LoomWeaver documentation
LoomWeaver is a domain-agnostic plugin & UI platform. Products (“weavers”) are built as thin
distributions that consume the published @loom/* npm packages — you never need this repository
to build one. The platform is frontend-only; your product brings its own backend.
Pick your path
| You want to… | Start here |
|---|---|
| See it running first | the live demo at demo.loomweaver.dev — being rebuilt, so it is thin for now |
| Try it in five minutes | Getting started — scaffold a running, branded product |
| Understand how it works | Architecture — platform / weaver / distribution, the uniform ctx |
| Build a plugin (a “weaver”) | Authoring a weaver, with copyable recipes in Samples |
| Compose and brand a product | Building a distribution |
| Use Bootstrap or your own CSS framework | Manual setup → bring your own CSS framework |
| Wire your own backend | Backend integration |
| Look something up | the reference pages below |
Guides
- Architecture — the mental model: platform / weaver / distribution, the uniform
ctx, default-deny capabilities, auth-aware access gating, the three RPC boundaries. Read this first. - Getting started — scaffold a running, branded product with a plugin in it (~5 min).
- Manual setup — the same app wired by hand, plus the Nx, SSR and Module Federation answers (~15 min).
- Samples — complete, copyable recipes: a sidebar view with persisted state, a routable surface, a command with its triggers, a settings section, access gating, dialogs.
- Authoring a weaver — build UI: views, commands, access gating, dialogs, settings, i18n.
- Building a distribution — compose weavers into a branded product.
- The plugin system — the three rungs (trusted, sandboxed, community-installed), default-deny capabilities, and what the user can revoke, disable or uninstall.
- Scaffolding — generate weavers, distributions and integrations with the
@loom/clicommand line, the@loom/devkitNx generators or the@loom/mcpserver for AI assistants, all in your own repository. - Backend integration — the product hand-off: settings, session and translations against your own backend. The platform ships no server.
Reference
- Shell anatomy — the region vocabulary (rail / panel / bar / content) and docks a distribution declares.
- Host services — the runtime services a distribution may inject: dialogs, toasts, settings, commands, session, tabs, updates, sync.
- Access gating — the complete
accessreference: what gates where, identity changes, and why client-side gating is not a security boundary. - Design tokens &
<lw-*>vocabulary — the semantic tokens and host UI building blocks to use in templates (never raw palette colors). - Accessibility — the WCAG 2.1 AA guardrail the host meets and weavers inherit.
The per-symbol reference is the packages themselves: @loom/plugin-sdk and @loom/shell ship typed
declarations with JSDoc on every public member, which your editor shows in place. The pages above
cover the concepts; a repository check verifies that no published export is missing from them.
For AI assistants
../llms.txt (curated map) and ../llms-full.txt (the full set,
inlined) let an assistant ingest everything needed to build a distribution.