loopwork: The AI proposes, you decide — a local coding workshop inside the chat

German Peña — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 21:21:15 +0000

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady

What I Built

loopwork is a local workshop for files and code that lives inside the chat of DeepSeek, ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. The AI never touches your disk: it only receives what you explicitly share, and its answers arrive as a diff you review, approve or reject.

Virtual disk (OPFS) or a real folder on your PC, with full ZIP export.
Editor with highlighting, search/replace, live HTML preview, and a mandatory diff before saving.
Local Git with buttons or commands (init, add, commit, diff, branch, checkout, restore).
Per-file checkpoints before any destructive operation, plus recovery after interrupted browser closes.
Bash-style project commands: mkdir -p app/{src,docs}, touch, tree, mktree.
Multi-step undo/redo that survives page reloads.

Who gets to be lazier? Anyone who codes with an AI chat and is tired of copy-pasting blocks by hand. With loopwork: share a file → the AI replies with a dv block → click Review patch → click Apply. A checkpoint is created and the SHA256 is verified before writing. If the file changed since the AI saw it, the proposal is rejected. Zero copy-paste, zero silent changes.

Demo

Live page with screenshots and GIFs: https://germanpet-svg.github.io/loopwork/
Full user manual (step by step, 16 sections, command reference): https://germanpet-svg.github.io/loopwork/manual.md

The page runs inside a real chat (Gemini, in the screenshot there) and walks through the full cycle: share → propose → review → apply → run → commit.

Code

germanpet-svg / loopwork

Entorno de edición y versionado 100% local en el navegador. Edita archivos, ejecuta código y colabora con IA sin subir nada a ningún servidor. OPFS + Git + WebAssembly.

loopwork

Taller local de archivos y código asistido por IA dentro de DeepSeek, ChatGPT, Gemini y Claude. Userscript basado en OPFS y Git: la IA propone, el usuario revisa y aprueba.

Versión actual: 1.15.0. 135 pruebas Node más una suite nueva en tests/ (121 pruebas: traducciones, análisis de código y e2e en Chromium) Es un prototipo funcional, no un IDE completo ni un sistema de respaldo externo.

Documentación: Manual del usuario (paso a paso) · Roadmap (estado y pendientes) · Portada del proyecto.

En 60 segundos

Instala Tampermonkey y pega loopwork.js en un script nuevo.
Abre DeepSeek (o ChatGPT / Gemini / Claude, experimentales): aparece el panel flotante.
Nuevo archivo… → pega tu código → Compartir archivo… → pide un cambio.
En la respuesta pulsa Revisar parche en DV, mira el diff y Aplicar cambios.
Ejecutar para probar y Guardar cambios en Git para versionar.

Todo…

View on GitHub

The complete userscript is in loopwork.js. The extension/ folder contains the Chrome extension variant.

How I Built It

loopwork is a userscript (~11k lines of plain JavaScript, no build) injected into four chat sites via Tampermonkey, plus an equivalent Chromium extension.

Three layers:

Storage: OPFS or the File System Access API. Same FileSystemDirectoryHandle interface for both.
Atomic writes: each write goes to .dv_tmp/<uuid>.tmp, verifies SHA256, logs PREPARED to .dv/journal.jsonl, writes the target, verifies, logs COMMITTED, then deletes the temporary file. On startup, recoverTransactions() completes, reverts, or saves the approved version aside.
Isolated UI: a panel in a closed shadowRoot, with a capture-phase keyboard guard so ChatGPT doesn't steal focus into its composer.

Open AI at the core:

DeepSeek and GitHub Copilot collaborated as AI tools on ideas, code, docs and tests. No sponsorship or affiliation implied.
The dv protocol is an open JSON (path, hash, operation, old, new, optional patch or changes[]). Any LLM can emit it; any client can consume it.
The SHA256 verified before applying is what makes it possible to trust an LLM without a closed API: I don't need the model to be deterministic, only for its proposal to be tied to an exact file version.

No server: the only network requests are isomorphic-git and diff from jsDelivr at install (or bundled in the extension).

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

loopwork could not exist as a closed API:

The disk is yours. OPFS and File System Access need no backend. A closed service would have to custody your files in its cloud.
The protocol is open and documented. Anyone can write a client that speaks dv, or a model that emits it. If a provider disappears, the format keeps working.
The SHA256 hash is the guarantee. I trust the model because every proposal is tied to an exact hash of the file it saw — not because the provider promises determinism.
The AI doesn't touch the disk. The design makes silent changes impossible, even if the model tries.
Open distribution. An 11k-line userscript fits in one file, can be audited, and can be forked.

The live page shows loopwork running inside Gemini, with nothing installed outside the browser: same userscript, same protocol, same editor and same local Git as in DeepSeek, ChatGPT or Claude. The same client talks to any LLM because the contract (hash + diff + approval) does not depend on the provider.

The Lazy Payoff

Copy-pasting code: ~15–20 times per session × ~10 s = ~3 min/session, and hours per month.
Reviewing what the AI changed: a 2–3 s read of the patch instead of re-reading the whole file. ~10× faster.
Recovering a broken file: one !restore instead of going back to a commit or losing work.
Mid-save browser closes: recoverTransactions() decides on startup. Zero broken files in daily use.

Did I use it this week? Yes — it's my daily tool for writing loopwork itself: the 11k lines have been edited, versioned and tested inside loopwork, with DeepSeek and Copilot emitting dv proposals I review with the editor. Pure dogfooding.

Prize Categories

Best Use of an Open-Weight Model — dv is model-agnostic; tested with DeepSeek and Copilot.
Best Developer Tool — mandatory diff + checkpoints are the heart.
Most Innovative Use of AI — SHA256 as a verifiable contract between LLM and disk.
Best Use of Open Source — isomorphic-git, diff, native Compression/Decompression Streams.

Thanks for reading. If it's useful, leave a comment or open an issue on the repo.

DEV Community: German Peña