LeedsJs

This month we’re taking a look at how modern frontend tooling is being used in large-scale public sector systems.

The NHS runs a wide range of national digital services that must meet high standards for accessibility, performance, security, and reliability. In this talk we’ll explore how Next​.js and related modern web technologies are being used to build and deliver tools that support these services.

We'll also be digging into some open source code to find out what makes the NanoClaw personal assistant tick (snap?)

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Speakers

Next​.js at the NHS – Mark Ramsden
Mark will share how the NHS is using modern frontend technologies such as Next​.js to build tools that support national services, along with the challenges and opportunities that come with adopting these technologies in a large public sector environment.

Code Review: NanoClaw – Mike Houston
Trying something different this month, Mike will be taking a look at NanoClaw, "A lightweight alternative to OpenClaw that runs in containers for security." Since it's aim is to be small enough to be easily understandable and it's implemented in TypeScript, let's see how it works and what goes in to building an agent.

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Schedule
18:00 Network, drinks and pizza
18:30 Talk: Next​.js at the NHS – Mark Ramsden
19:10 Code Review: NanoClaw – Mike Houston
19:40 Q&A and discussion
20:00 Home or Pub

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We are an inclusive group and welcome people of all experience levels and fans of all programming languages.

Please let us know if you have any dietary requirements.

For April’s LeedsJS we have two talks on two different approaches to web development. Steve will be talking about Progressive Web Apps and Service Workers while Tim will talk about Astro and Static Site Generation.

PWAs and Service Workers - Steve Milne
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) promise the best of both worlds—web simplicity with native app-like performance. At the heart of this experience lies the often-misunderstood (and occasionally mischievous) Service Worker.

In this talk, we’ll break down what PWAs actually are, how Service Workers work their behind-the-scenes magic, and why they’ve become such a powerful tool for modern web development. From offline capabilities and caching strategies to performance boosts and background sync, you’ll see how they can transform user experiences.

But it’s not all sunshine and lightning-fast load times—Service Workers can also introduce subtle bugs, confusing caching issues, and “why is this still broken?” moments that haunt even seasoned developers.

Vibe Coding a static site with Astro - Tim Lewis
A dive into using Claude code to develop stuff in a framework that the LLMs probably wouldn’t recommend. We’ll look at what is good and what is still a bit janky.