Introduction

Waylis is a Node.js package designed to simplify and speed up interaction between the user and your applications. It’s an all-in-one solution offering both a developer-friendly API and a user-friendly web UI.

⚡ It’s like Express.js, but instead of exposing an HTTP API for developers — you expose a user-friendly UI for end users.

Motivation

Traditional client-server applications often require building a separate frontend: designing forms, input flows, and UI components just to collect, validate and display data. Waylis eliminates this extra work by offering a ready-to-use web interface where interaction happens throw predefined chat scenes. The user and your application communicate using simple messages, which can contain data of different formats: from plain text to entire files.

This approach makes it easy to prototype ideas, create demos, or even run production-ready services without writing a single line of frontend code.

Use cases

The scope of Waylis is quite broad. You can use it to build entirely new applications from scratch, or integrate it into existing ones to provide a specific part of the functionality.

• Desktop tools packaged into a single executable file.
• Public online services (for example: converters, generators, calculators).
• Internal systems for companies.
• Demonstration setups for showcasing specific logic.
• Utilities for personal use.
• and more...

Technical overview

At its core, Waylis runs as an HTTP server with its own built-in frontend and backend parts. In the backend, it uses a chat scene engine that lets users interact with the application just like a chatbot.

The entire flow is based on message exchange between the user and your app:

• Users start communication by sending predefined command messages that trigger a corresponding scene.

• Each scene can define its own sequence of steps, where the user is asked questions to collect specific data.

• Once all steps are completed, the scene handler is executed. At this point, the handler has access to all user-provided data and can run custom logic on it.

Waylis can use any database and file storage to store data. All you need to do is implement the appropriate interfaces.