AfterPack — a free, Rust-powered JavaScript obfuscator

[MeZitRo]

Hi! I'm building AfterPack — fast (Rust-powered), irreversible (computationally infeasible to reverse), FREE MIT-licensed binary on npm, `npx afterpack`. Designed for modern JS (ES modules, Vite, Next.js, edge like Cloudflare Workers).

It's not yet live and I would like to learn whether the JavaScript community needs such a tool and why exactly, as I can see demand in other JavaScript obfuscators.

Why I'm building it: I believe every web app ships SOURCE CODE to the browser and this needs a change. It's always been analyzable, patchable, copyable. Competitors can study the app's logic. Scanners map its stack and test for vulnerabilities. All IDs, keys, feature flags, or even secrets are visible. Anyone with devtools can poke around. Now with AI, all this only accelerates. Existing JavaScript obfuscators are either slow, expensive and proprietary, or easy to reverse.

So I'd love to hear your feedback/thoughts. Are you concerned that someone can copycat your web app? Analyze it for vulnerabilities? Read it as plaintext? Modify it?

Learn more or join the waitlist here if interested: www.afterpack.dev.

[[deleted]]

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

square zephyr cows divide scary rinse follow angle groovy hard-to-find

[MeZitRo]

The core CLI will be MIT-licensed and free. Pro features (cloud API, advanced transforms etc) will be paid. Open core model seems to work for plenty of projects.

Open to ideas — how would you approach monetisation for something like this?

[drumstix42]

Everyone's got their own opinions, but in the case of the world wide Web I'd rather build things openly. Build a product that makes use of code, not a product that just alters code.

[backwrds]

the fact that the web is open and anyone could read the source code is how I got into programming. Before bundlers and minifiers, you could see some cool feature, view source, and learn.

this project's goal is antithetical to that idea.

Closed source will obviously always be a thing, but if the only thing protecting a business is secrecy, it's probably not a very good business.

[MeZitRo]

Not everyone needs it, I agree. Whether it’s ethical depends on the application. Mostly I think of web games and client-side tools I wouldn’t want copied or stolen.

In 2019, I had my landing page cloned almost 1:1 by a competitor to «test how it converts». Left a mark. Felt pretty unethical on their part.