galileo

The inspector of a space: the apps and files on this machine, one at a time, under one bar.

galileo keeps a list of sources, the things you want to look at. There are two kinds:

Each source gets an address of its own, <name>.localhost:4100, and opens under telescope, galileo's bar and router:

localhost:4100/sources          the Sources page: add, open and remove sources
localhost:4100/s/acme/pricing   the source acme, at /pricing, under the bar

flowchart LR
  subgraph tab["a browser tab on localhost:4100"]
    bar["telescope<br/>the bar and router"]
    frame["the source, in a frame<br/>acme.localhost:4100"]
  end
  galileo["galileo<br/>127.0.0.1:4100"]
  app["an app on a port<br/>localhost:5173"]
  disk["files on disk<br/>~/notes"]
  bar -->|"the sources API"| galileo
  frame --> galileo
  galileo -->|proxied| app
  galileo -->|read only| disk
  frame -.->|"the bridge: where the page is"| bar

The bar says which source you're on and where in it. Switch source from its menu, type a path, reload, or open the source in a tab of its own. As you click around inside a source, the bar and the address follow.

galileo starts nothing: a port source shows whatever already answers there. It listens on 127.0.0.1 only, and only ever reads files.

Quick start

Node 20 or later, and nothing to install:

npm start

Open http://localhost:4100/ and add a source on the Sources page: a name, and a port such as 5173 or a path such as ~/notes. Sources can also be given when galileo starts:

npm start -- --source web=5173 --source notes=~/notes

npm run demo starts a sample app and shows it, its folder of files, and this README as three sources.

Sources

• A port is an app on this machine, such as a dev server. galileo proxies it, WebSockets included, so hot reload keeps working. If nothing answers yet, the source shows a page that tries again every 2 seconds.
• Files are a folder or a single file. A folder shows its index.html, or else a listing; a single file shows itself alone. Text files open as readable pages with a Raw link, images, video, audio and PDFs in their own viewers, and HTML as it is. Hidden files (.env, .git) are never shown, nothing outside the source is ever served, and nothing is ever written.
• A source's name becomes its address, so it is lowercase letters, digits and dashes. galileo keeps the list in data/sources.json, so sources stay across restarts.

telescope

telescope is galileo's whole page: the bar along the top and the view under it, which is the Sources page or one source in a frame.

• The bar: galileo's mark (back to Sources), the source menu (ports and files, each with a dot for whether it is there), the path, reload, and open on its own.
• The router: telescope owns the address. /sources is the Sources page; /s/<name>/<path> is a source at a path. Back and Forward work across sources and inside them.
• The bridge: each page a source serves gets one small script appended, /__xo/bridge.js, which tells telescope where the page is whenever that changes. That's how the bar follows clicks inside a source.

How it works

1. Route by hostname. localhost:4100 is galileo's own: telescope and the sources API. acme.localhost:4100 is the source acme. A name nobody added gets a page listing the real ones, and never another source.
2. Proxy or read. A port source is proxied to its port; a files source is read from disk.
3. Frame. Every response from a source may be framed only by galileo (and by the source itself), so apps that refuse frames still show under the bar, and no other site can frame them.
4. Bridge. Each HTML page gets the bridge appended as it streams through, with its security policy loosened just enough for that one script.

docs/ARCHITECTURE.md follows a request through every part, with diagrams.

Settings

From the environment, or .env.local beside this README (see .example.env); what the shell sets wins.

The demo

npm run demo

Working on galileo

npm test        # node --test: sources, page rules, files, and galileo end to end

No dependencies and no build step: plain ESM JavaScript on Node's own modules, and plain scripts for telescope. The tests pass a glob to node --test, which needs Node 21 or later. AGENTS.md has the rules for changing galileo, and a map of where each part lives.

Docs

Limits

• Safari before macOS 26 can't resolve *.localhost.
• A page's bridge is blocked by a security policy set in a <meta> tag, since only headers are adjusted; the bar then doesn't follow that page.
• A link to another site opens in a tab of its own: the frame shows sources only.
• More in docs/REFERENCE.md.