Build tools

PostCSS is a tool for transforming CSS with JavaScript plugins. It parses CSS into an abstract syntax tree, lets plugins inspect and mutate it, then stringifies the result — powering everything from autoprefixing to future-syntax polyfills and minification.

Rollup is a JavaScript module bundler that compiles ES modules into optimized output across multiple formats (ESM, CommonJS, UMD, IIFE), with aggressive tree-shaking to eliminate unused code. It's widely used for bundling libraries and underpins build tools like Vite.

GitButler is a Git-based version control client with both a desktop GUI and a `but` CLI, built around virtual/stacked branches, easy commit editing, an undo timeline, and AI-assisted workflows. It acts as a friendlier, more powerful drop-in replacement for the vanilla Git interface in any existing repo.

Snowpack is an ESM-first frontend build tool that leverages native JavaScript modules in the browser to deliver near-instant, unbundled development. Rather than rebuilding entire bundles on each change, it builds each file once and caches it, only rebuilding what changes.

Task is a cross-platform task runner and build tool written in Go, configured via a simple YAML Taskfile. It positions itself as a modern alternative to Make, with built-in dependency tracking, file-checksum-based change detection, and a single self-contained binary.

Browserify lets you write Node-style modules using require() and bundle them into a single file that runs in the browser, resolving the CommonJS dependency graph and shimming Node core modules. It pioneered the idea of bringing npm packages to the front end.

A VSCode extension that reformats TypeScript's notoriously dense error messages into readable, syntax-highlighted output, adding inline links to type declarations and external explanation resources.

Mitosis is a compiler that lets you author UI components once in a JSX-like syntax and transpile them into idiomatic code for many frameworks — React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, Solid, Qwik, web components and more. It's the open-source engine behind Builder.io's cross-framework component delivery.

Rolldown is a Rust-based JavaScript/TypeScript bundler designed as a drop-in, Rollup-compatible replacement, built for speed and intended to become the unified bundler powering the Vite ecosystem.

CodeSandbox-client is the open-source web application powering CodeSandbox, a browser-based online IDE for building, prototyping, and sharing web projects. It bundles, runs, and previews JavaScript/web apps entirely in the browser, with sharing and collaboration baked in.

nexe is an open-source TypeScript project in the build tools space with 13.6k GitHub stars. The repository has seen commits within the last year.

cheat is a command-line tool for creating and viewing plain-text cheatsheets, designed to remind users of options for commands they use occasionally. It supports tags, syntax highlighting, multiple cheatpaths, regex search, and shell autocompletion.

rspack is an open-source Rust project in the build tools space with 12.7k GitHub stars. The repository is actively maintained, with recent commits.

A webpack plugin and CLI tool that visualizes the contents of bundle output as an interactive zoomable treemap, parsing minified bundles to reveal each module's real stat, parsed, and compressed (gzip/Brotli/Zstandard) sizes to aid bundle-size optimization.

Komodo is a self-hosted, open-source platform for building and deploying software across many servers, providing centralized management of Docker containers, builds, and server monitoring through a web UI and API.

tsup is an open-source TypeScript project in the build tools space with 11.3k GitHub stars. The repository is actively maintained, with recent commits.

A webpack plugin that automatically generates an HTML file (or processes a template) and injects your bundled script and CSS tags into it, handling hashed filenames so the markup always references the correct assets. It works with zero configuration and exposes hooks for an ecosystem of companion plugins.

cdnjs is a free, open-source content delivery network that hosts the static assets (JS, CSS, fonts, etc.) of thousands of popular web libraries, letting developers include them via a public CDN URL. This particular repository is the robot-only asset store; library metadata and contributions live in separate repos.

node-gyp is the cross-platform command-line tool that compiles native add-on modules for Node.js, wrapping a vendored copy of Google's gyp build-configuration generator to drive the local C/C++ toolchain. It is invoked automatically by npm whenever a package contains native code that must be built from source.

Buildah is a daemonless command-line tool and Go library for building OCI and Docker-format container images, with or without a Dockerfile, and supporting rootless builds. It provides low-level, scriptable primitives (from, run, copy, commit) that let you assemble images step-by-step or via Containerfiles.

gridsome is an open-source JavaScript project in the build tools space with 8.5k GitHub stars.

Microbundle is a zero-configuration bundler for small JavaScript and TypeScript libraries, built on Rollup. It reads your package.json and emits optimized CJS, UMD, ESM, and modern ES2017 bundles with Babel transpilation, Terser minification, and TypeScript typings out of the box.

Podman Desktop is a cross-platform Electron/TypeScript desktop GUI for building, running, and managing containers, pods, images, and Kubernetes workloads. It installs and keeps Podman up to date, works across multiple container engines (Podman, Docker, Lima, crc), and is extensible through a plugin system.

lightningcss is an open-source Rust project with 7.6k GitHub stars. It is associated with build-tool, compiler, css, minifier. The repository is actively maintained, with recent commits.

Electron Forge is an all-in-one CLI and toolchain for scaffolding, developing, packaging, and distributing Electron desktop applications, wrapping the disparate Electron build tools (packager, rebuild, makers, publishers) behind a unified configuration.

A Python CLI for developing, locally testing, building, and deploying AWS serverless applications defined with the Serverless Application Model. It emulates Lambda execution in Docker and wraps the build/package/deploy lifecycle for Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions, and other AWS services.

Windi CSS is a utility-first CSS framework that generates styles on demand by scanning your HTML/CSS, offering Tailwind-compatible utilities with faster build times and HMR. The project has been officially sunset and is no longer recommended for new projects.

rushstack is an open-source TypeScript project in the build tools space with 6.5k GitHub stars. The repository is actively maintained, with recent commits.

Farm is a Rust-based web build tool and bundler that is largely compatible with the Vite ecosystem, using SWC for parsing/transformation to deliver very fast cold starts, sub-20ms HMR, and consistent dev/prod output. It supports Vite plugins out of the box, persistent module-level caching, lazy compilation, and partial bundling.

react-snap is a build-time prerendering tool that uses headless Chrome (via Puppeteer) to crawl a deployed single-page app and emit static, pre-rendered HTML for each route. It improves perceived performance and SEO without requiring server-side rendering infrastructure.

Extension.js is a zero-config build and dev tool for browser extensions, providing hot module replacement, cross-browser targeting (Chrome, Edge, Firefox), and production packaging via a single CLI. It supports vanilla JS, TypeScript, and frameworks like React, Vue, Svelte, and Preact without webpack or rollup configuration.

harp is an open-source JavaScript project with 5k GitHub stars. The repository has seen commits within the last year.