web-revive

Give your agent the power to bring dead Flash and Java web games back to life, so they run in any modern browser again.

Math Slash, a real open-source ActionScript 2 Flash game (examples/flash-mathslash), revived and recorded in one command: the GIF above is the gameplay clip web-revive revive saved from its headless-Chrome run.

Play the revived games in your browser: Math Slash (Flash) · Reversi (Java applet)

Try it · Use it with your agent · Real revivals · How it works · Limits

Found an old Flash game or Java applet that no browser will run anymore? Ask your agent to revive it. web-revive gives it the operations to do that properly: find the embedded game (on a live page or, if the page is gone, in the Internet Archive), inspect the file and judge whether it can run, fetch the right runtime (Ruffle for Flash, CheerpJ for Java), package a static site, then open it in a real browser and prove it works. You get a folder you can put on any static host, and a report of everything that was done and checked.

Try it

npm install -g web-revive          # or run it with npx web-revive ...
npx playwright install chromium    # the browser web-revive drives

Then revive a game in one command. Point it at a dead page, a direct .swf/.jar, a local file, or an Internet Archive capture URL:

web-revive revive examples/flash-mathslash/MathSlash.swf --title "Math Slash"

It finds the game (recovering it from the Internet Archive if the page is gone), inspects it, fetches the right runtime, packages a static site, opens it in headless Chrome, runs a short input script to get past the menu, records a gameplay GIF, writes a report, and starts a preview server you can open:

  find examples/flash-mathslash/MathSlash.swf
  inspect MathSlash.swf
  runtime ruffle
  package
  verify (headless Chrome, input script, GIF)
  boots and animates at 58.1 fps

Revived in 10.4s. Boots and animates at 58.1 fps in headless Chrome.
Gameplay GIF: .web-revive/MathSlash/evidence/screenshots/gameplay.gif
Report: .web-revive/MathSlash/evidence/report.md

Play it at: http://127.0.0.1:52891/

Pass --no-serve to skip the preview server, --no-gif to skip the GIF, --out <dir> to choose the workspace, and --json for machine-readable output. If a game cannot be revived, revive ends with an honest reason (an AS3 feature gap, a JNI native library, a file found in no capture), not a false success.

The whole flow is still available as separate subcommands (find, inspect, runtime, package, verify, serve, report) when you want to drive a step by hand.

Related MCP server: Clone Space MCP

Use it with your agent

web-revive setup          # shows what it would change
web-revive setup --yes    # registers the MCP server with Claude Code, Codex and Cursor

Then just ask:

"Revive this old Flash game and prove it runs: ."

The agent follows skills/web-revive/SKILL.md. For most requests it makes one call to the revive tool, which finds the game (live or from the archive), inspects it, fetches the runtime, packages, verifies in a real browser, gets past the menu, records a gameplay GIF, and returns the playable link, the "boots" vs "reached gameplay" verdict, and what will not work offline, or an honest blocker. The per-step tools (find, inspect, runtime, package, verify, serve, report) are there for when it needs to drive a step by hand.

setup registers npx -y web-revive mcp, which works once the package is on npm. Until then, point your agent at the local build instead: claude mcp add web-revive -- web-revive mcp.

Real revivals

Every row was produced end to end on a Mac with web-revive. Each folder in examples/ has the evidence bundle and a screenshot.

One command, five real targets

These were each revived with a single web-revive revive <source> on an Apple Silicon Mac (Ruffle nightly, CheerpJ 4.3). The game files are not redistributed here for the copyrighted ones; each folder keeps only the report, a screenshot, and the gameplay GIF. Numbers are from one real run; the "boots" vs "reached gameplay" verdict depends on whether a generic input script happened to get past that game's menu, so it can vary between runs.

Driven step by step (0.1)

Two of these redistribute someone else's game, each under its own clear open-source license, kept next to the file: Math Slash is GPL-3.0 and Reversi is GPL-3.0. FoilSim is the exception: it is NASA's work and its repository states no license, so examples/java-foilsim keeps only the report and a screenshot, not the .jar; the README there shows how to download it and reproduce the run. flash-bounce is original MIT work generated in this repo, kept as a tiny self-contained fixture rather than the headline.

How it works

flowchart LR
  A[old page or file] --> B[find]
  B --> C[inspect]
  C --> D[runtime<br/>Ruffle / CheerpJ]
  D --> E[package<br/>static site]
  E --> F[verify<br/>headless Chrome<br/>input script + GIF]
  F --> G[report<br/>evidence bundle]
  G --> H[serve<br/>playable link]

revive runs that whole chain in one command. The individual steps:

Every step is a CLI subcommand (add --json) and an MCP tool. The tool never calls an LLM.

What it can't do

• Ruffle runs Flash, and its AS1/AS2 support is much more complete than its AS3 support. Many AS3 movies run; some use features Ruffle has not implemented yet. inspect flags AS3 and verify shows what breaks.

• CheerpJ runs JVM bytecode, not native code. A JAR that loads a .so/.dll/.jnilib (JNI) is reported as not supported. CheerpJ runs applets on Java 8; newer bytecode may not load.

• Browsers have no raw TCP/UDP sockets. Games that opened sockets (Flash XMLSocket, Java java.net.Socket) will not connect. CheerpJ networking is limited and needs its own backend.

• A game that loaded other files at runtime (more SWFs, XML, server calls) needs those too. find can pull them from the archive when they exist; server-side calls cannot be revived.

• This is an MVP: one game per run, Ruffle and CheerpJ as the runtimes, Flash and Java as the inputs.

Rights and licensing

You need the right to share a game before you publish it. web-revive only works on your machine and never uploads anything. The examples here redistribute only content that may be redistributed: flash-mathslash (Math Slash) and java-reversi (Reversi) each ship under their own GPL-3.0 license, kept next to the file; flash-bounce is original MIT work; and java-foilsim keeps only a report and screenshot because NASA's FoilSim states no license. When you revive someone else's game, keep its license with it, or keep only the report.

Privacy

Everything runs on your machine. web-revive never calls an LLM and sends no telemetry. The only network traffic is: the page or file you point it at; the Internet Archive (only when something is missing); the Ruffle release download from GitHub; and, for Java, the CheerpJ loader, which the packaged page loads from Leaning Technologies' CDN at runtime. Every request carries a User-Agent naming the tool, and find makes one request at a time. setup only touches the three agent config files, backs them up first, and is a dry run unless you pass --yes.

License

MIT, Copyright (c) 2026 Abel Yagubyan. Revived games keep their own licenses. Ruffle is MIT/Apache-2.0. CheerpJ is proprietary software from Leaning Technologies (free for personal use; check its license for commercial use).