BoreConnect: Streamlining Public URL Exposure via a Unified Web Interface for Bore CLI

Abstract

Public URL exposure of local services is frequently required during rapid prototyping, remote debugging, and short-lived integration testing. Although tunnelling utilities such as Bore offer a lightweight mechanism for NAT traversal, their terminal-centric workflow introduces avoidable operational friction: manual command construction, repeated context switching between terminal and browser, and error-prone transcription of relay-assigned endpoints. This paper presents BoreConnect, a Spring Boot control plane that manages an unmodified Bore CLI instance as a supervised operating-system process and publishes the discovered public endpoint through a web interface and REST endpoints. BoreConnect continuously drains the CLI output stream to prevent blocking, extracts the relay-assigned port using regular-expression matching, and exposes the resulting public URL via a status API for near-real-time consumption by a browser client. A test structure takes shape through clear cause-and-effect measures, built around numbers that track how fast tunnels form, how often they work, mistakes by users, shifts between tasks, and system load. Variables are split into what changes and what responds, forming a backbone for checking real-world performance without guesswork creeping in. Metrics land firmly on timing, accuracy, repetition, effort gaps, and demand on tools. Each piece connects not just logically but through observable results piling up over trials.