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There are two ways to publish a mini app: web publishing (install nothing; good for small changes and a first try) and the CLI (write code locally, hot-reload, view logs; recommended).

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Option A: web publishing

1

Open the author center

Visit www.nodeloc.com/apps/authoring.
2

Create a mini app

Click “New app” and fill in a name and slug (lowercase letters, digits, hyphens).
3

Paste your code

Paste your handler code into the editor and check the permissions you need.
4

Submit for review

Wait for an admin to review. Once approved, place the mini app into a topic from its detail page — see Review and publishing.

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Installation

Requires Node.js 22 or later. The CLI is not yet published to the npm registry, so install it from source:

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Logging in

The terminal prints a verification code and a link. Open the link in your browser, check that the code on the page matches the one in your terminal (if it doesn’t, close the page — that approval request wasn’t initiated by you), click “Approve”, and the terminal receives credentials automatically. Credentials are stored in ~/.config/nodeloc-apps/credentials.json, readable only by you. This key can only publish your own mini apps — it can’t do anything else on the site. Running login again immediately invalidates the previous key.
CI or machines without a browser: click “Generate key” on the author page and use environment variables instead (they take precedence over credentials saved by login):

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Initialize a project

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Development loop

  • dev inlines relative imports into a single module and catches patterns the server would definitely reject (missing render export, eval, node: built-ins, browser globals, fetch).
  • The playtest installation is visible only to you, needs no review, and can be experimented with freely. It watches .js changes under src/, re-pushes on save, and the page refreshes automatically.
  • logs prints the handler, result, duration, and error code for each invocation:

Next: configure app.json

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