reinventinglikes/relikes

Re:Likes is a JavaScript library that lets website visitors react to specific passages of text with a Like or Dislike, instead of only being able to react to a whole page at once. A reader selects or paints across a piece of text, adds their reaction, can partially erase it later, and can switch between viewing their own marks or a combined heatmap showing how everyone reacted to that passage. It runs in the browser and depends on a companion project called Clean Selection to handle the text selection logic. The library is meant to be dropped into a webpage. You can load it as two separate script files alongside Clean Selection, install both through npm, or use a single standalone minified file that bundles everything together. It creates a global object in the browser and ships with TypeScript type definitions for anyone using it in a typed project. On its own, Re:Likes works locally in the browser using localStorage, with no server needed. To sync reactions across visitors and show aggregate heatmaps, it needs a backend that follows a documented JSON protocol. The project includes a simple example backend written in PHP that stores data in JSON files with signed anonymous sessions, rate limits, and basic safeguards, though it is described as fit for demos and modest traffic rather than large scale production use. There is also a maintained WordPress plugin with its own REST API and database tables, distributed as a downloadable zip from the project's releases page. Documentation covers the public API, configuration options, the sync protocol, internal architecture, and privacy considerations, since a connected backend can receive document identifiers, text positions, and a reader identity. The project is created by a developer using the handle kotoverse and is released under the MIT license, which allows free use including commercial use as long as the copyright notice is kept.