Lens Desktop Experiments

Dynamic feature experiments for Lens Desktop. Each experiment is a renderer-only CommonJS bundle loaded at runtime via a sandbox.

Repository Structure

experiments/
  hello-world/        # Sample experiment
infrastructure/
  build/              # Shared esbuild configuration and build scripts
  sign/               # Ed25519 bundle signing utilities
  publish/            # Manifest generation for releases

How It Works

Experiments are renderer-only CommonJS bundles that export getFeature() instances. At runtime, Lens Desktop loads these bundles via a sandbox (new Function("module", "require", code)) and registers the features into the DI container.

Each experiment has a single entry point:

• index.ts - Re-exports the renderer feature, built to dist/index.js

Adding a New Experiment

1. Create a new directory under experiments/your-experiment-name/
2. Add a package.json with experiment metadata (see below)
3. Add an index.ts that re-exports your feature
4. Implement your feature in src/renderer/feature.ts with glob-imported injectables
5. Run npm run build to verify the build

Development

# Install dependencies (requires GitHub Packages auth for @lensapp scope)
npm install

# Build all experiments
npm run build

# Build a single experiment
npm run build:experiment -- hello-world

# Type-check all experiments
npm run typecheck

# Run tests
npm test

# Sign bundles (requires EXPERIMENT_SIGNING_PRIVATE_KEY env var)
npm run sign

# Generate release manifest
npm run manifest

Experiment Metadata

Each experiment's package.json includes an experiment field:

{
  "experiment": {
    "id": "my-experiment",
    "name": "My Experiment",
    "description": "What this experiment does",
    "terminationUtcDateTime": "2027-01-01T00:00:00Z"
  }
}

The terminationUtcDateTime field defines when the experiment expires and should be removed.