What is chii?

Chii is a remote debugging tool for web pages. It lets you inspect and debug a website running on one device, say, a phone, from a separate computer's browser, using the same kind of developer tools that Chrome already ships with. The main benefit is that you don't need to physically connect the device or install desktop syncing software, you just open a web page on your computer and start poking around the target site's HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and network activity. The way it works is straightforward. You run a small server on your machine (via a command like chii start), then add a single script tag to the webpage you want to debug. That script connects the page back to your server. When you open your server's address in a browser, you get a Chrome-style developer panel showing what's happening on the target page in real time, elements, console logs, network requests, and so on. It replaces an older tool called weinre with the current Chrome DevTools frontend, so the interface looks familiar to anyone who has used Chrome's built-in inspector. This is most useful for people building or testing websites that need to work on mobile devices, embedded browsers, or other environments where standard debugging tools aren't available. For example, if a web app looks broken on an older Android phone but fine on your laptop, you can use this tool to see what the phone's browser is actually rendering and where things went wrong, without relying on USB cables or manufacturer-specific tooling. The project is built in JavaScript and installs through npm. The README doesn't go into deeper detail on architecture or tradeoffs, but the core idea is keeping the setup minimal: one server, one script tag, and a devtools interface you access through any browser.