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StackBlitz Blog
blog.stackblitz.com · Company blog · on HN since 2021
The StackBlitz company blog announces and explains WebContainers, which run Node.js in the browser, along with related web tooling news.
What HN saysHN links it for WebContainers announcements and technical posts on browser support, WebAssembly and sandboxing, mainly as background for the product.
36HN people shared it
14linked it in comments
28stories submitted
1.0Kstory points
2 years agolast shared
2021people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1WebContainers: Run Node.js natively in the browser17 people · 392 points · first shared 2021 · 230 comments on HN
- 2WebContainers can now run Node.js in Safari / iOS / iPadOS6 people · 16 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 3WebContainers are now supported in Firefox on desktop and Android2 people · 180 points · first shared 2022 · 127 comments on HN
- 4WebContainer API released for public use2 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 5What design systems teams can learn from open-source maintainers2 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 6Fragmented thinking is a bigger threat to flow state than interruptions1 people · 387 points · first shared 2024 · 163 comments on HN
- 7Shopify partners with StackBlitz to bring Hydrogen development in-browser1 people · 8 points · first shared 2021 · 2 comments on HN
- 8Chasing Memory Bugs through V8 and WebAssembly1 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 9Introducing: SQLite3 Support in WebContainers1 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 10What Is Storybook? An Overview for Developers1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 11Pkg.pr.new1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 12Unbundling the JavaScript Ecosystem1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 13Bringing Sharp to WebAssembly and WebContainers1 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 14Bolt 100K Open Source Fund1 people · 1 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 15Using wasi and WebContainers to run Python in a browser1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
adamddev1 · 2023-07-25
The announcement says that you can't use extensions that use node. I thought they might use WebContainers from StackBlitz to run node with this?
https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/webcontainer-api-is-here/
throwaway888abc · 2023-05-09
ericmsimons · 2023-02-16
> is it "ECMAScript API of new open source WASM-based POSIX-style browser OS"
This is closer to what the Bytecode Alliance is looking to do with WASI, which we're playing a small (but crucial) part in: https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/bytecode-alliance/
> Does "WebContainer API" mean "proprietary web service for accessing npm and git over http"?
Kinda, we have plans to allow self hosting and more reg open source- more to come!
jrvidal · 2022-07-28
hi HN, there's a companion technical post by yours truly which might be more appropriate/technically dense for your taste:
https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/supporting-firefox/
(I'm also sad that Multi-Account Containers are not a thing in Firefox for Android).
Disclaimer: I (obviously) work for StackBlitz.
benatkin · 2022-06-23
This is also sandboxed FWIW. It means users could write plugins in Python and have them run securely, much like browsers running JavaScript, and games that have Lua scripting.
https://webassembly.org/docs/security/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WebAssembly/comments/ryz2zz/are_wasm_binaries…
Deno also touts its permission system. It will be interesting to see if both get interesting use.
micropip is impressive. A lot of JavaScript dev still depends heavily on Node, to the point that only one browser-based build tool exists that can handle most projects and they're keeping it proprietary: https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/
nickcoury · 2022-04-15
Yes, there's at least one option for that now!
https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/
marwis · 2022-02-02
If you want Node in your browser, stackblitz has a super fast implementation. I think it's NodeJS compiled to Wasm but with V8 replaced by browser's native JS engine:
https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/
maltenuhn · 2022-02-01
Nice! How does this compare to Web Containers (https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/, proprietary to Stackblitz)?
sytse · 2022-01-05
This is made by StackBlitz (not really, see reply to this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29812650 ) who make a Cloud IDE that runs in the browser instead of a server. As for the why of that see https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/ "What about Code Spaces/Sandbox/Repls/...?
Legacy online IDEs run your entire dev environment on a remote server and stream the results back across the internet to your browser. The problem with this approach is that it yields few security benefits and provides a worse experience than your local machine in nearly every way: it takes minutes to spin up containers, is prone to network latency, cannot work offline, often results in network timeouts, debugging frozen/broken containers is nearly impossible, and hitting refresh just reconnects you to the broken container again."
themmes · 2022-01-05
I assume their goals are similar to the "WebContainers" project [0] they link to.
- development environment with a browser as only requirement
- easily shareable development environment
- fast to "boot" environment
However, as I read both pages I'm not sure what benefits Browser-vite offers over WebContainers.
[0] https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/
theturtletalks · 2021-08-11
Stackblitz Webcontainers[0] look promising too. I read the creators plan on open-sourcing the underlying tech once more mature.
0. https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/
dfabulich · 2021-06-15
This looks a LOT like StackBlitz WebContainers which were launched last month.
https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/
Is this using WebContainers? Or is it just very similar?
The HN discussion about StackBlitz focused on the problem that it would only work in Chrome… I assume that's true here as well? (Due to lack of the File System Access API?) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27223012
dangoor · 2021-06-08
> or maybe a kubernetes that runs in the browser and the circle of ironic self referencing will be complete
https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/