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Personal GAP Playground #6799
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Dear Max (@fingolfin),
Today I found out about @ChrisJefferson 's work on developing a GAP-in-the-browser web app: #6593.
I am not sure why I haven't found this earlier! I stumbled upon this while researching.
Because of this missing feature, I actually built my own, so that my mathematician husband can still program in GAP on his mobile when he does not have his computer with him. Here it is: https://gap-online.pages.dev/
As it uses GitHub runners, the project is only for personal use. This setup is temporary, though. I am looking into serverless alternatives.
I currently have the site deployed via Cloudflare. Originally, it was going to be all GAP (hence the name, "GAP Playground"), but I have since adapted it to my husband's needs, adding Prover9/Mace4, as well as Lean 4. It caters highly to semigroup theorists :-) I might need to change the name if I keep adding non-GAP tools. With the advent of AI math results, I thought it'd be prudent to add Lean 4. Prover9 and Mace4 are just for teaching purposes (they still teach those provers here in Portugal...).
If you guys would like to discuss more about this, let me know. I code AI-assisted now. A few years ago, I was still coding proudly from scratch, but now adapting rather quickly.
I hope that GAP finally has its own official online programming web app.
Cheers from Portugal,
Poyi
Activity
fingolfin commentedon Nov 4, 2026
Hi @fraubentz just to clarify: I am just the project coordinator but this isn't "my" project, so it's a bit weird to be directly addressed like this in an issue here -- esp. since this is not a feature I have worked on myself at all.
Perhaps @ChrisJefferson is interested in discussing any of this?
My personal view is that it'd be nice to offer a web-only playground on our website, but I'd not want to try to offer a "comprehensive" environment with tools beyond GAP -- just a playground, not a "workground". As such, I'd try to keep the interface as as simple and "intuitive" as possible. No "connection & privacy" settings for example (I can see why this is useful for "power users", but it's really scary for casual users).
Actually https://magma-maths.org/calc/ looks quite nice (albeit very obviously completely AI generated, as the entire new Magma website)
fraubentz commentedon Nov 4, 2026
Hello @fingolfin, many thanks for getting back to me. In hindsight, perhaps it was better to just comment on the issue you created than to create my own. At that time, I was unsure about the etiquette and hierarchy.
I already PR on @ChrisJefferson 's project today. So alles ist gut.
I agree with your personal take. The 'playground' I made was more a personal project between me and my husband. I do not see GAP going this far!
I had a look at the link you sent. Yeah, it looks very AI. At that rate, I might as well stick with SageMathCell.
I will wait to see what Chris thinks. I am willing to help polish the frontend so that it can be ready for GAP's 40th. As for the underlying engine, rest assured, I am not touching that. As I am not part of the GAP community, that is the most I can do to contribute, but it would be a pleasure to do so.
ChrisJefferson commentedon Nov 5, 2026
Hi!
So, I agree this website looks like a nice idea. However, my concern is that it looks like you are using github's CI to do calculations. I believe github discourages this, you are not supposed to use CI for 'any other activity unrelated to the production, testing, deployment, or publication of the software project associated with the repository where GitHub Actions are used.'
Now I'm sure for something one person uses they aren't going to care too much, but I worry they might get annoyed if it got used too much?
fraubentz commentedon Nov 6, 2026
Thanks, Chris! Yes, I know the policy and the risk. The runners are only temporary until I find a good option, and that one beloved user of mine does not use it frequently enough these days to trigger anything on GitHub's end. I am currently looking at custom dockerfile/Hugging Face Space. Something for the weekend.
But this means one thing: we really need an official online GAP-in-the-browser to prevent students and spouses like me from DIYing GAP haphazardly! I found out from my husband that one of his students is doing his or her own hack with Jupyter, to avoid using the terminal. I don't know Jupyter, so I presume s/he might be using the Jupyter kernel for GAP...