WASM Compatibility Checker for marimo Notebooks Check whether a marimo notebook can run in a WebAssembly (WASM) environment — the marimo playground, community cloud, or exported WASM HTML. Instructions 1. Read the notebook Read the target notebook file. If the user doesn't specify one, ask which notebook to check. 2. Extract dependencies Collect every package the notebook depends on from both sources: PEP 723 metadata — the
/// script
block at the top:
/// script
dependencies = [
"marimo",
"torch>=2.0.0",
]
///
Import statements
— scan all cells for
import foo
and
from foo import bar
. Map import names to their PyPI distribution name using this table:
Import name
Distribution name
sklearn
scikit-learn
skimage
scikit-image
cv2
opencv-python
PIL
Pillow
bs4
beautifulsoup4
yaml
pyyaml
dateutil
python-dateutil
attr
/
attrs
attrs
gi
PyGObject
serial
pyserial
usb
pyusb
wx
wxPython
For most other packages, the import name matches the distribution name.
3. Check each package against Pyodide
For each dependency, determine if it can run in WASM:
Is it in the Python standard library?
Most stdlib modules work, but these do
not
:
multiprocessing
— browser sandbox has no process spawning
subprocess
— same reason
threading
— emulated, no real parallelism (WARN, not a hard fail)
sqlite3
— use
apsw
instead (available in Pyodide)
pdb
— not supported
tkinter
— no GUI toolkit in browser
readline
— no terminal in browser
Is it a Pyodide built-in package?
See
pyodide-packages.md
for the full list. These work out of the box.
Is it a pure-Python package?
Packages with only
.py
files (no compiled C/Rust extensions) can be installed at runtime via
micropip
and will work. To check: look for a
py3-none-any.whl
wheel on PyPI (e.g. visit
https://pypi.org/project/
/// script
block so they are automatically installed when the notebook starts. Check for these issues: Missing metadata: If the notebook has no
/// script
block, emit a WARN recommending one. Listing dependencies ensures they are auto-installed when the notebook starts in WASM — without it, users may see import errors. Missing packages: If a package is imported but not listed in the dependencies, emit a WARN suggesting it be added. Note: version pins and lower bounds in PEP 723 metadata are fine — marimo strips version constraints when running in WASM. 6. Produce the report Output a clear, actionable report with these sections: Compatibility: PASS / FAIL / WARN Use these verdicts: PASS — all packages and patterns are WASM-compatible WARN — likely compatible, but some packages could not be verified as pure-Python (list them so the user can check) FAIL — one or more packages or patterns are definitely incompatible Package Report — table with columns: Package, Status (OK / WARN / FAIL), Notes Example: Package Status Notes marimo OK Available in WASM runtime numpy OK Pyodide built-in pandas OK Pyodide built-in torch FAIL No WASM build — requires native C++/CUDA extensions my-niche-lib WARN Not in Pyodide; verify it is pure-Python Code Issues — list each problematic code pattern found, with the cell or line and a suggested fix. Recommendations — if the notebook fails, suggest concrete fixes: Replace incompatible packages with WASM-friendly alternatives Rewrite incompatible code patterns Suggest moving heavy computation to a hosted API and fetching results Additional context WASM notebooks run via Pyodide in the browser Memory is capped at 2 GB Network requests work but may need CORS-compatible endpoints Chrome has the best WASM performance; Firefox, Edge, Safari also supported micropip can install any pure-Python wheel from PyPI at runtime For the full Pyodide built-in package list, see pyodide-packages.md