bluetab

Minimal MV3 reimplementation of the brotab subset used by this project. The CLI binary is named bt.

Install from npm

npm install -g @esanchma/bluetab

The npm package depends on bun, so users do not need a separate Bun installation for normal npm-based installs.

Then load the unpacked extension from the global package directory, for example:

$(npm root -g)/@esanchma/bluetab/extension

After loading the extension, install the native messaging manifest with the extension id shown by the browser:

bt install <extension-id>

Supported surface

• bt --help
• bt install <extension-id|chrome-extension://extension-id/>
• bt clients
• bt windows
• bt list
• bt active
• bt query +active|-active +pinned|-pinned +muted|-muted -title GLOB -url GLOB
• bt activate a.<windowId>.<tabId>
• bt activate reading a tab id from stdin, compatible with pipelines such as bt list | ... | bt activate
• bt close a.<windowId>.<tabId> [...]
• printf '%s\n' https://example.com | bt open a[.<windowId>|.0]

Unsupported by design: text, html, words, index, search, and other brotab commands outside the MVP.

Build from source

bun install
bun run check
bun run build

The compiled binary is dist/bt.

Native messaging setup

bt install writes io.github.bluetab.json to the common per-user Chromium native messaging host directories, including Brave, Chrome, Chrome Beta, Chromium, Microsoft Edge, and Vivaldi.

The host name must stay io.github.bluetab, matching extension/service_worker.js.

Runtime shape

The MV3 service worker opens a native messaging connection. The bt process then acts as a small daemon on $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/bluetab.sock (usually /run/user/<uid>/bluetab.sock). CLI invocations connect to that socket and forward one command to the extension.