SS14 Editor

A standalone visual editor for Space Station 14 prototype YAML files. Works with any SS14 fork — just point it at your project folder.

Warning

Work in progress! The tool is still in active development. Expect bugs and missing features. Make backups before mass-editing.

Note

Vibecoding! This entire project was created using generative AI technologies. If you don't like it, don't use it.

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What it does

• Browse and edit prototype YAML files through a modern, themed UI
• Auto-completes entity IDs, component names and field types from your project's assemblies
• Shows inheritance chains, validates required fields, renders sprites inline
• Watches Resources/Prototypes/ for external changes and live-reloads open files / the file tree (Server-Sent Events)
• Loads game DLLs through System.Reflection.MetadataLoadContext — no game code is executed
• Ships as either a self-contained CLI / HTTP server (any browser) or as a packaged Electron desktop app with a custom title bar and in-app updates

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Quick start

Option A — Desktop app (recommended)

Grab the latest installer or portable build from the Releases page:

Platform	Installer	Portable
Windows	ss14-editor-v<version>-setup.exe (NSIS)	ss14-editor-v<version>-portable.exe
Linux	ss14-editor-v<version>-linux-x64.AppImage	—
macOS (Apple Silicon)	ss14-editor-v<version>-osx-arm64.dmg	—

Launch the app — a splash window appears immediately, the bundled .NET server starts in the background, and the project picker opens as soon as it is ready. When a newer release is published an accent-coloured Update button appears in the header; click it to download and restart into the installer. Nothing is downloaded silently.

Option B — CLI / browser

Prefer running the .NET server yourself? Download one of the standalone archives instead of the Electron installer:

Platform	Archive
Windows	ss14-editor-v<version>-win-x64.zip
Linux	ss14-editor-v<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz
macOS (Apple Silicon)	ss14-editor-v<version>-osx-arm64.tar.gz

The archive contains a single self-contained ss14-editor binary (the WebUI is embedded inside it, so nothing else is needed). Extract it anywhere and run:

ss14-editor               # starts in setup mode — open http://localhost:2701 in any browser

Option C — Build from source

git clone https://github.com/your-org/ss14-editor
cd ss14-editor
dotnet run --project ss14-editor.csproj

Requires .NET 10 SDK.

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Desktop app (Electron)

The electron/ folder contains the Electron wrapper that owns the desktop window, the system-tray icon and the update flow.

Highlights:

• Native window chrome is hidden. frame: false means the OS title bar is gone; the WebUI draws its own header containing the Project menu, the Update button and the minimize / maximize / close window controls.
• No silent auto-update. The main process queries GitHub Releases on startup; if there is a newer version it sends update-available over IPC and the WebUI surfaces the Update button. Downloading and installing happens only after the user clicks it.
• Renderer is hardened. nodeIntegration:false, contextIsolation:true, sandbox:true. All cross-process traffic goes through the small surface exposed by electron/preload.js (window.electronAPI).
• No CORS. The .NET server and the WebUI share an origin (http://localhost:2701). Do not add Access-Control-Allow-* headers — they would let any website the user visits POST to /api/file and rewrite prototype files.

Development

# 1. Build the .NET server (Debug is fine for dev, output lands in bin/)
dotnet build ss14-editor.csproj

# 2. Install Electron dependencies (once)
cd electron
npm install

# 3. Run
npm start

The main process spawns the .NET binary from bin/, publish/win-x64/ or publish/server/ (whichever it finds), waits for the HTTP server to respond, then opens the window.

Packaging a distributable

# Publish the self-contained .NET binary first (from repo root)
dotnet publish ss14-editor.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained -o publish/win-x64

# Then build the Electron installer (from electron/)
cd electron
npm run dist

Output goes to electron/dist/ — an NSIS installer (ss14-editor-vX.Y.Z-setup.exe) and a portable executable (ss14-editor-vX.Y.Z-portable.exe). Optionally place a 256×256 icon.ico at the repo root to brand the build.

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How it works

• The .NET server uses System.Reflection.MetadataLoadContext to read the compiled game DLLs without executing any game code — safe and fast even on a fork you have never run before.
• The WebUI is vanilla HTML / CSS / JS embedded as resources via <EmbeddedResource Include="WebUI\**\*">. There is no bundler, no transpiler, no npm step.
• Live file-tree / file-content updates are delivered over Server-Sent Events from /api/events.
• All filesystem inputs from HTTP requests go through PathSecurity.NormalizeRelative, which rejects absolute paths and .. traversal before any I/O happens.