@chestnutlabs/gcode-bgcode
Binary G-code (.bgcode) decode for the Chestnut Labs G-code toolpath stack (DD-011, epic #188).
Prusa's .bgcode is a container of ordinary G-code, not a new toolpath language. This package walks
the binary block structure, verifies per-block CRC32, decompresses, decodes, and concatenates the GCode
blocks into plain G-code — which the existing parser / dialect / IR / renderer / progress pipeline
consumes unchanged. Decode-only (it never writes .bgcode), in-memory only (no filesystem, no
network), zero runtime dependencies beyond @chestnutlabs/toolpath-core and
@chestnutlabs/gcode-containers.
Licensing (why this is a clean-room decoder)
The reference libbgcode and OctoPrint-MeatPack are AGPL-3.0; none of their code is used here — the
block walker is written clean-room from the published format spec (RR-003).
The MeatPack decoder is a faithful port of the MIT jamesgopsill/meatpack
(© 2025 James Gopsill), and the heatshrink decoder is a port of the ISC
atomicobject/heatshrink (© 2013–2015 Scott Vokes) —
both attributions preserved in their source files. This package is MIT.
Status — phased (DD-011 §14)
| Capability | Status |
|---|---|
Block walker + CRC32 + sniff/open | ✅ phase 1 |
| Compression: None, DEFLATE | ✅ phase 1 |
| Encoding: None | ✅ phase 1 |
| Encoding: MeatPack (both variants) | ✅ phase 2 |
| Compression: heatshrink 11/12 | ✅ phase 3 |
| DEFLATE zlib-flavor fix + golden-equivalence killer test (real Prusa files) | ✅ phase 4 |
| Container adapter + batteries-worker registration + metadata/thumbnail surfacing | ✅ phase 4c |
| Adversarial fuzz corpus + §7 security review + decode benchmark | ✅ phase 5 |
Usage
import { openBgcode, sniffBgcode } from '@chestnutlabs/gcode-bgcode';
if (sniffBgcode(firstBytes, name)) {
const { gcode, blocks, checksum } = await openBgcode(bytes, { metadata: true });
// `gcode` is plain G-code (Uint8Array) → feed the existing parser.
}
It also registers as a container adapter in the batteries parser worker, so a .bgcode file "just
works" through GcodeParseSession (containers: 'auto') — decoded to G-code, with the machine geometry
(bed_shape) and whitelisted slicer settings surfaced as container metadata. Thumbnails are decoded and
available on openBgcodeContainer(bytes).thumbnails.
Every failure — bad magic/version, CRC mismatch, truncation, unknown/unsupported codec, or a
decompression bomb — is a structured, bounded ContainerError (never a crash or an unbounded read).