Quiet Field

Every new tab becomes a calm color field in the spirit of Rothko — original, procedurally generated artwork keyed to the time of day (and, optionally, your local weather).

 Manifest V3 · TypeScript · Vite · zero-warning install

A Chrome/Brave/Edge extension that overrides the new-tab page. Inspired by Current Rothko, reworked for the new-tab context: it must paint instantly, offline, with no flash, leave focus in the address bar, and never trigger an unrequested permission prompt.

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Highlights

• Original generative art, not reproductions. The default Fields collection is generated — six color-field composition archetypes, each in the spirit of a painter (Rothko, Albers, Newman, Frankenthaler, Agnes Martin, Clyfford Still) — so it's copyright-free and publishable with a zero-warning install.
• Contextual. A curated palette/register is chosen for the current time of day; opt-in weather refines it further. The same moment + seed always yields the same piece.
• Instant & offline. Paints synchronously on first frame from a localStorage mirror — no flash, no network, no async storage read on the paint path. Focus stays in the omnibox.
• Honest attribution. Every piece names its provenance in the caption (generated vs. a real painting, and who it's attributed to). See Attribution.
• Accessible. WCAG-AA contrast for captions over any artwork, prefers-reduced-motion and prefers-color-scheme respected.

Collections

Three selectable collections (cog → Collection):

• Fields — generated color-field art. Original, copyright-free, publishable.
• Abstract — real public-domain abstraction, contextually matched (Kandinsky, Klee, Mondrian, Malevich, Hilma af Klint, late near-abstract Turner, and atmospheric PD painters). Sourced from Wikimedia Commons; safe to publish.
• Hopper — Edward Hopper, framed. Personal/unpacked build only — Hopper is under US copyright (rights: "personal"). See Artwork & rights.

Install (load unpacked)

pnpm install
pnpm build
# Chrome → chrome://extensions · Brave → brave://extensions · Edge → edge://extensions
# Enable "Developer mode" → "Load unpacked" → select ./dist

Open a new tab. The Fields collection works immediately on a fresh clone (it needs no images). Abstract and Hopper require downloading their images first — see below.

A plain Chromium browser (Chrome/Edge) gives the cleanest full-bleed result. Brave injects its own new-tab footer bar over extension new-tab pages, which the extension cannot remove.

Develop

pnpm dev            # http://localhost:5173/newtab.html — full HMR; chrome.* is stubbed
pnpm test           # vitest — the pure core: selection, palettes, attribution, clock, rng
pnpm build          # tsc --noEmit && vite build  ->  dist/  (personal: all collections)
pnpm build:publish  # public-domain-only build (no Hopper) for the Web Store
pnpm package:publish # build:publish + zip dist/ -> quiet-field.zip
pnpm icons          # regenerate the icon set into public/icons/

Painting images (Abstract + Hopper)

Downloaded images live in public/art/stillness/ and are not committed (they're reproducible artifacts; Hopper is also in copyright). The catalog metadata and curation sources are committed, so regenerate the images with:

node scripts/generate-catalog.mjs   # sources in data/curation/, writes src/core/stills.ts + images

This downloads from Wikimedia Commons (politely, with rate-limit backoff) and downscales locally with sips. The Fields collection is fully generated and needs no images.

Architecture

Pure core, impure shell. core/selection.ts, core/attribution.ts and render/fields.ts are pure and do no I/O; newtab.ts gathers the moment and calls them, painting synchronously before any await.

src/
  newtab.html       critical CSS inlined; base tone from prefers-color-scheme pre-JS
  newtab.ts         impure shell: synchronous paint, then async reconcile
  core/
    rng.ts          seeded PRNG (mulberry32) — determinism
    palettes.ts     hand-curated color registers (the product)
    selection.ts    selectPiece(context, seed) — pure, testable heart
    attribution.ts  honest provenance lines (generated vs. real)
    stills.ts       generated paintings catalog (metadata only)
    types.ts
  render/
    fields.ts       soft-edged field renderer (6 archetypes; SVG turbulence + grain)
    present.ts      gallery wall, framing, caption, ambient line
    image.ts        representational renderer (focal crop)
  context/
    clock.ts        time-of-day / season / seed — no permission, no network
    weather.ts      opt-in geolocation + Open-Meteo; off the paint path
  ui/panel.ts       inline settings panel
  storage.ts        chrome.storage + synchronous localStorage mirror

The generative engine has six composition archetypes, weighted so Rothko-style bands stays dominant: bands (Rothko), squares (Albers), zips (Newman), veils (Frankenthaler), grid (Agnes Martin), cleave (Clyfford Still). Adding a seventh is a compile error until it's handled everywhere (exhaustiveness-checked).

Weather (opt-in)

Toggle Match the weather in settings: it asks for your location once, then uses Open-Meteo (no API key) to pick art that fits the sky, with a rain · 18° line and your city in the caption. It runs entirely off the paint path — the tab paints instantly from a cached reading, then refreshes in the background. Geolocation is an optional permission — install never asks for location; the extension requests it (together with the two weather-API hosts) only when you flip the toggle, and a denial reverts the toggle and falls back cleanly to time-of-day.

Attribution

Every caption states what a piece is, so a generated work is never mistaken for a real one (src/core/attribution.ts):

• Generated Fields → Generated · in the spirit of <painter>. These are original works, not reproductions — most of those painters are still in copyright, which is exactly why we emulate rather than copy. (Style is not copyrightable; nothing is reproduced.)
• Real paintings → their actual artist, title, and year, plus a Public domain or In copyright · personal use provenance line.

Artwork & rights

The MIT LICENSE covers the source code and the generated Fields art only — not any third-party painting reproductions. The separation is clean by construction:

• No painting images are committed to this repository. They are downloaded locally at build time (scripts/generate-catalog.mjs) onto each user's own machine. What is committed is metadata only — titles, Wikimedia filenames, years, tags — which are facts, not copyrightable.
• Abstract images are public domain (artists died 70+ years ago). Free to use and publish.
• Hopper images are still under US copyright (rights: "personal"). They are for the personal/unpacked build only and must not be redistributed. This is enforced, not just documented: pnpm build:publish narrows the selection pool to rights === "pd", hides the Hopper edition in both settings UIs, and scripts/prune-personal.mjs physically deletes every in-copyright image from dist/ and fails the build if any remain. (Inert catalog metadata — titles, filenames, years, i.e. facts — may remain in the JS bundle, the same way stills.ts is committed; no in-copyright image is ever selected, rendered, or shipped.)
• Downloads come from Wikimedia Commons; complying with the source's terms is the user's responsibility.

In short: the repository itself contains no copyrighted artwork, and the per-collection rights above govern what you may do with images you download.

Publishing to the Chrome Web Store

rights: "pd" is the single source of truth for what may be published. To prepare a store build:

pnpm package:publish   # public-domain-only build + zip -> quiet-field.zip

Upload quiet-field.zip in the developer dashboard. See STORE_LISTING.md for the listing copy, permission justifications, data-use disclosures, and the asset/pre-submit checklist, and PRIVACY.md for the privacy policy (host it and link its URL in the dashboard).

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. Please:

1. Keep the pure core pure (no DOM/I/O in core/); the renderer stays a pure function of a piece.
2. Add tests for core logic (pnpm test) and keep pnpm build (tsc + vite) clean.
3. Don't commit downloaded images, and don't add in-copyright artwork as anything other than rights: "personal".

License

MIT © 2026 Bruno Belcastro. Generated artwork is part of the licensed work; third-party painting reproductions are not — see Artwork & rights.