Native Federation DevTools

See what your micro frontends actually negotiated.

A read-only Chrome DevTools panel for Native Federation applications running the v4 Orchestrator.

Which version of @angular/core won? Who provided it? Why did that remote end up with its own copy?

The negotiation happens once at startup — then it disappears into the import map. Native Federation DevTools reads it back out of the running page and explains it: every shared package, every remote, every chunk. Evidence, not guesses.

What you get

• 📦 Packages — the negotiation, per package and share scope: every version, the resolver's verdict for each remote, and a deep dive into who ships it, its entrypoints and its files. Out-of-range remotes, isolated copies and torn entrypoints are called out, not averaged away.
• 🛰️ Remotes — each participant from its own point of view: what it exposes, what it declares, and where every single dependency really resolves.
• 🕸️ Graph — remotes, dependency copies, and build files as one traceable picture. Hover to trace, tick remotes to include or exclude them, group the dependency column by provider, share scope, pool, or build.
• 🗺️ Import Map — the effective map, row by row, each entry attributed to its package, its provider, and the chunk bundle that serves it.
• 🧩 Pools — one matrix per explicit pool tag: which build each remote loads the family from, which copies pooling redirected or isolated, and the reason the orchestrator stored. Appears only when the capture carries pool tags.
• 📤 Export JSON — freeze the entire snapshot to a file. Doubles as a reproducible bug report.
• 🔒 Read-only, zero permissions — no host permissions, no content scripts. The panel inspects; it never mutates the page. Enforced by tests, not by convention.

In progress: Diagnostics (registry↔map lint) and global search.

Hover to trace

One hover answers "who shares this — and which files does it load?"

Dashed nodes are isolated copies, dotted edges are borrowed dependencies — the sharing story is visible at a glance.

Every negotiation, explained

Four remotes ship @angular/core 22.0.8: the host's build is shared, the other three resolve to it, and every entrypoint and file is accounted for, SRI included. A remote whose range rejects the shared version is flagged even when it isn't strict — the orchestrator stores a plain skip for it.

Every remote, from its own point of view

Exposes, provided packages, and — line by line — which dependency this remote consumes from whom, and which own version lost the negotiation.

Requirements

Requires the v4 Orchestrator. The panel reads the registry that @softarc/native-federation-orchestrator keeps in the page (window.__NATIVE_FEDERATION__). Applications on the classic v3 runtime (@softarc/native-federation-runtime) do not expose this registry and are not supported — on such pages the panel shows No Native Federation detected.

The registry is found under the default storage options, a custom storageNamespace, and localStorage / sessionStorage storage. Since orchestrator 4.7 the panel follows the storage descriptor the orchestrator publishes (window.__NF_ORCHESTRATOR__). On older versions it falls back to the default namespace in window, then localStorage, then sessionStorage. Custom storage adapters are not supported.

Install

🛒 Chrome Web Store: coming soon — the extension will be published under the official Native Federation presence. Until then, install it from a GitHub release. No build toolchain needed — it takes about a minute.

From a release

1. Download native-federation-devtools-<version>.zip from the releases page and unzip it into a folder of its own (the zip has no top-level folder). Keep that folder — Chrome loads the extension from it.
2. Open chrome://extensions in Chrome — type it into the address bar.
3. Turn on Developer mode (toggle in the top-right corner).
4. Click Load unpacked and select the unzipped folder.
5. Open Chrome DevTools (F12, or Ctrl+Shift+I / ⌥⌘I) on an application that runs the v4 Orchestrator. The panel appears as a new Native Federation tab — if DevTools was already open, close and reopen it once.

Unpacked extensions do not update themselves. To upgrade, unzip the new release into the same folder and click the ↻ reload icon on the extension's card in chrome://extensions. Automatic updates come with the Web Store.

From source

Contributors can build the extension themselves — see Development & Architecture.

Native Federation ecosystem

Project	What it is
native-federation.com	Project home — docs, guides, team, resources
orchestrator	Runtime micro frontend orchestrator (v4) — the runtime this panel reads
devtools (this repo)	Chrome DevTools panel for inspecting running federations

Documentation

• Development & Architecture — build, run, test, repository layout, and the design constraints behind the tool
• Resolution data model — how a captured snapshot becomes the model behind the views

About

Developed and maintained by Lutz Leonhardt as part of the official Native Federation project.

Built in an agentic workflow with Claude Code and Codex as pair programmers — architecture, review, and verification stay with the maintainer.

Licensed under MIT.