Tabslab: AI Browser Workspace
A Chrome extension that turns a messy browser into organised workspaces, with AI tab grouping, page summaries, task extraction and semantic search over your saved items.
Overview
Tabslab (first built as BrowserMate) is a Manifest V3 Chrome extension with a popup, a side-panel assistant and a full dashboard. It groups open tabs, saves and restores workspaces, summarises the current page, turns pages into tasks and notes, and runs a focus mode. AI calls go through a small Node backend so no API key lives in the extension, and accounts sync through Supabase.
The problem
With dozens of tabs open, research, work and distractions get mixed together: context is lost when the browser closes, notes and to-dos end up elsewhere, and sending page content to an AI tool raises privacy concerns.
What I built
I built the extension in React, TypeScript, Vite and Tailwind with a local-first design: page content is read only when the user clicks an AI action, and an optional preview shows the exact payload before it is sent. A Node proxy calls the LLM (Gemini or any OpenAI-compatible API such as DeepSeek), validates inputs and model outputs with Zod, rate-limits requests and applies a daily quota on the free plan. Saved items are embedded and ranked by cosine similarity to answer questions about your browser memory. Supabase handles accounts and cloud sync, Paddle handles subscriptions, and the backend runs in Docker behind Caddy on a VM, deployed by GitHub Actions.
Results
- Popup, side panel, dashboard and options page in one Manifest V3 extension
- Interface and AI replies in 7 languages
- Unit tests with Vitest for services, stores, sync merging and the backend prompts and schemas
- Backend deployed with Docker and Caddy (automatic HTTPS) through a GitHub Actions SSH deploy
Highlights
- AI tab grouping that can create real Chrome tab groups
- Page summary with key points, and extraction of 3 to 5 tasks into a Kanban board with reminders
- Semantic search over workspaces, tabs, notes and tasks with embeddings
- Focus mode that mutes, blocks or hides distracting tabs
- Privacy by design: read on click, request preview, keys kept server-side
- Supabase cloud sync and Paddle subscriptions
