Adrenaline.js

Ship only what you use. Eliminate everything else. The ultra-lightweight Electron alternative.

Adrenaline.js is an ultra-lightweight, high-performance desktop application framework for Node.js developers. By decoupling your app from Chromium bloat and offering both native OS webviews and a pruned, modular Chromium (CEF) engine, Adrenaline delivers blazing-fast desktop applications with tiny bundle sizes and minimal memory footprint.

"Why not Tauri? Tauri is brilliant, but writing backend logic shouldn't require learning Rust and fighting the borrow checker. Adrenaline gives you the same lightweight native webviews using 100% Node.js and the full npm ecosystem you already know."

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⚡ Key Features

• Dual-Engine Architecture (WebView & Pruned CEF): Choose between an ultra-lightweight system webview (~5-10MB) or a 100% consistent, de-googled Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) engine with compile-time physical bloat stripping.
• Zero Rust / Go Barrier: Built 100% for JavaScript and Node.js developers. Use your favorite npm packages natively without bridging or learning a new language.
• Drop-in Electron-Compatible API: Zero learning curve. Code with familiar abstractions including app, BrowserWindow, ipcMain, and native dialog.
• Native OS Dialogs Module: Non-blocking platform file pickers, save dialogs, and message boxes (dialog.showOpenDialog, dialog.showSaveDialog, showMessageBox) powered by native Win32, Cocoa, and GTK.
• Modular Stripping Engine (adrenaline.config.js): Physical compile-time tree-shaking purges unused components (PDF, WebRTC, DevTools, redundant locales) directly from the disk bundle.
• Zero-Telemetry by Default: Curated ungoogled-chromium optimization flags enforce low-memory device caching, disable background networking pings, and block WebRTC IP leaks.
• Full TypeScript & Dual ESM/CJS Support: First-class TypeScript declarations (index.d.ts) alongside simultaneous support for import (ESM) and require (CommonJS).
• Sub-Millisecond Multithreaded IPC: Direct non-blocking communication between the frontend and the Node.js event loop using Napi::ThreadSafeFunction (TSFN).
• Built-in CLI & Scaffolder: Rapid project bootstrapping with npx adrenaline-js init and adrenaline dev.

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🚀 Quickstart Guide

Scaffold and launch a new project in seconds:

# 1. Scaffold a modern starter project
npx adrenaline-js init my-app

# 2. Navigate to your project folder
cd my-app

# 3. Install dependencies
npm install

# 4. Launch your desktop app!
npx adrenaline dev

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👑 The Royal Rumble — 5-Way Runtime Showdown

An empirical, headless benchmark (xvfb-run -a) running five JavaScript desktop runtimes through an identical heavy workload for 30 seconds each: 10,000-record virtualized DOM mutations, 100 JSON IPC packets/sec, and 2 concurrent SHA-256 CPU worker threads.

Master Comparison Matrix

Metric	Electron (v45)	NW.js	Neutralinojs	Adrenaline (WebView)	Adrenaline (CEF)	Winner 🏆
Startup to First Paint	394 ms	567 ms	530 ms	509 ms	382 ms	Adrenaline (CEF) 🥇
Peak Stress Memory (PSS)	717.3 MB	924.6 MB	486.4 MB	496.8 MB	439.4 MB	Adrenaline (CEF) 🥇
Peak Private Memory	565.1 MB	732.7 MB	344.2 MB	346.3 MB	356.6 MB	Neutralinojs
Total Shipped Payload	273.8 MB	510.8 MB	123.6 MB	121.1 MB	620.0 MB	Adrenaline (WebView) 🥇
Process Count (Task Manager)	11 procs	14 procs	10 procs	8 procs	6 procs	Adrenaline (CEF) 🥇
Real Node.js / npm Support	Yes	Yes	No (custom)	Yes	Yes	—

Key Takeaway: Adrenaline (CEF) held the lowest memory under peak stress (-38.7% vs Electron, saving 278 MB RAM) and achieved the fastest cold startup, while Adrenaline (WebView) shipped the smallest uncompressed distribution payload.

Full methodology, raw 350KB profiler trace, and process-by-process breakdowns available in benchmarks/ROYAL_RUMBLE_SHOWDOWN.md.

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⚙️ Configuration & Module Stripping (adrenaline.config.js)

Adrenaline allows developers to physically eliminate unused features from the final distribution:

// adrenaline.config.js
module.exports = {
  engine: 'cef', // 'webview' (lightweight) or 'cef' (Chromium)
  modules: {
    devtools: false,   // Physically deletes devtools resource paks
    webrtc: false,     // Clamps down WebRTC & prevents IP leaks
    pdf: false,        // Strips PDF support
    cleanPrivacy: true // Injects aggressive low-end device & ungoogled flags
  }
};

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💻 Code Example

Main Process (main.js)

const { app, BrowserWindow, ipcMain, dialog } = require('adrenaline-js');
const path = require('path');

app.whenReady().then(() => {
    const win = new BrowserWindow({
        width: 800,
        height: 600,
        title: 'My Adrenaline App',
        resizable: true
    });

    win.loadFile(path.join(__dirname, 'index.html'));

    ipcMain.on('open-file-dialog', async (event) => {
        const result = await dialog.showOpenDialog({
            title: 'Select a document',
            filters: [{ name: 'Documents', extensions: ['txt', 'md', 'json'] }]
        });
        
        if (!result.canceled) {
            win.webContents.send('selected-file', result.filePaths[0]);
        }
    });
});

Renderer Process (index.html)

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>My Adrenaline App</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Hello Adrenaline.js! ⚡</h1>
    <button onclick="pickFile()">Choose File</button>
    <p id="path-display">No file selected.</p>

    <script>
        function pickFile() {
            window.adrenaline.send('open-file-dialog', {});
        }

        window.adrenaline.on('selected-file', (filePath) => {
            document.getElementById('path-display').innerText = filePath;
        });
    </script>
</body>
</html>

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🛠️ CLI Commands

Adrenaline comes with a built-in CLI tool for seamless developer experience:

• adrenaline init <project-name>: Scaffold a modern starter project with pre-configured IPC.
• adrenaline dev / adrenaline start: Run the desktop application in the current directory.
• adrenaline --version / -v: Display current CLI version.
• adrenaline --help / -h: Display help options and usage flags.

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.