dev-serve

What This Skill Does

The dev-serve skill provides a streamlined, one-command workflow for hosting development servers locally while making them immediately accessible via public-facing, TLS-secured wildcard subdomains. It abstracts away the complexity of managing background tmux processes, configuring reverse proxies, and handling SSL certificates. By mapping your local project folder to <project>.YOUR_DOMAIN automatically, it allows developers to test web applications in an environment that mimics production HTTPS, rather than relying on standard localhost ports. The skill handles the entire lifecycle: it auto-detects common frameworks like Vite, Next.js, and Nuxt, patches configuration files for host headers, manages the tmux session, updates the Caddy configuration via the Admin API without requiring restarts, and verifies service availability.

Installation

1. Copy the script: cp scripts/dev-serve.sh ~/.local/bin/dev-serve
2. Grant permissions: chmod +x ~/.local/bin/dev-serve
3. Configure your domain by setting the DEV_SERVE_DOMAIN environment variable in your shell profile (e.g., export DEV_SERVE_DOMAIN=dev.example.com).
4. Ensure tmux, jq, curl, and a Caddy instance with wildcard DNS/TLS support are installed and running.

Use Cases

• Client Demos: Quickly share a live, secure link to a feature branch with stakeholders without deploying to a staging server.
• Mobile Testing: Access your local development server from mobile devices connected to the same network via a real URL.
• Multi-Service Development: Run multiple web applications simultaneously on different subdomains with separate persistent tmux sessions.
• Environment Parity: Ensure your application behaves correctly under HTTPS and specific domain headers during the local coding phase.

Example Prompts

1. "Start a dev server for the project in my ~/projects/dashboard folder and give me the public link."
2. "Check which dev servers are currently running and stop the one named 'old-app'."
3. "Launch the current project on port 5500 using the 'yarn dev' command."

Tips & Limitations

• Port Allocation: The skill defaults to the 5200+ range. If you have services using these ports manually, you may encounter conflicts.
• Vite Configuration: While the skill attempts to auto-patch Vite's allowedHosts, complex configuration files might require manual adjustments if the script cannot parse them correctly.
• Persistence: Because the server runs in a named tmux session (dev-<name>), you can attach to the session manually if you need to debug the server output directly.