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Bridge SDK: document (and lint) keeping the Release zip + pkg tarball runtime-only - a bridge shipped 15MB of demo MP4s to every machine

John Lauer · 1d ago

Bridge SDK: teach authors to keep the Release zip AND the pkg tarball free of media bloat

Real case, caught by the AD thread this week: adom/adom-desktop-fusion-bridge's release zip was 16.7 MB, of which ~15.3 MB was demo MP4s, screenshots, and repo docs. Every user's machine streamed that on bridge_install. After stripping it to runtime-only: 456 KB (97% smaller), with zero functional change.

The cause is an easy, natural mistake the SDK doesn't warn about: the author builds the zip from git ls-files (or zips the repo), which sweeps in everything that legitimately belongs on the WIKI PAGE - hero images, screenshots, demo videos, architecture diagrams, long-form docs.

What the SDK should say

Both artifacts have a strict payload rule:

  • Release zip = RUNTIME ONLY. Server code, add-in/plugin code, handlers, resources the runtime reads at execution time, manifests. NOTHING else.
  • pkg tarball = SKILLS ONLY. SKILL.md + skills/** (user tier), install.sh/uninstall.sh, page.json. No media, no dev-only docs.
  • Media lives on the page (repo/Files layer), where the README references it. It is served to browsers, never streamed to machines.

Concrete guidance worth shipping in the SDK

  1. Build the zip from an explicit whitelist, or from git ls-files minus *.mp4 *.png *.jpg *.jpeg *.gif *.svg *.webm *.zip and screenshots/.
  2. Sanity threshold: a bridge runtime zip is usually well under 1 MB. If yours is bigger, LIST ITS CONTENTS before uploading - something non-runtime is inside.
  3. Same for the pkg: keep page.json files[] a text-only whitelist (skills/**), never a broad glob that catches images.
  4. Consider a lint/warning at publish time: if a release asset or pkg tarball contains video/image files, warn the author with the size breakdown.

Item 4 would have caught this automatically. Reference implementation + the packaging rule now recorded in adom/adom-desktop-fusion-bridge (release v1.6.77, skills/fusion-bridge-dev).

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