Or instead it reads like someone thoughtfully came up with a minimal design and then iterated on that based on real world feedback for what is actually useful i

Or instead it reads like someone thoughtfully came up with a minimal design and then iterated on that based on real world feedback for what is actually useful in this context. Your only actual complaints were "weird global state" and "no API". I look forward to seeing you design a protocol that involves two way communication between two unrelated entities that avoids some shared state between them. As for no API, this is a protocol specification. if you need an API so badly go browse NPM.