Alline Dev

Build Alline Mini Apps without leaving your editor — and keep Alline itself one click away while you do.

What you get

Alline Chat, in the sidebar

The full Alline client runs in the panel: conversations, contacts, communities, settings, Mini Apps. It is the real web client, not a cut-down copy, so it stays current on its own and your messages stay end-to-end encrypted exactly as they are everywhere else.

Free for every account.

LIVE preview

Run your Mini App on Alline's real runtime, in a panel beside your code. Every save recompiles and relaunches it — no device, no emulator, no upload.

• Compiles like the real thing. Your entry point goes through the same bundler the publishing toolchain uses, so imports, multiple files and TypeScript all work. A compile error names the file, line and column.
• Signed in as you. Alline.User.* returns what it returns on your phone, so an app that greets you by name behaves here as it will in the wild.
• The real components. Alline draws the UI from your app's patch stream — what you see is what users see.
• A bridge log showing every API call, permission prompt and error as it happens.

Requires an Alline Developer subscription.

Add your Mini App to your chat list

Push the app you are working on to your own Alline account and it appears in your chat list — on the web, on your phone, everywhere you are signed in — carrying a Debug badge so it is never mistaken for a published app. Every save updates it live.

It is visible only to you. Nobody else can see it, and it never touches the store.

ALLINE_SKILL.md

Drop the full SDK reference into your workspace so your AI assistant knows the entire Alline API surface — every component, every method, every permission.

Getting started

1. Install the extension and click the Alline icon in the activity bar.
2. Open Alline → Settings → Account and tap User ID to copy it.
3. Paste it into the panel and press Connect.

That's it. Your ID signs you in, so chat and preview both come up as you.

Your user ID is a credential. Anyone who has it can sign in to your account from this extension. Treat it like a password: don't paste it into screenshots, issues or shared configs. Sessions created here appear in Settings → Active Sessions and can be revoked at any time.

Commands

Your Mini App folder

LIVE preview looks for alline.json in the workspace root:

{
  "id": "com.example.myapp",
  "name": "My App",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "entry": "app.js",
  "permissions": ["storage"]
}

entry is the file the bundler starts from. Import whatever you like from there.

Settings

Offline

The preview keeps a copy of the SDK and runtime, so it still runs with no connection. Anything that genuinely needs the server — chat, pushing to your chat list — waits until you are back. Losing your connection never changes what your account is entitled to.

Requirements

VS Code 1.85 or newer, and an Alline account.

Development

The extension is plain JavaScript with no build step.

code --extensionDevelopmentPath=<path to this folder>

Or open the folder and press F5.

Two harnesses stub the vscode module so the real code paths run under Node:

npm run selftest      # compile, push to chat list, runtime sync
npm run offlinetest   # fallback with no server reachable

To package:

npx @vscode/vsce package
code --install-extension alline-dev-<version>.vsix