mini-ide

A lightweight, web-based IDE designed for easy deployment on a VPS or Railway. Provides a full development environment accessible from any browser — file management, code editing with syntax highlighting, multiple terminal sessions, and integrated AI coding agents.

Features

• File Explorer — Grid and tree views with breadcrumb navigation, upload, rename, delete, and context menus
• Code Editor — CodeMirror 6 with syntax highlighting for JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, HTML, CSS, JSON, Markdown, and more. Ctrl+S to save
• Multi-Terminal — Multiple persistent terminal sessions with tabs. Sessions survive tab switching
• AI Agents — One-click launch for Claude Code and OpenAI Codex directly in the terminal
• Browser Preview — Built-in iframe browser for previewing web apps
• Theming — Customizable color scheme with live preview
• Branding — Custom instance name and icon (shows in browser tab and PWA)
• PWA — Installable as a Progressive Web App
• Authentication — Token-based auth with configurable credentials

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React 18, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind CSS
Editor	CodeMirror 6 (modular, lazy-loaded language support)
Terminal	xterm.js + node-pty via WebSocket
Backend	Express.js, TypeScript
Deployment	Docker, Node 20

Quick Start

Local Development

# Install dependencies
npm install
cd client && npm install && cd ..

# Run dev server (backend + frontend with hot reload)
npm run dev

The app will be available at http://localhost:5173 (Vite proxy forwards API calls to the backend on port 3000).

Default credentials: admin / admin

Docker

docker build -t mini-ide .
docker run -p 3000:3000 -v mini-ide-data:/data mini-ide

Railway

1. Connect your repo to Railway
2. Add a volume mounted at /data for persistent storage
3. Set environment variables as needed (see below)

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
AUTH_USERNAME	admin	Login username
AUTH_PASSWORD	admin	Login password
DATA_DIR	/data	Directory for user files (mount a volume here)
PORT	3000	Server port
SHELL	/bin/bash	Shell used for terminal sessions
GITHUB_TOKEN	—	Auto-login to GitHub CLI on container start
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	—	Required for Claude Code
OPENAI_API_KEY	—	Required for OpenAI Codex

Project Structure

mini-ide/
├── client/                 # React frontend
│   └── src/
│       ├── components/     # UI components
│       │   ├── FileExplorer.tsx      # File browser (grid + tree)
│       │   ├── FileTreeView.tsx      # Tree view with collapsible dirs
│       │   ├── CodeEditor.tsx        # CodeMirror 6 editor
│       │   ├── EditorTabs.tsx        # Editor tab bar
│       │   ├── Terminal.tsx          # Multi-session terminal
│       │   ├── FilePreviewModal.tsx  # Image/file preview modal
│       │   ├── PreviewWindow.tsx     # Browser iframe
│       │   ├── ThemeCustomizer.tsx   # Theme editor
│       │   ├── LoginScreen.tsx       # Auth screen
│       │   └── ContextMenu.tsx       # Right-click menu
│       ├── hooks/          # Custom React hooks
│       ├── utils/          # Shared utilities
│       ├── App.tsx         # Main layout
│       └── theme.ts        # Theme system
├── server/                 # Express backend
│   ├── index.ts            # Server entry, routing, WebSocket
│   ├── filesystem.ts       # File I/O API (/api/fs/*)
│   ├── terminal.ts         # PTY spawning + WebSocket handler
│   ├── auth.ts             # Authentication
│   └── branding.ts         # Instance customization
├── Dockerfile
├── docker-entrypoint.sh
└── package.json

Pre-installed Tools (Docker)

The Docker image includes:

• Node.js 20 — JavaScript runtime
• Git — Version control
• GitHub CLI (gh) — GitHub operations from the terminal
• Claude Code — Anthropic's AI coding agent
• OpenAI Codex — OpenAI's AI coding agent
• vim, nano — Terminal text editors
• curl, wget — HTTP clients
• build-essential, python3 — Build tools

License

Private — Verne Studios