Local Launchpad

Local Launchpad is a lightweight developer tool designed to manage and orchestrate your local projects from a single centralized dashboard. It recursively scans your development directory for projects identified by a .launchpad configuration file and provides a modern web interface to start, stop, and access them.

Features

• Auto-Discovery: Recursively scans your workspace to find projects with a .launchpad configuration file.
• Centralized Control: specific Start and stop tasks/servers for any project from one dashboard.
• Real-time Feedback: View the running status and port usage of your applications.
• Web Dashboard: A modern, responsive UI built with React and Tailwind CSS.
• Quick Access: Open project applications directly in your browser.

Tech Stack

• Frontend: React (Vite), TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Lucide Icons.
• Backend: Node.js, Express, Socket.io (for real-time updates), Chokidar (file watching).
• Tooling: Concurrently (for running multiple services).

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v16+ recommended)
• npm

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd local-launchpad

2. Install dependencies for the root, server, and client:

   npm run install:all

Usage

Starting the Application

To run both the server and the client concurrently in development mode:

npm run dev

• Frontend: Accessible at http://localhost:5173 (default Vite port).
• Backend: Runs on http://localhost:3000 (or configured port).

Configuring Your Projects

To make a project visible to Local Launchpad, add a .launchpad file to the root of that project. This file can contain a single project configuration or an array of multiple configurations (useful for monorepos or multi-service projects).

Example .launchpad (Single project):

{
  "name": "My app",
  "port": 4200,
  "startCommand": "npm run start:my-app",
  "color": "blue",
  "category": "Web Applications"
}

Example .launchpad (Multiple projects):

[
  {
    "name": "Frontend",
    "port": 3000,
    "startCommand": "npm run dev",
    "category": "Project X"
  },
  {
    "name": "Backend",
    "port": 4000,
    "startCommand": "npm run server",
    "category": "Project X"
  }
]

Field	Description	Type
name	Display name of the project.	string
port	The port the application runs on (used for linking and status checks).	number
startCommand	The command to start the application (e.g., npm start).	string
color	Visual accent color for the project card (e.g., blue, red).	string
category	Optional category to group multiple launchers together.	string

Root configuration

Launchpad reads a root config file launchpad.config.json at the repository root to determine where to scan for projects.

• projectsRoot: Path (relative to this repo) where Launchpad will recursively search for projects containing a .launchpad file.

Example launchpad.config.json:

{
  "projectsRoot": "../"
}

If you keep your projects outside this repository, set projectsRoot accordingly (e.g., "../" to look one level up, or a specific subfolder like "../workspace").

Project Structure

local-launchpad/
├── client/           # React frontend application
├── server/           # Node.js/Express backend
├── scripts/          # Helper scripts
├── package.json      # Root configuration and workspaces scripts
├── project.md        # Project goals and core logic documentation
└── README.md         # Project documentation

Development

• Server: Located in server/. Run npm run dev inside this folder to start the backend with nodemon.
• Client: Located in client/. Run npm run dev inside this folder to start the Vite dev server.