The CGI slave provides a way to execute CGI programs without the need to have a running web server. This can for example be used for local testing of CGI programs or for using search engines that only provide a CGI frontend like the one from Doxygen.

The slave implements the cgi: protocol. It uses the filename from the given URL and searches a configurable list of folders. If it finds an executable with the given name it executes it, passes the arguments of the URL and sets the environment variables needed by CGI programs.