The Web Clipper extension

Install the browser extension, point it at your Trail, and clip any web page into a knowledge base with one click. Covers setup, the API token, what the extension can and cannot see, and what each error message means.

The Web Clipper is a browser extension that saves the page you are reading straight into a Trail knowledge base. One click, no copy-paste, and the page arrives as a Source that Trail compiles into Neurons like any other upload.

It is idle until you click it. It does not follow your browsing.

Availability. The extension is not in the Chrome Web Store yet — it is being submitted. Until it is approved, there is a download below; it installs in four steps and needs no development tools. A Safari version follows as a signed Mac app, because Safari does not accept bare web extensions.

Install (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc)

Any Chromium browser will load it. You do not need the repository, and you do not need to build anything.

  1. Download trail-web-clipper-0.1.0.zip and unzip it. Put the folder somewhere permanent — see the warning below.
  2. Open chrome://extensions.
  3. Turn on Developer mode (top right).
  4. Click Load unpacked and choose the unzipped folder.
  5. Pin Trail Web Clipper to the toolbar from the puzzle-piece menu.

Chrome will warn you about developer mode on every startup — "Disable developer mode extensions". That is Chrome objecting to any extension not installed from its own store, not a fault in this one. It stops once the store version is live, which is the main reason the store submission is worth waiting for.

Keep the folder, and do not move it. Chrome runs the extension from that folder rather than copying it. Delete it, move it, or empty your Downloads and Chrome silently drops the extension — usually noticed after a restart, when the icon is simply gone. A store install removes this problem permanently, because Chrome then owns the copy.

This download does not update itself. When the store version is approved, remove this one and install from the store instead.

Building it yourself (optional)

Only if you have the repository and want to change something:

cd apps/web-clipper && pnpm build

This produces apps/web-clipper/dist, and that is the folder to load — not the folder above it. The folder above holds TypeScript source, which no browser can run: the extension loads, its background script never starts, and the panel opens empty with no error to click on. The source folder deliberately contains no manifest.json, so Chrome refuses it outright with "Manifest file is missing or unreadable" rather than half-loading it into a silent failure.

Point it at your Trail

Open the extension and click Settings. Two buttons pick the server for you:

Button Address When
Use cloud https://app.trailmem.com the default — works whether or not your own machine is running
Use local http://127.0.0.1:58031 only while your own Trail engine is running

Choose local and a clip is lost whenever that server is down. That is why the cloud is the default.

Get an API token

The token is what proves a clip is yours. The extension ships without one, deliberately — a token baked into an extension would be a published credential.

  1. Open the Trail you chose above.
  2. Go to Settings → Developer.
  3. Click Generate new key.
  4. Copy it immediately — it is shown once and never again.
  5. In the extension: Settings → API Token, paste, Save & Connect.

The token must belong to the server you selected. A token from a local engine will not work against the cloud, and the other way round — they are separate systems with separate accounts. The extension will say so if you mix them up.

Clip a page

  1. Open an article.
  2. Click the Trail icon.
  3. Pick a knowledge base and, if you like, add tags.
  4. Clip.

The status line shows which Trail the clip will land in before you click, so a clip never quietly goes somewhere you did not intend.

The page arrives as a Source. From there it follows the normal path: Trail extracts it, compiles it, and the resulting Neurons appear in the curation queue for review.

What the extension can see

It asks for the narrowest set of permissions that still allows clipping:

Permission Why
activeTab read the page you are on — only at the moment you click
scripting run the extraction code on that page, on that click
storage remember your server address and token, on your own device
access to app.trailmem.com and 127.0.0.1 the two Trail servers it may upload to

There is no background script running on the pages you visit. The extractor is injected when you click and is gone afterwards. If you configure a different Trail server, your browser asks your permission for that specific address at that point, rather than everyone granting it up front.

Your token and server address stay in the browser's local extension storage on your own machine. The token is sent to exactly one place: the Trail server you configured, as the credential for your own upload.

When something goes wrong

The extension tells you what actually failed rather than showing an empty panel:

Message What it means What to do
Not configured — add your API token in settings no token yet see Get an API token
Can't reach <address> the server did not answer is it running? is the address right?
<address> refused the API token (401) the server answered and rejected the token the token is revoked, or belongs to the other server — generate a new one
Content script did not respond the page did not answer in time reload the page and clip again

An extension that shows an empty panel with no message at all is a different problem: its background script failed to start. Open chrome://extensions, look for the red Errors button on the Trail card, and check that the folder you loaded is dist.

Browser-internal pages (chrome://…), the extension store itself, and PDF viewers cannot be clipped. Browsers do not let extensions read them, and no setting changes that.

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