web-edit
A Python web editing application developed by Simon Willison and published on PyPI, used to demonstrate performance profiling and visualization.
Timeline (last 90 days)
web-edit is a lightweight web application that runs in the browser for browsing and editing files in a folder.
0.1a2 is still an early alpha version and is not suitable as the sole editing entry point for important files.
web-edit is positioned as single-purpose, self-hostable access, oriented toward personal workflows, and does not provide collaboration, version control or a permission system.
The author runs pelican prompts on a laptop, accesses web-edit from a phone, and then copies the results to a Gist.
The core change in web-edit 0.1a2 is the addition of a "copy to clipboard" option that supports both text data and image data.
Simon Willison's main motivation for developing web-edit was to edit files across different machines via Tailscale.
The performance optimization code in web-edit 0.1a1 was written by Claude Opus 5.5.
Simon Willison released web-edit 0.1a1, and this version includes performance optimizations.
According to the information in PR #1, Claude Opus 5.5's optimization work was submitted in the form of a pull request.
web-edit is still at an early stage, and 0.1a1 means the first iteration on the alpha channel.
7 more timeline events
All Facts (13)
web-edit is a lightweight web application that runs in the browser for browsing and editing files in a folder.
50%Unverified0.1a2 is still an early alpha version and is not suitable as the sole editing entry point for important files.
50%Unverifiedweb-edit is positioned as single-purpose, self-hostable access, oriented toward personal workflows, and does not provide collaboration, version control or a permission system.
50%UnverifiedThe core change in web-edit 0.1a2 is the addition of a "copy to clipboard" option that supports both text data and image data.
50%UnverifiedSimon Willison's main motivation for developing web-edit was to edit files across different machines via Tailscale.
50%UnverifiedThe performance optimization code in web-edit 0.1a1 was written by Claude Opus 5.5.
50%Unverifiedweb-edit's file list page has a top-level title of WORKSPACE, contains three buttons—Refresh, Upload files, and New file—and its table lists Name/Size/Modified, with support for Download and Delete.
50%UnverifiedKeeping sensitive data outside the agent's view, replacing permission systems with network isolation, and translating mobile-first into concrete technical choices are three takeaways that can be learned from web-edit.
50%Unverifiedweb-edit displays images smaller than 2 MB inline, and selecting a text file enters editing.
50%Unverifiedweb-edit is designed to run inside a Tailscale network, so after the agent starts the service, users edit files directly from their phones via Tailscale, and credentials never pass through the model.
50%UnverifiedSimon Willison's motivation for developing web-edit was that when developing with an AI coding agent on his phone, he needed to edit credential files but did not want the credential contents to enter the LLM context.
50%UnverifiedThe author runs pelican prompts on a laptop, accesses web-edit from a phone, and then copies the results to a Gist.
50%UnverifiedSimon Willison released a tool called web-edit 0.1a0, a small tool that provides a Web UI within a folder for browsing, uploading, and editing files.
50%