How to install

Follow these steps:

1. Install Witchcraft Chrome extension: get it here

2. Right-click on the extension icon in the Chrome toolbar and choose “Manage extension”

   

3. Enable the “Allow user scripts” option

   

   Note

   If you don’t see this option, make sure you are using the latest Chrome version.

   Alternatively, you can skip this step and Witchcraft will fall back to using an older method for loading scripts, but it won’t work for sites that use strict Content Security Policies (CSP).

4. Choose a local folder where your scripts will be stored. For instance, ~/witchcraft-scripts (create it now if it doesn’t exist yet)

5. Start a local web server to serve that folder. You can use any web server you like, but here are some simple options:

   Python

   python3 -m http.server 5743

   Node.js

   npx http-server . -p 5743

   WSL2

   A WSL2 bash script + Windows Task Scheduler to auto-start it. See details here.

   Docker

   docker-compose.yml

   version: "3.9"
   services:
     web:
       image: nginx:alpine
       container_name: simple-web
       ports:
         - "5743:80"
       volumes:
         - ./witchcraft-scripts:/usr/share/nginx/html:ro

   Just make sure to change ./witchcraft-scripts to the correct path of your scripts folder.

   Homelab alternative

   A wild idea is to run a Docker container in your homelab (in case you have one) and then mount the remote scripts folder as a local volume on your machine, this way you can have a single scripts folder that is shared across multiple devices on your network. Just make sure to set Witchcraft to point to the correct server address instead of the default 127.0.0.1.

   More

   A comprehensive list of ways to start a web server can be found here.

Checking that everything is working

As soon as Witchcraft is able to reach the server, the status indicator will turn green:

If it doesn’t, check that the server address is correct. Witchcraft will look for the server at http://127.0.0.1:5743. If you choose a different port (or start the server in a different machine), make sure to configure it accordingly in the extension’s settings by clicking on the Witchcraft icon in the Chrome toolbar and updating the server address field.

You can now create a script in your scripts folder and open the corresponding web page to see it in action.

If you encounter any problems, feel free to ask for help here.