Slate

Organize your work as projects in Chrome - each project gets its own window with its own saved tabs and tab groups. Switch contexts instantly. Never lose your place.

Features

• Project = window. Each project owns a Chrome window. Closing the window saves the tab set; reopening the project restores it.
• Tab groups preserved. Group titles, colors, and collapsed state are saved with the project.
• Pinned tabs preserved. Pinned state is restored on reopen.
• Active tab restored. The tab that was active when you last closed the window is reactivated.
• Toolbar badge shows the current project's initials in its color, per window.
• Side panel manager for renaming, reordering (drag & drop), changing icons/colors, and deleting projects. Deleting a project unlinks its window without closing it.
• Icon picker with 335 curated Lucide icons + image upload (PNG/JPG/SVG/WebP up to 512 KB).
• Import / export all projects as JSON.
• Optional CLI to open/close projects from your shell.
• 100% local. No accounts, no servers, no telemetry. See PRIVACY.md.

Install

From the Chrome Web Store

(Pending publication.)

From source (development)

Requires Node.js 18+.

npm install
npm run build

Then in Chrome:

1. Open chrome://extensions
2. Enable Developer mode (top right)
3. Click Load unpacked and select this directory

Usage

• Create a project - click the toolbar icon → New Project, or in the side panel.
• Switch projects - click the toolbar icon and pick a project from the list. Its window is opened or focused.
• Assign an existing window - open the popup in a window with no project assigned, click Create project from this window.
• Manage projects - click the gear icon in the popup to open the side panel.
• Reorder - drag projects in the side panel.
• Import/export - buttons in the side panel header.

CLI (optional)

A small bash wrapper lets you control Slate from the command line:

slate open "Work"
slate close "Work"
slate list

See cli/README.md for setup.

Build

npm install              # install esbuild + types
npm run build            # one-shot build
npm run watch            # rebuild on change
npm run typecheck        # strict TS check, no emit

Output:

• dist/service-worker.js - background service worker
• src/popup/popup.js - popup bundle
• src/manager/manager.js - side-panel manager bundle

Project layout

manifest.json              MV3 manifest
src/
  background/              service worker, tab sync, window tracking, startup reconciler
  popup/                   toolbar popup
  manager/                 side-panel project manager (icon picker, drag reorder, import/export)
  cli/                     hidden cli.html shim invoked by the bash wrapper
  models/                  shared types
  storage/                 chrome.storage.local adapter
assets/                    icons + Lucide JSON
cli/slate                  optional bash CLI wrapper

Permissions

Slate requests only what it needs:

• tabs, tabGroups - read URLs/titles/group state to save and restore project tab sets
• storage - store projects in chrome.storage.local
• sidePanel - show the project manager in Chrome's side panel

No host permissions, no content scripts, no network access. See PRIVACY.md.

Requirements

Chrome 119 or newer (per-window action APIs).

License

MIT - see LICENSE.