tabb

Manage Chrome browser tabs from the terminal or an AI assistant.

tabb exposes your browser tabs as a unix-style CLI and MCP server. List tabs, read their content as markdown, and close them — from your terminal or from Claude Code.

Architecture

┌──────────────┐  Native Messaging  ┌───────────────┐  Unix socket  ┌───────────┐
│   Chrome     │──(stdin/stdout)───→│    tabb       │←──────────────│ CLI / MCP │
│  Extension   │                    │  (Go binary)  │               │  clients  │
└──────────────┘                    └───────────────┘               └───────────┘

A thin Chrome extension talks to a Go binary via Chrome's Native Messaging protocol. The binary also listens on a Unix domain socket so CLI commands and MCP clients can reach your tabs. No daemon, no open ports — the binary runs only while Chrome is open.

Install

1. Install the binary

Homebrew (macOS / Linux):

brew install joelhelbling/tap/tabb

Install script (downloads a release archive, verifies its checksum, installs to ~/.local/bin):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/joelhelbling/tabb/main/install.sh | sh

From source (requires Go):

go install github.com/joelhelbling/tabb/cmd/tabb@latest

Or clone and build:

git clone https://github.com/joelhelbling/tabb.git
cd tabb
go build -o tabb ./cmd/tabb
# Move to somewhere on your PATH:
mv tabb /usr/local/bin/

2. Get the extension

If you installed from source, you already have the extension/ directory — skip to "Load the extension" below.

If you installed via Homebrew or the install script, download the unpacked extension from the latest release and unzip it:

curl -fsSL -o tabb-extension.zip \
  https://github.com/joelhelbling/tabb/releases/latest/download/tabb-extension.zip
unzip tabb-extension.zip   # creates ./extension

3. Load the extension

1. Open chrome://extensions in Chrome
2. Enable Developer mode (toggle in top right)
3. Click Load unpacked and select the extension/ directory
4. Note the extension ID shown on the extensions page

4. Set up Native Messaging

tabb setup

tabb setup walks you through two steps:

1. Paste the extension ID from step 3. The browser will only launch the native host for extension origins explicitly listed in the manifest's allowed_origins, so the ID must be authorized before the extension can connect. The manifest is written to the Native Messaging directory of every Chromium-family browser it detects on your machine (Chrome, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Arc, Chromium…).
2. Reload the extension when prompted. It connects to the now-authorized host, which records the profile so setup can detect it and ask you to name it (defaults to the browser name or "Default").

The profile name and IDs are saved to ~/.tabb/profiles.json, and a Unix socket is created at ~/.tabb/<profileId>.sock.

Multiple browsers / profiles

Run tabb setup once per browser or Chrome profile. You can also paste several extension IDs in a single run — setup keeps prompting until you press Enter on an empty line. Each profile gets its own name and socket, and all extension IDs are accumulated in the Native Messaging manifest's allowed_origins.

tabb setup   # first profile → "Default" (or browser name)
tabb setup   # second profile → prompted for a name, e.g. "Brave"

Usage

CLI

# List all tabs
tabb list

# List tabs matching a filter
tabb list react

# JSON output
tabb list --json

# Show tab content as markdown (with YAML frontmatter)
tabb show 12345

# Show raw DOM as markdown (no Readability extraction)
tabb show 12345 --raw

# Close a tab
tabb close 12345

# Focus a tab (bring to foreground)
tabb focus 12345

# Focus and reload a tab
tabb focus 12345 --reload

# List configured profiles
tabb profiles

Targeting a specific profile

If you have multiple profiles, tabb auto-detects when only one is active. With multiple active profiles, specify which one:

# Via flag
tabb --profile Brave list

# Via environment variable
TABB_PROFILE=Brave tabb list

The --profile flag takes precedence over TABB_PROFILE.

MCP Server (for Claude Code)

Add to your Claude Code MCP config (~/.claude/settings.json or project .mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tabb": {
      "command": "tabb",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

This exposes tools to Claude:

• list_tabs — list open tabs with optional filter
• show_tab — get tab content as markdown
• focus_tab — bring a tab to the foreground, optionally reload it
• close_tab — close a tab
• list_profiles — list registered browser profiles and their status

Claude Code Plugin

This repo is a Claude Code plugin marketplace. Install the plugin and the MCP server is wired up automatically:

/plugin marketplace add joelhelbling/tabb
/plugin install tabb

Prerequisite: the tabb binary must already be on your $PATH (install it via go install, make install, or the steps above). The plugin configures Claude Code to run tabb mcp; it does not install the binary itself. You also still need the Chrome extension loaded and tabb setup completed, same as for CLI use.

The plugin also ships a skill that teaches Claude Code to reach for tabb whenever you mention the browser tabs you currently have open.

Tabignore

Tabignore lets you hide sensitive tabs from tabb. Ignored tabs are filtered in the extension before any data reaches the Unix socket or CLI.

Adding patterns

• Right-click any page → "Add to tabignore" (adds the domain)
• Extension popup → manage patterns with full control over type

Pattern types

Type	Example	Matches
Domain	bank.com	All URLs on bank.com and subdomains
Domain + path	google.com/mail	Gmail specifically
Full URL	https://example.com/secret?id=123	That exact URL
Regex	bank|finance|trading	URLs matching the regex

Security

• Unix sockets (~/.tabb/<profileId>.sock) have mode 0600 — only your user can connect. Same trust model as ~/.ssh.
• Tabignore filtering happens in the extension before data leaves Chrome. Ignored tab URLs and content never reach the socket.
• No network exposure — the binary uses Native Messaging (stdin/stdout) and a Unix domain socket. No TCP ports are opened.
• Extension permissions: tabs (list tabs), scripting (read page content), nativeMessaging, contextMenus, storage. The scripting permission is required for content extraction and is only used by your local extension code.

Development

# Build
go build ./cmd/tabb

# Run the native host directly (for debugging)
tabb host

# The extension auto-reconnects every 5 seconds if the host isn't running

Changelog

2026-05-31

• Fixed: tabb setup could never register a profile — Two compounding bugs made first-time setup impossible. (1) The manifest was written with an empty allowed_origins before any extension was authorized, so the browser refused to launch the native host, so no profile was ever discovered — a chicken-and-egg deadlock introduced when the paste-the-ID step was removed. Setup now asks for the extension ID up front and authorizes it before you reload. (2) The manifest was only ever written to Google Chrome's directory; it's now written to every installed Chromium-family browser (Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Arc, Chromium, and their beta/dev channels).

2026-04-16

• focus_tab — New tool/command across extension, MCP server, and CLI. Activates a tab and brings its window to the foreground. Pass reload: true (CLI: --reload) to also refresh the page — useful for finding a lost tab or retrying a show_tab that failed due to page restrictions.
• Skill: CLI documentation — The tabb skill now documents the CLI as a first-class alternative to the MCP tools, so agents consider shell scripting for batch operations and piped workflows.
• Plugin v0.2.0 — Bumped plugin version so existing installs pick up skill updates.

2026-04-15

• Multi-browser / Multi-profile support — Fixed a bug where Chromium browsers that reuse the same extension ID across profiles (notably Vivaldi) would collide on the same Unix socket. The extension now generates a per-profile UUID stored in chrome.storage.local and sends it in the handshake. Sockets are keyed on profileId instead of extensionId. profiles.json upgraded to a structured schema; legacy format is detected and migrated on next tabb setup.
• Plugin marketplace layout — Moved Claude Code plugin assets into plugins/tabb/ so /plugin install tabb no longer copies Go source, Makefile, or extension code into users' plugin caches. Added .claude-plugin/marketplace.json so the repo can be added as a marketplace.
• tabb skill — Added a discoverability skill (plugins/tabb/skills/tabb/SKILL.md) that teaches Claude Code to reach for the tabb MCP server when the user mentions their open browser tabs.
• MCP profile support — Added a list_profiles tool and an optional profile parameter on list_tabs, show_tab, and close_tab so the AI can target a specific browser profile.
• Setup flow — tabb setup now detects new profiles by reload-and-scan instead of requiring the user to paste an extension ID.

License

MIT