's AMP (and its offshoots like webpackage [1]) are a practical take on the syndication concept again, where the usage of adtech is assumed from the start, and the surfacer of the content becomes decoupled from its author. [1] https://github.com/WICG/webpackage
In The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS
There is some truth in the fact that until we have support for signed code on the web - and a way to check that whoever signed can be trusted, we only have "level 1" security. In FxOS we used code signing to grant access to more powerful apis. I think that something like what the Dat project is doing could be interesting in this regard, or web packages as described in https://github.com/WICG/webpackage/blob/master/explainer.md
In Requiring secure contexts for all new features
No. In fact, the solution detailed in that article accomplishes the exact inverse of one of the letter's demands. While the letter wants third-party content not to be surfaced in a wrapping viewport that downplays the fact that it's actually Google's AMP Newsreader, the recent AMP announcement details a planned change where emerging tech [1] will be used to make the URL appear as if the content was directly loaded from the distant origin, because the content being served has been digitally signed by that origin and its serving has been delegated to Google akin to how a run-of-the-mill CDN is delegated the authority to serve content for a domain that's 'spiritually' owned by someone else. However, the recent AMP announcement does address a very frequent complaint about AMP. Just one that's at odds with the one the letter is requesting. [1]
Read the rest
In A letter about Google AMP

Showing the 15 most recent of 20 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.