A live visual surface for terminal coding agents, Sideshow bridges the gap between text-based agent output and human comprehension. It enables agents to publish dynamic content like UI mockups, data visualizations, code diffs, and diagrams directly to a browser viewer, enhancing understanding and reducing the need for verbose textual descriptions. This significantly benefits developers and researchers interacting with AI agents by providing immediate visual feedback, improving efficiency, and lowering token costs associated with generating rich content.

How It Works

Sideshow functions as a small Node.js server that agents can interact with. Agents publish "surfaces," which are ordered lists of "parts" (e.g., HTML fragments, Markdown, code diffs, Mermaid diagrams, JSON, images). The Sideshow viewer, running in a browser, receives this content data and renders it using its own theme and components. This approach drastically reduces token usage compared to standalone HTML documents, as only the content, not the entire design system, is transmitted.

Quick Start & Requirements

Requires Node.js 22.18 or newer. Install dependencies: npm install Serve the viewer and connect agents: npx sideshow serve --open The viewer will be available at http://localhost:8228. To integrate with an agent, paste the provided setup block (e.g., curl -s http://localhost:8228/setup >> AGENTS.md) into its instructions. A demo session is available via npx sideshow demo. Further integration details are in docs/connecting-agents.md and deployment options in docs/deploying.md.

Highlighted Details

• Supports diverse surface parts: HTML, Markdown, Diff, Terminal (alpha), Trace, Image, Mermaid, JSON, and Code.
• Achieves significant token savings (42-90%) by separating content from presentation, making agent output more efficient.
• Can be deployed locally or as a Cloudflare Worker for distributed agent/viewer setups.
• Offers an "open-as-image" feature to render surfaces as PNGs, though this requires a Workers deployment and Cloudflare's Browser Rendering binding.

Maintenance & Community

The project is sponsored by Modem. Detailed architecture and contributor information can be found in AGENTS.md. No specific community links (like Discord/Slack) were found in the provided README snippet.

Licensing & Compatibility

Licensed under the MIT license, which is permissive for commercial use and integration into closed-source projects.

Limitations & Caveats

The Terminal surface is currently in alpha with unstable APIs. The image export functionality is limited to Cloudflare Workers deployments due to its reliance on a headless browser environment; it is disabled on the local Node.js server.