Baseline Buddy

Inspiration Web developers often hesitate to adopt modern web features because they’re unsure of cross-browser support. Checking MDN, Can I Use, or blog posts interrupts flow and slows productivity. With the new Baseline project, there’s finally a single source of truth for feature support. We wanted to make this data instantly accessible inside the tools developers already use — linters, IDEs, CI/CD pipelines, and documentation generators. What it does Baseline Buddy is a developer assistant that: Checks your code for modern web features and validates them against Baseline data. Warns you if a feature is not safe to use across browsers yet. Suggests polyfills, fallbacks, or alternatives. Provides inline documentation and direct links to MDN. Can run in your IDE, as a linter plugin, or in CI/CD to ensure production-readiness. How we built it Data Source: Integrated with the web-features npm package and the Web Platform Dashboard. Core Engine: Node.js + TypeScript for parsing and analyzing project files. IDE/Editor Plugin: Prototype in VS Code using the extension API. Linter Integration: ESLint plugin that checks Baseline compatibility. CI/CD: GitHub Action that fails builds if unsupported features are detected. Challenges we ran into Mapping Baseline feature definitions to real-world code patterns. Handling features used via frameworks (React, Vue, Svelte) that don’t directly expose APIs. Keeping performance fast enough so analysis doesn’t slow developer workflows. Accomplishments that we're proud of Built a working prototype that runs as both a VS Code extension and ESLint plugin. Successfully parsed Baseline data and surfaced compatibility warnings inline. Demonstrated end-to-end flow: developer writes code → Buddy flags risky features → Buddy suggests safer alternatives. What we learned How powerful and flexible the Baseline data model is. The importance of UX when surfacing compatibility issues — developers want just-in-time feedback, not overwhelming walls of warnings. Integration points (IDEs, linters, CI) are key to adoption. What’s next for Baseline Buddy Expand support to more IDEs (JetBrains, Neovim). Build a CLI tool for quick compatibility checks. Add AI-powered suggestions that explain tradeoffs and provide migration guides. Contribute improvements back to Baseline data mapping. Publish as an open-source project with permissive license to encourage contributions.

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