Verifying the desktop app over CDP

How a change is checked in the installed Electron build rather than a dev server: build, install, launch with the DevTools protocol open, then drive the renderer from a Node script. No device or hand-testing needed.

1. Build and install

From apps/desktop (Git Bash; ~5 min, so run it in the background and poll the log — a foreground sleep is not allowed in the agent shell):

(node scripts/build.mjs && node scripts/build-web.mjs && npx electron-builder --win nsis --arm64; echo "exit=$?") > .scratch/build.out 2>&1 &

Before installing, prove the bundle carries the change:

grep -rl "<some unique string from the change>" apps/desktop/dist/web/_next/static/chunks

Then quit the running app and install silently:

taskkill //F //IM WeaveForge.exe
powershell -NoProfile -Command "Start-Process 'release\WeaveForge Setup 0.6.0.exe' -ArgumentList '/S' -Wait"

git status after a build: build-web.mjs must not have deleted route files.

2. Launch with the debug port

"$LOCALAPPDATA/Programs/WeaveForge/WeaveForge.exe" --remote-debugging-port=9222 &

http://127.0.0.1:9222/json then lists the renderer targets; the one with type === "page" is the app window.

3. Drive it from Node

A ~15-line helper is enough (Node 22 has WebSocket and fetch built in):

// cdp.mjs
import { writeFileSync } from "node:fs";
const list = await (await fetch("http://127.0.0.1:9222/json")).json();
const page = list.find((p) => p.type === "page");
const ws = new WebSocket(page.webSocketDebuggerUrl);
await new Promise((r) => ws.addEventListener("open", r));
let id = 0;
const pending = new Map();
ws.addEventListener("message", (ev) => {
  const d = JSON.parse(ev.data);
  if (d.id && pending.has(d.id)) { pending.get(d.id)(d); pending.delete(d.id); }
});
export const send = (method, params = {}) =>
  new Promise((r) => { const i = ++id; pending.set(i, r); ws.send(JSON.stringify({ id: i, method, params })); });
export const run = async (expr) => {
  const r = await send("Runtime.evaluate", { expression: expr, awaitPromise: true, returnByValue: true });
  if (r.result.exceptionDetails) throw new Error(r.result.exceptionDetails.exception?.description ?? "eval failed");
  return r.result.result.value;
};
export const shot = async (file) => {
  const r = await send("Page.captureScreenshot", { format: "png" });
  writeFileSync(file, Buffer.from(r.result.data, "base64"));
};
export const close = () => ws.close();

A check script imports it and asserts on what the page reports:

import { run, shot, close } from "./cdp.mjs";
await run(`location.href = "app://weaveforge/reader/?paper=<id>&pen=1"`);
await run(`new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 3000))`);
console.log(await run(String.raw`[...document.querySelectorAll(".pdf-reader-ref-link")].map(a => a.textContent)`));
await shot("reader.png");
close();

Conventions that save time:

• Wrap run() bodies in String.raw so regexes and backslashes survive.
• Navigate with location.href = "app://weaveforge/<route>/?..."; the app is a static export, so routes end in /.
• Offline, the reader shows a "Load PDF…" button — click it first (document.querySelector('button') by text), then wait for .pdf-reader-page.
• Drags (pen strokes, region select) go through Input.dispatchMouseEvent — mousePressed, mouseMoved with buttons: 1, mouseReleased — in CSS pixels. Synthetic PointerEvents cannot setPointerCapture, so they do not work.
• Keyboard: Input.dispatchKeyEvent with modifiers: 2 for Ctrl.
• Screenshots come back at the window's DPR (1.25× here: 1426×838 inner).
• Local DB from the page: window.weaveforge.queryLocalDb(sql, params).
• React state when the DOM does not say enough: walk __reactFiber$* up from a node to the component's memoizedProps.
• Console noise to ignore: two Uncaught (in promise) from the collab provider's destroy() when leaving Edit mode offline.

4. Report with evidence

Paste the numbers the script printed (link texts found, annotation counts before and after undo, …) and the screenshot. A claim without them is a guess; the build is there so that it need not be.