COMMLINK — Cyberpunk Dialog Constructor

A single-page web app for composing cyberpunk-styled dialog screenshots (netrunner UI vibe). No backend, no build step. Open index.html in any modern browser.

Inspired by Commlink-Thread.

Features

• Messages — speaker, body, portrait, left/right side, optional in-bubble image, optional time stamp. System messages (centered, no avatar) for events like FILE TRANSFERRED.
• Contacts — collapsible sidebar of named avatars. Click to drop a linked message; editable in place via the pencil button (swaps to a save icon while editing).
• Contact links — messages dropped from a contact are chain-linked by contactId. Editing the contact propagates name/avatar to every linked message in the preview and PNG export. Clone-of-a-clone keeps the chain even without a contact. Visible // NO CONTACT badge in red on rows that aren't linked.
• Snapshots — save/load named versions of the whole dialog. Per-language EXAMPLE_* snapshots are seeded for every supported locale. Toggle to hide examples once you've found your own rhythm.
• State export / import — JSON download / upload of the full state + contacts (images included as inlined data URLs). Confirmation prompt before import overwrites your current dialog.
• 8 languages — EN, RU, ES, DE, CN, JP, IT, FR. Switcher in the header. Includes UI labels, toast messages, the import-confirm dialog, locale-specific glitch scramble alphabet (katakana for JP, Han for ZH, Latin elsewhere), and per-locale example dialog.
• PNG export — html-to-image-based, with a 15px black border around the captured frame. Filename commlink_dialog_<epoch-ms>.png.
• Effects — scanlines, glitch (static SVG displacement-map tearing), accent color picker (8 presets + custom-color slot with saved swatch), background image (upload, paste, recrop).
• Persistence — localStorage keeps state, contacts, snapshots, language, UI open-state. Images (bg + bgOriginal + body images + their *Original recrop sources) live in IndexedDB, content-addressed by SHA-256 so identical images dedupe automatically across messages and snapshots.

Running it

Just open the file:

xdg-open index.html          # Linux
open index.html              # macOS
start index.html             # Windows

No server needed — all dependencies are either inlined (fonts as base64) or loaded from CDN (augmented-ui, html-to-image, qrcode-generator).

If you'd rather use a local server:

python3 -m http.server
# then visit http://localhost:8000

File structure

.
├── index.html              ← markup + inline JS, inlined @font-face base64 fonts
├── css/
│   ├── base.css            ← root vars, layout, panels, fields, buttons, swatches, toast, lang select
│   ├── messages.css        ← message editor rows + dialog frame + preview rendering + signal bars
│   ├── config.css          ← snapshots panel + slot list
│   └── contacts.css        ← collapsible sidebars (contacts / snapshots / donate) + contact editor
└── js/
    ├── i18n.js             ← translation dictionary for all 8 supported locales
    ├── storage.js          ← localStorage + IndexedDB image store
    ├── state.js            ← defaultState, loadState/saveState, helpers, migrations
    ├── render.js           ← renderPreview, renderMessagesEditor, syncForm
    ├── snapshots.js        ← snapshot CRUD + bundled EXAMPLE_* seeding
    ├── contacts.js         ← contact CRUD + inline edit
    ├── crop.js             ← image crop modal (openCrop/doCrop + drag handlers)
    ├── png-export.js       ← html-to-image PNG export
    ├── json-io.js          ← state + contacts JSON export/import
    └── effects.js          ← tag-glitch animation + version-hover morph

Tech notes

• Fonts: Tektur (display/body, Latin + Cyrillic) and JetBrains Mono (mono, Latin + Cyrillic) — base64-embedded directly inside index.html's <style id="font-face-inline"> block so html-to-image picks them up reliably without any cross-origin fetch (necessary for clean PNG export on file://). CJK glyphs fall back to system fonts (Hiragino / Yu Gothic / PingFang / Noto Sans CJK).
• Clipped corners / notches: augmented-ui v2, loaded from CDN.
• PNG export: html-to-image clones the DOM into an SVG foreignObject so the browser does the actual rendering (correctly handling clip-path, gradients, box-shadow). The glitch SVG filter is temporarily cloned into the captured tree so its url(#glitch-slices) reference resolves; the export captures .stage-wrap so the floating signal-bars sibling is included, then crops off the .stage-meta header.
• QR code: qrcode-generator — small SVG renderer; custom path emitted by hand so the cells can be yellow-on-dark instead of the default monochrome.
• i18n: dot-path key lookup with {var} interpolation; English fallback when a key is missing in another locale. Glitch animation reads the tag string fresh on each cycle so language changes apply on the next glitch.
• Image dedup: every bg / body-image upload is hashed (SHA-256) and stored once in IndexedDB. State JSON holds the idb:<hash> ref; snapshots store the same ref → no copy on save. A reference-count GC runs after destructive ops (image clear, JSON import, snapshot delete) to remove orphaned blobs.
• Persistence: switched from cookies → localStorage because cookies don't work reliably on file:// URLs.

Versioning

APP_VERSION constant near the top of the script in index.html follows X.Y.Z:

• X — almost certainly never bumped
• Y — bumped for major features
• Z — bumped for all small changes (tweaks, fixes, polish)

The header tag shows the version after the locale-aware app name (e.g. DIALOG CONSTRUCTOR // v1.2.12). The tag occasionally glitches to DIALOG FORGER and back.

Storage keys

localStorage

• commlink:state — current dialog (messages, choices, meta, accent, FX). Image fields are idb:<hash> refs.
• commlink:snapshots — { name: snapshot } map. Image fields are refs (same hash space as state).
• commlink:contacts — [ { id, name, avatar } ]. Avatars stay as base64 here (they're already 128×128 WEBP and small).
• commlink:bgOriginal — recrop source ref for the background.
• commlink:lang — current locale code.
• commlink:openPanel — currently open side panel (contacts / snapshots / '').
• commlink:seeded — version stamp so the bundled EXAMPLE_* snapshots refresh after a schema bump.
• commlink:showExamples — '1' / '0' for the SHOW EXAMPLES toggle in the snapshots panel.

IndexedDB

• DB commlink-images, store images: { key: sha256hex, value: Blob }. Used for bg, bgOriginal, and message body images (current + recrop source).

Support

If you find these tools useful, you can support development here: boosty.to/cyberdelaai/donate

License

MIT © 2026 CyberDelaai