After about 6 years in hiatus, AI vibe coding finally enabled me to update my JavaScript-based Go board rendering library, jGoBoard. We've (meaning Claude Code and I) just rolled out version 4.0.3, and it brings a modern build stack and a bugfix to boot.

Also thanks to Gemini CLI which composed the structure of this post, although the signature AI fluff needed to be heavily edited afterwards.

For those unfamiliar, jGoBoard is a library designed to make rendering Go boards (gobans) in your web projects a breeze. It's been around for a while, but using it in modern build processes and ES module based environment was painful, and Grunt used for building has been in maintenance mode for years, not to speak about some of the other parts that were overhauled.

What's New and Exciting?

• Switch to Vite in build tools
• Can run "npm run dev" if you want hot reloading while tinkering with the code and demos
• Outputs ES Modules, CommonJS, and UMD formats, plus better tree-shaking. This translates to smaller file sizes for your projects.
• Removing superagent dependency that gets rid of security vulnerabilities in the outdated versions of the past

What's Slightly Less Exciting?

• Fix for Github Issue #9: No more illegal move popups when accidentally clicking on coordinate labels outside the board area. The click handler now includes proper bounds checking and coordinate validation.
• Improved Demo UX: The "Play demo captures" experience has been refined for a smoother interaction.
• Demo Fixes: Even demoTree.html got some attention, with SGF loading fixed (though it's still a work in progress, as noted in the commit!).

And in a nod to the future (and perhaps a theme from some of my recent posts!), you might spot a familiar co-author in the commit history: Claude Code lent a hand in some of the changes, particularly with the version bump and dependency removal. It's always interesting to see how AI can assist in the development workflow!

Get Started

If you're looking to integrate a Go board into your web application, jGoBoard is easier than ever to get started with. Just head to https://jgoboard.com or simply clone the github repo https://github.com/jokkebk/jgoboard and check out the README.md there.