Before anything else at all ...your PIC MUST have Low Voltage Programming (LVP) enabled. ESPPIC will not work at all (ie:- won't even read, let alone program memory) if LVP is not set. Any modern PIC processors which you buy from a reliable source should come with this configured, but if you're using a device from a previous project, it's very likely that it won't be.

The only way to set LVP in a PIC which doesn't have it enabled is to use a "high voltage" programmer (ie:- PicKit2/3/4) to program it. There is no way around this. (You can build yourself a cheap HV programmer very easily, depending upon the contents of your spares box. Here is one project I found .)

If your ESP boots and displays the ESPPIC page, but the dump memory link (bottom LH side of the page) comes back with all zeros in the memory section and all zeros in the DEV-ID field, then there's a good chance that the LVP bit isn't set (this is, of course, assuming that your wiring to the PIC is all correct). If your HEX file is all ones, the PIC is either dead, erased, or there is a connection problem.

• Use PlatformIO. It has much more functionality than the Arduino IDE.
• Once you've initialized the project (ie:- pio init --board=esp12e), edit the platformio.ini file to add the following lines to enable the LittleFS filesystem and automagically install the WebSockets library:-

   board_build.filesystem = littlefs  
   lib_deps = links2004/WebSockets@^2.2.1  

• Copy the "assets" directory to "data" in the platformIO project directory (-not- the /src directory). This makes the web content for the ESP available to the uploadfs command.
• Use "pio build -t upload" to compile and upload to your target board. There will be several warnings during the compile; this is expected.
• Use "pio build -t uploadfs" to load the web-pages from the "data" directory to the LittleFS filesystem on the ESP8266.

The built-in pin numbers defined in the program are as follows:

• Target RESET - Pin D0
• Target PGD/DAT - Pin D1
• Target PGC/CLK - Pin D2

If you wish to power the PIC with the 3.3v LDO built into the ESP "programmer", keep in mind the LD1117 can't handle much more current than the ESP currently draws. You'll need to wire the 3.3v supply pins on the PIC to the 3.3v pin on the ESP separately.

• v0.1 - Can flash/read code & configs to a PIC16F1705. The code flashed is hardcoded as hex data in an array of strings in the esp code.

• v0.2 - Implemented web interface, can upload files. Read and flash config from web.