peek-mode is a minor mode that publishes live Emacs buffers through an elnode server under http://:/peek/. Turning on peek-mode in a buffer will publish it. To unpublish a buffer, toggle peek-mode off. peek-mode is (very very!) largely based on Brian Taylor's impatient-mode However, impatient-mode does not use elnode, but rather a different emacs httpd backend . I consider peek-mode as "impatient-mode ported to elnode". Start the elnode server (`elnode-start') and visit http://:/peek/. There will be a listing of all the buffers that currently have peek-mode enabled. You can evaluate the line below to start the elnode server on localhost:8008 with the proper dispatcher, assuming the code in this file is available by having loaded it. (elnode-start 'peek-mode-dispatcher-handler :port 8008 :host "localhost") Because html-mode buffers are sent raw, you can use peek-mode see your edits to an HTML document live! To receive updates the browser issues a long poll on the client waiting for the buffer to change -- server push. The response happens in an `after-change-functions' hook. Buffers that do not run these hooks will not be displayed live to clients.