Live Server

Visual Studio Code is a free, open-source Microsoft-developed source-code editor and development environment for Windows, macOS, Linux, and the web, built from the Code - OSS repository. It supports code editing, navigation, code understanding, lightweight debugging, integration with existing development tools, and extensibility through extensions. It provides an environment for building with AI agents that plan, modify, and debug code, managing multi-agent workflows, hosting AI coding plugins such as Claude Code, and running workflows such as Spec Kit commands.

Sandpack is a React component toolkit for embedding live-running code editing and preview experiences in web applications. It runs JavaScript and Node.js applications in the browser and can be used for interactive documentation, coding environments, low-code tools, generated website previews, and embedded playgrounds. Sandpack provides templates containing project files and dependencies, custom setup for changing dependencies or file structure, configurable built-in components, themes, and composable components and hooks for custom interfaces. It uses CodeMirror for editor functionality, supports npm dependencies, hot module reloading, error overlays, caching, and Node.js execution through its Nodebox runtime. The Sandpack Client package exposes a framework-agnostic bundler protocol, and the toolkit supports frameworks including Next.js, Remix, Vite, and Astro.

Vite is frontend tooling for modern web projects, developed in the vitejs organization. It combines a development server that extends native ES modules with fast Hot Module Replacement and a build command that bundles code with Rolldown into optimized static assets for production. It provides a JavaScript and plugin API with full typing support, and is distributed under the MIT license.

Portless is a command-line development proxy that replaces numbered localhost ports with stable, named local URLs such as https://myapp.localhost. It runs an application command, assigns the child process an available port through the PORT environment variable, registers the app with an HTTP/2 HTTPS proxy, and routes requests from the named hostname to that process. It can infer and run package.json development scripts, inject port and host flags for frameworks that do not honor PORT, manage multiple workspace packages, and register aliases or subdomains. The proxy supports custom TLDs, local certificate generation and trust, WebSockets, LAN access through mDNS, startup services, and optional sharing through Tailscale or ngrok. Portless is distributed as an npm package for macOS, Linux, and Windows and is pre-1.0.

Airship is a command-line visual editor for existing web applications, developed by Airship Labs. It runs as a reverse proxy in front of a development server and presents the application on an infinite canvas or in an inline editor, with live frames for different device sizes. Developers can select an element, describe a change, review the resulting diff, and have Claude Code, Codex, or OpenCode update the source file that rendered it; changes can also be undone. It works with applications serving HTML over HTTP, including Vite, Next, Remix, and Rails, without plugins, configuration changes, or additions to the project's dependencies or bundle. The CLI can connect to an existing server or start it with a command, and the README states that operation stays on the local machine without an account, telemetry, or separate hosted service.