meet catweb: a browser for windows (with a cat)

Cole — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 22:49:40 +0000

so i have a browser now. it's called catweb, a pixel cat named tuft lives on the new tab page.

download: https://yupthatscole.github.io/catweb-releases/

what it is
catweb is a windows browser written in rust.

websites run on webview2, the same engine microsoft edge uses, so most sites just work. catweb draws everything around the page itself: tabs, address bar, menus, settings, downloads, and tuft.

there's also catweb native, a from-scratch rendering engine. it's an experimental side project, and tabs using it get an "Experimental" label. don't sign in to anything in those.

what it does
built-in ad and tracker blocking (easylist), toggle per site
tries https first, strips tracking junk from links
private tabs that forget everything when closed
tabs in the title bar, drag to reorder, reopen closed tabs (ctrl+shift+t)
address bar suggestions, bookmarks bar, history, downloads panel
imports your chrome bookmarks and history
themes and accent colors (default is "lavender soft")
updates itself and checks a signature before installing anything
silly settings, off by default. yes, the switches meow.
privacy
no accounts, no analytics, no telemetry. on its own, catweb only talks to:

github, once a day, to check for updates (can be turned off)
sites you visit, to grab their icons (never in private tabs)
microsoft smartscreen, for dangerous sites and downloads (on by default, can be turned off)
history and bookmarks stay on your pc. catweb doesn't save passwords.

it hasn't had an outside security audit, so i wouldn't use it for banking yet.

the smartscreen thing
catweb isn't code-signed (that costs money every year), so windows will warn you. click "More info", then "Run anyway".

if you want to check it first:

virustotal: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/ea48b93c00d2345afdcbc42327ce868ffac0f0fcb33bd4c1df12320d2c864cec/detection
every release has a sha-256 checksum next to the download

what's next
a vpn/proxy option someday, making catweb native good enough for real sites.

bugs
found one? open an issue at https://github.com/yupthatscole/catweb-releases/issues and say what you did and what happened.

meow 🐈

I built a little social site with zero npm dependencies (and a cat runs it)

Cole — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 21:56:35 +0000

I've been building catcloud, a small corner of the internet where everyone gets their own page to decorate, kind of like old GeoCities/MySpace pages. It's run by Tuft, a purple pixel cat who is officially the CEO. He writes memos.

You get a page at catcloud.party/@yourname that you can paint however you want: colors, layouts, pictures, or raw HTML/CSS. There are guestbooks, a mini pixel cat on every page that visitors can pet and feed, trading cards, a small arcade, and a live hangout room where everyone's mini cats walk around together.

Here's how it's built, because a few parts were fun to figure out.

Zero dependencies
The whole thing runs on plain Node 22: node:http for the server and the built-in node:sqlite for the database. There's nothing in node_modules, no framework, and no build step. The frontend is plain JavaScript too.

Hosting it for free
It runs on the Cloudflare Workers free plan. The whole app lives inside one SQLite-backed Durable Object, so it's still "one server with one database", just on someone else's computer. The same code also runs on a normal PC with npm start.

Letting people write raw HTML safely
People can put their own HTML and CSS on their page. To make that safe, each page renders inside a sandboxed iframe with a strict Content-Security-Policy and no scripts allowed. That way someone's page can look however they want, but it can't run code or touch anyone's account.

Pixel art without image editors
Most of the art (game sprites, furniture, cat clothes) is drawn as little text grids in JavaScript, where each letter is a color. The browser turns them into outlined pixel sprites at 4x. It's a lot easier to tweak a hat when the hat is a string.

Games that are hard to cheat
The arcade pays out coins, so people would want to cheat it. The server picks every round from a seed, then re-checks the results when you finish: it replays the round and checks that you didn't move faster than the game allows. If the numbers don't add up, no coins.

A live room on a free plan
The hangout room uses Server-Sent Events. To keep traffic tiny, the cats' walking paths come from a shared seed, so the server only sends "this cat did something" events, never positions. Every browser works out where each cat is on its own.

Try it
It's free and still new, so it's pretty quiet right now. If you make a page, drop your link in the comments and I'll sign your guestbook. I'd love feedback on what's confusing or broken!

👉 https://catcloud.party

DEV Community: Cole

meet catweb: a browser for windows (with a cat)

I built a little social site with zero npm dependencies (and a cat runs it)