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Web Proxy module

What it does

Web Proxy runs a guest-local HTTP proxy for a browser already installed on a PowerPC Macintosh. Requests cross the existing NOW connection to the host, which fetches HTTP and HTTPS pages, optionally runs their contemporary JavaScript through Playwright, and returns bounded ASCII HTML selected for Classilla, MacWeb, or a conservative 68K profile.

The macOS Web Proxy module

Availability

The PowerPC guest listens on its own loopback at 127.0.0.1:5180 by default. The browser does not connect to the modern Mac's LAN address and no second browser-facing port is opened there.

The PowerPC Workshop Web page saves only the guest-loopback port and reports relay status. The address it shows is the one Open Transport granted the listener, not the one that was requested, and its status area names a refused browser connection and what the modern Mac last said about a page — so "nothing has connected yet" and "every connection was refused" cannot read alike. The host module owns the internal renderer's lifecycle and relay status; the browser profile, rendering lens, fetch engine, handlers, and outbound policy live in the Web tab of the Settings window (New Old World > Settings…, or the module's own Settings… button), alongside whether the renderer starts automatically.

NOW-68K does not yet ship a Web page or MacTCP relay.

On the modern Mac

  1. In Settings' Web tab, choose a browser profile, rendering lens, and fetch engine.
  2. Optionally choose an installed AI planner or model, also in Settings.
  3. Start the renderer from the Web page. Its private ephemeral loopback address is managed by New Old World and is not browser configuration.

Compatible Page is the deterministic default. Reader is a reduced view of the same semantic block tree. AI Layout is optional and falls back to Compatible Page when its planner is unavailable, invalid, slow, or over budget.

On the classic Mac

Set Classilla's HTTP proxy to 127.0.0.1 and the port shown on the Workshop Web page (5180 by default). HTTPS destinations are fetched by the host and rewritten through plain HTTP gateway links; NOW Web does not expose a general CONNECT tunnel.

The PowerPC Web page

Common tasks

  • Start the host renderer and leave the guest application running.
  • Point Classilla at the guest's displayed loopback address and port.
  • Choose MacWeb when the browser needs conservative HTML 2, flattened tables, ASCII entities, smaller pages, and 4 KB delivery chunks.
  • Choose Reader for an article-oriented page without changing the browser profile.
  • Return to Compatible Page whenever a handler, Reader, or AI Layout removes context needed to navigate the site.
  • Stop the host renderer when the classic Mac is no longer browsing through it.

The browser-facing listener is bound to the classic Mac's own loopback address, so nothing outside that machine can reach it. That bind is the boundary. The listener does not additionally filter the peer address of an accepted connection: Open Transport reports a genuine loopback connection's peer as the machine's primary interface address, so a peer test on 127.0.0.1 refuses every real browser instead of protecting anything. The host renderer is also loopback-only and ephemeral. The remaining network boundary is NOW's existing plaintext guest-to-host connection, so use it only on a trusted network.

Private, link-local, loopback, and special-use destinations are blocked by default. The unsafe development switch — Settings' Web tab, "Allow private and local web destinations (unsafe)" — broadens the host's outbound reach and must not be enabled casually.

Ordinary helper logs omit request paths, URL queries, cookies, authorization, and page bodies. The bridge does not import browser cookies or credentials.

Failure states

Missing helper, stopped, starting, ready, incompatible helper protocol, renderer failure, blocked destination, refused connection, unsupported browser profile, expired page token, and unavailable AI planner remain distinct.

Current limitations

  • The static engine does not execute JavaScript. Playwright and Chromium are explicit optional dependencies and are never downloaded on a page request.
  • Forms, logins, uploads, session replay, synthetic JavaScript event links, video, and a complete image-transcoding pipeline are not yet served.
  • Until 2026-08-15 the PowerPC listener refused every browser connection, so no page had ever been served on any guest. It has now served one end to end on the emulator — an in-guest HTTP client fetched a page through 127.0.0.1:5180 and the host's bytes arrived intact — but not yet from Classilla, and not yet on real hardware.
  • The optional local layout model is not distributed until its model card, base-model and training-data provenance, license, version, and checksum are settled. An already-installed local model folder can be selected in the host module; the first adapter cold-loads it per AI request.

For developers

The source-tree implementation plan, operator note, and provenance inventory are docs/plans/2026-08-10-032-feat-web-bridge-plan.md, web-bridge/README.md, and web-bridge/PROVENANCE.md.