Anya

github copilot for your browser. powered by the copilot sdk.

Anya is an MV3 sidebar extension for any Chromium-based browser — Edge, Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Vivaldi, Arc — that talks to a local Node bridge wrapping @github/copilot-sdk. On top of Copilot's standard tools (files, shell, sub-agents, MCP), Anya adds browser-native powers: it reads your tabs, searches bookmarks, checks history, drives pages via Playwright, and lets you right-click anything on a page to attach it as context.

_{Summarize a PR. Reads the diff tab, drafts the review.}

_{Draft a review comment. You approve before it posts.}

Anya filing a pull request into a new bookmarks folder.

_{Organize bookmarks. "File this under Code Reviews" — done.}

┌────────────────────┐    JSON frames    ┌────────────────────┐
│  Browser sidebar   │ ◀─────────────▶   │  Node bridge       │
│  chat UI · 📎 menu │  Native Messaging │  @github/copilot-  │
│  context chips     │                   │  sdk + tools       │
└────────────────────┘                   └────────────────────┘
        ↑                                          │
        │ right-click · Alt+A · field tracking     │ shells out to
        │                                          ▼
   page-bridge.ts                           playwright-cli
   (content script)

What you get

Browser tools, autonomous. Anya reads tabs, searches bookmarks, checks history, lists open tabs, reads selections — on its own. Just ask.
"Add to Anya" context menu. Right-click any element, field, link, or selection on a page. Anya captures it as a context chip with the element's text, tagged with data-anya-ctx for fresh re-reads.
📎 attach menu + @ references. Click 📎 or type @tab, @selection, @clipboard, @tabs, @bookmark:query in the composer. All produce the same context chips — attachments are the content, @ tokens are just labels.
Field fill. Focus a text field, ask Anya what to write. One click inserts the response — dispatches input + change events so React / Angular / Vue forms pick it up.
Voice in & out. 🎤 to dictate — interim words stream live into the composer; 🔊 to hear replies, streamed sentence-by-sentence or read at end of turn. TTS is local; speech-to-text uses the browser's Web Speech API. First use grants mic access once via a small permission window.
Playwright automation. drive_tab, drive_browser, drive_context, drive_devtools — Anya drives your real, logged-in browser. Same cookies, same session.
Local folders. Attach a folder via 📎 → the SDK loads skills, prompts, and file tools from that repo.
Multi-chat with persistence. Drawer with pin, tag, search, rename, delete, export to Markdown. Survives restarts via chrome.storage.local.
Streaming + tool cards. Token-by-token streaming. Every tool call renders as an expandable card with args, progress, and result preview.
Approval for write tools. Toggle "Require approval for write tools" in the 🔧 tools panel. When on, Anya asks before running any write/shell/MCP tool — you Allow or Deny each call. Read tools always auto-approve. Off by default.
Live debug panel. 🐛 button traces every Native Messaging frame.
Hotkeys + slash commands. Ctrl+B/N/K/L/., Ctrl+1..9, plus /help, /pin, /stop, /tag, /clear, /export, /open.
Nothing leaves your machine. No Anya server, no telemetry, no cloud sync. Chats in chrome.storage, bridge on localhost.

See design.md for the full architecture.

Repo layout

Anya/
├── README.md
├── design.md                     # architecture spec
├── setup.ps1                     # one-shot install/build/register (PowerShell 7+)
├── setup.sh                      # one-shot install/build/register (bash)
├── extension/                    # Chromium MV3 extension (Lit + Vite)
│   ├── manifest.json
│   ├── sidebar.html
│   ├── vite.config.ts
│   └── src/
│       ├── main.ts               # <anya-app> Lit component (UI, chat, tools, attachments)
│       ├── styles.ts             # extracted CSS
│       ├── types.ts              # ContextAttachment, ChatMessage, Chat, etc.
│       ├── native-bridge.ts      # chrome.runtime.connectNative wrapper
│       ├── background.ts         # side panel + "Add to Anya" context menu
│       ├── speech/               # Web Speech STT/TTS + mic-permission helper window
│       └── page-bridge.ts        # content script: element capture, field tracking, fill
└── bridge/                       # Node Native Messaging host
    ├── manifest.template.json
    ├── launcher.cmd / launcher.sh
    ├── install.ps1 / install.sh
    ├── uninstall.ps1 / uninstall.sh
    └── src/
        ├── host.ts               # NM stdio loop + frame router + folder-pick
        ├── copilot-bridge.ts     # SessionManager (one CopilotSession per chat)
        ├── sessions.ts           # CDP Playwright session manager
        ├── tools.ts              # SDK tool definitions
        ├── tool-rpc.ts           # bridge → extension RPC
        ├── native-messaging.ts   # length-prefixed JSON framing
        ├── config.ts             # ~/.anya/config.json loader
        ├── paths.ts              # cross-platform data-dir resolver
        └── log.ts                # bridge.log + debug-mirror sink

AGENTS.md at the repo root onboards any AI agent (Copilot CLI, Cursor, etc.) working on the codebase. Anya's own system prompt is .github/agents/anya.agent.md — a Copilot CLI custom-agent profile loaded by bridge/src/copilot-bridge.ts.

Install

Requirements

Windows, macOS, or Linux
Node 20+ (node -v)
A shell to drive the installer:
- PowerShell 7+ (pwsh) on any OS — runs setup.ps1. Comes with Windows 11 / Server 2022; on macOS/Linux: brew install powershell / [microsoft.com/powershell].
- bash — runs setup.sh. Native on macOS/Linux. On Windows use Git Bash, MSYS2, or Cygwin (any of these ship cygpath and reg.exe is on PATH). Inside WSL, setup.sh will install for browsers running inside WSL — to register Windows-host browsers from WSL, invoke setup.ps1 via pwsh.exe/cmd.exe interop instead.
A Chromium-based browser with developer-mode extensions enabled. Anya is installed and tested in: Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Vivaldi, Arc (Arc is Windows + macOS only — no Linux build).
A GitHub Copilot subscription (Individual, Business, or Enterprise) with the Copilot CLI logged in (copilot auth status)
@playwright/cli for browser automation: npm i -g @playwright/cli
Remote debugging enabled in your browser — open edge://inspect/#remote-debugging (or chrome://inspect/... etc.) and check "Allow remote debugging for this browser instance". This is needed for Anya to drive tabs via CDP.

One-line install (recommended)

PowerShell 7+ on Windows, macOS, or Linux:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aasis21/Anya/main/install.ps1 | iex

bash on macOS or Linux:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aasis21/Anya/main/install.sh | bash

Either clones the repo to ~/Anya and runs setup.ps1 / setup.sh for you. To customise:

# PowerShell — pass through args
& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aasis21/Anya/main/install.ps1))) `
    -InstallDir D:\code\Anya -Branch main -Browsers edge,chrome

# bash — pass through args after `--`
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aasis21/Anya/main/install.sh | bash -s -- \
    --install-dir ~/code/Anya --branch main --browsers chrome,brave

Developing locally

If you want to hack on Anya (modify the bridge, the extension, the agent prompt, etc.), clone it manually and run setup.ps1 directly so your edits aren't blown away by the bootstrap re-clone:

# PowerShell 7+ — Windows, macOS, or Linux
git clone https://github.com/aasis21/Anya.git
cd Anya
.\setup.ps1

# bash — Windows (Git Bash / MSYS2 / Cygwin), macOS, or Linux
git clone https://github.com/aasis21/Anya.git
cd Anya
./setup.sh

This runs npm install + npm run build for both projects, the bridge ping smoke test, then registers the Native Messaging host for every Chromium browser detected on the machine and prints the per-browser load instructions. If multiple browsers are present you'll get an interactive picker.

Switch (`setup.ps1`)	Flag (`setup.sh`)	Effect
`-Browsers edge`	`--browsers edge`	Register only for the named browser(s). Valid: `edge`, `chrome`, `chromium`, `brave`, `vivaldi`, `arc`, `all`.
`-Quiet`	`--quiet`	Skip the interactive picker; install for everything detected.
`-SkipTest`	`--skip-test`	Skip the bridge ping/pong smoke test.
`-Uninstall`	`--uninstall`	Remove the NM host entries from every Chromium browser.

How registration works on each OS

OS	Mechanism	Where
Windows	HKCU registry	`HKCU:\Software\<vendor>\<browser>\NativeMessagingHosts\com.anya.bridge` → manifest
macOS	File drop	`~/Library/Application Support/<vendor>/<browser>/NativeMessagingHosts/com.anya.bridge.json`
Linux	File drop	`~/.config/<vendor>/<browser>/NativeMessagingHosts/com.anya.bridge.json`

Bridge runtime data lives at:

OS	Path
Windows	`%LOCALAPPDATA%\Anya\`
macOS	`~/Library/Application Support/Anya/`
Linux	`${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/Anya/`

Load the extension in each browser

Once the bridge is registered you need to load the unpacked extension in each browser you plan to use Anya in. The manifest pins a deterministic extension ID (oopdnihjfloclgnbbkebgeiipfadebid) via its key field, so the same ID is granted Native Messaging access in every browser.

Browser	Extensions URL
Edge	`edge://extensions`
Chrome	`chrome://extensions`
Brave	`brave://extensions`
Vivaldi	`vivaldi://extensions`
Chromium	`chrome://extensions`
Arc	`arc://extensions`

In each:

Toggle Developer mode.
Load unpacked → pick extension/dist/.
Confirm the extension ID matches oopdnihjfloclgnbbkebgeiipfadebid.
Pin the action icon → click it → sidebar opens.

Smoke test

Type ping → should answer PONG. This validates the bridge handshake without involving the Copilot SDK.
Type a real prompt → streamed response with inline tool cards.

Updating

Run the same one-liner you used to install:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aasis21/Anya/main/install.ps1 | iex

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aasis21/Anya/main/install.sh | bash

If the repo already exists at ~/Anya, the installer pulls the latest changes (git pull --ff-only) and re-runs setup.ps1 to rebuild everything. Same command to install and update.

If you cloned manually for development:

cd Anya
git pull
.\setup.ps1

After updating, reload the extension in your browser (edge://extensions → Reload).

Uninstalling

# Remove bridge registration from all browsers
cd ~/Anya
.\setup.ps1 -Uninstall

cd ~/Anya
./setup.sh --uninstall

This removes the Native Messaging registry entries / manifest files. Then manually remove the unpacked extension from your browser and delete the ~/Anya folder if you no longer need it.

Using the sidebar

Header

Icon	Action
☰	Toggle the chat drawer (`Ctrl+B`)
＋	New chat (`Ctrl+N`)
🐛	Toggle the bridge debug panel
⋯	Menu: Remote Debug, Debug Log, Dark Theme

Tools panel

Open via the 🔧 pill in the composer bar.

Toggle individual tools on/off across 4 groups: Browser Context, Browser Actions, Playwright Connection, Playwright Driving.
"Require approval for write tools" toggle — when ON, Anya pauses before executing any write/shell/MCP tool and shows an approval banner above the composer with Allow / Deny buttons. Read-only tools (tab content, history, selections, bookmarks search) always auto-approve. Off by default.
"all on" / "all off" buttons for quick bulk toggling.

Chat drawer

⌕ — search chats (Ctrl+K)
＋ — new chat (Ctrl+N)
★ / ☆ — pin / unpin (pinned chats float to the top)
✎ — rename
⬇ — export to Markdown
× — delete (asks for confirmation)
Tag chips — click to filter; click all to clear
Per-row stats — N msg · ~T tok · age (relative time)

Context attachments

Anya uses a unified context attachment system. Content arrives as attachments (context chips above the composer). The user's message text contains @-reference tokens that point back to those attachments.

Attachments are the content. @ tokens are labels.

Three ways to attach:

Method	What happens
Right-click → "Add to Anya"	Captures the element, field, link, selection, or page you clicked. Smart walk-up finds meaningful containers.
📎 menu	Click 📎 in the composer → attach current tab, all tabs, clipboard, bookmarks, history, local folder.
`@` autocomplete	Type `@` → pick from the list. Same attachments, keyboard-first.

All three call attach(kind) → commitAttachment(chip) → inject @refLabel at cursor.

Attachment kinds

@ token	Kind	What's captured
`@tab`	🌐 tab	Full active tab content (≤5K inline, ref for full)
`@selection`	✂️ selection	Highlighted text on the page
`@clipboard`	📋 clipboard	System clipboard text
`@tabs`	📑 tabs	Markdown table of every open tab
`@url`	🔗 url	Active tab URL
`@title`	📌 title	Active tab title
`@tab:query`	🌐 tab	One tab by id or title/url search
`@bookmark:query`	🔖 bookmark	Bookmark search results
`@element:Name`	📄 element	Right-clicked DOM element
`@field:Name`	✏️ field	Right-clicked text field (for AI fill)
`@link:Name`	🔗 link	Right-clicked link (URL + text)
`@image:name`	🖼️ image	Pasted/dropped image
`@folder:name`	📁 folder	Local project folder

How it reaches the model

[Context — attached by the user]
[1] 🌐 PR #4521 — ref: @tab (25,412 chars)
... first 5,000 chars ...
→ call get_tab_content({ tabId: 42 }) for full text

[2] 📄 Change summary — ref: @element:Change-summary (847 chars)
Change summary: Why? PR1 of a 3-PR Redis migration...

[Message]
summarize @tab and compare with @element:Change-summary

@ tokens stay as-is in the text. The real content is in the numbered attachments. The model reads from there.

`/` — slash commands

Client-side only. Never sent to the model.

Command	Action
`/new`	Start a fresh chat (`Ctrl+N`)
`/clear`	Wipe the current chat (`Ctrl+L`)
`/rename [title]`	Rename current chat (no arg → inline edit)
`/delete`	Delete current chat
`/pin`	Toggle pin for the current chat
`/tag add\|rm <name>`	Add or remove a tag
`/tag list`	List tags on the current chat
`/search [query]`	Open chat search, optionally pre-filled (`Ctrl+K`)
`/export`	Download the current chat as Markdown
`/stop`	Cancel the in-flight stream (`Ctrl+.`)
`/open <folder>`	Open a new chat rooted in a local folder
`/help`	Print this list inside the chat

Hotkeys

Key	Action
`Ctrl+B`	Toggle chat drawer
`Ctrl+N`	New chat
`Ctrl+K`	Search chats
`Ctrl+L`	Clear current chat
`Ctrl+.`	Cancel in-flight stream
`Ctrl+1..9`	Switch to the Nth chat in drawer order
`Ctrl+/`	Cycle through quick-prompt templates
`Esc`	Close drawer / search / debug

Per-message actions

Hover any message and click ⋯ to copy, delete, or (on user messages) re-send the same prompt as a fresh turn.

Stop generating

While a response is streaming, the send button becomes a red stop button. Pressing it (or Ctrl+.) flips a soft-cancel flag that ignores any remaining deltas. Note: the bridge keeps streaming on its end — the SDK does not yet expose abort() — so we just stop painting.

Browser automation (Playwright)

Anya can drive your real, logged-in browser — any Chromium-based browser with remote debugging enabled. The flow:

Enable remote debugging: open edge://inspect/#remote-debugging (or chrome://inspect/... for Chrome) and check the box.
The agent calls connect_browser to attach via CDP.
Now the agent's drive_* tools can drive any tab — open, switch, close, click, type, screenshot, etc.
disconnect_browser releases control; the browser stays open.

Debug panel

Click 🐛 in the header for a live trace of every Native Messaging frame and every log() line from the bridge. Click any row to expand its JSON. The bridge log file path is shown at the top — click to copy. From DevTools: anya.debug().

For terminal tailing:

.\scripts\tail-bridge-log.ps1

Development

cd extension && npm run dev      # Vite watches src/
cd bridge    && npm run build    # tsc; rerun after .ts changes

Logs go to the bridge log file (also live in the 🐛 panel):

OS	Log file
Windows	`%LOCALAPPDATA%\Anya\bridge.log`
macOS	`~/Library/Application Support/Anya/bridge.log`
Linux	`${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/Anya/bridge.log`

Sidebar shows "disconnected" and bridge.log is missing/empty (macOS especially): Chrome/Edge/Brave launch Native Messaging hosts with a minimal environment that does not include your login shell's PATH. If Node was installed via nvm/volta/asdf/homebrew rather than Apple's or Node's official installer, the launcher's bare node call can fail to resolve — the host process exits before it ever writes a log line. bridge/launcher.sh handles this by caching the exact node path install.sh/install.ps1 used (in bridge/.node-path) and falling back to common install locations; re-run ./setup.sh (or install.ps1) after a Node version change so the cache stays fresh.

The extension keypair lives at .extension-key.pem (gitignored). Its public key is baked into extension/manifest.json so the extension ID stays stable across reloads — that matters because the bridge's Native Messaging manifest whitelists exactly that ID.

UI testing without touching your daily browser: see "UI testing (Playwright, isolated from your live browser)" in AGENTS.md for driving the real built sidebar (live bridge, real tool calls, real streamed replies) from a throwaway Chromium instance.

File-by-file

Extension (extension/src/):

main.ts — <anya-app> Lit component. UI state, chat store, frame handler, tool RPC, context attachment system (attach → commitAttachment), 📎 menu, and the render tree.
styles.ts — extracted CSS (one big css tagged template).
types.ts — ContextAttachment, ChatMessage, Chat, AttachmentKind, ATTACHMENT_VALUE_CAP, etc.
native-bridge.ts — wraps chrome.runtime.connectNative with auto-reconnect.
background.ts — side panel behavior + "Add to Anya" context menu registration.
page-bridge.ts — content script on every page: captures right-clicked elements (smart DOM walk-up), tracks focused text fields, handles fill commands, safeSend wrapper for extension context invalidation.

Bridge (bridge/src/):

host.ts — Native Messaging stdio loop. Routes frames to the SessionManager, tool/RPC handlers, and folder-pick dialog.
copilot-bridge.ts — SessionManager. One CopilotClient shared, one CopilotSession per chat id, lazy-created and cached.
sessions.ts — CDP Playwright session manager. Connects via playwright-cli attach --cdp, provides runPlaywrightCmd for tool handlers.
tools.ts — defines browser tools (get_active_tab, list_tabs, get_selection, get_tab_content, browse_history, find_bookmarks, edit_bookmarks, get_attached) and the Playwright drive_* family.
tool-rpc.ts — request/response correlation for bridge → extension tool calls (where the bridge needs chrome.* data).
config.ts — loads ~/.anya/config.json.
log.ts — appends to bridge.log and mirrors to the debug panel.

Uninstall

.\setup.ps1 -Uninstall

./setup.sh --uninstall

Then remove the unpacked extension from your browser's extensions page.

Navigation Menu

Repository files navigation

Anya

What you get

Repo layout

Install

Requirements

One-line install (recommended)

Developing locally

How registration works on each OS

Load the extension in each browser

Smoke test

Updating

Uninstalling

Using the sidebar

Header

Tools panel

Chat drawer

Context attachments

Attachment kinds

How it reaches the model

`/` — slash commands

Hotkeys

Per-message actions

Stop generating

Browser automation (Playwright)

Debug panel

Development

File-by-file

Uninstall

About

Releases

Packages

Contributors

Languages

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
.claude		.claude
.github		.github
assets		assets
bridge		bridge
docs		docs
extension		extension
scripts		scripts
.extension-id.txt		.extension-id.txt
.extension-pubkey.b64		.extension-pubkey.b64
.gitignore		.gitignore
AGENTS.md		AGENTS.md
CLAUDE.md		CLAUDE.md
PERMISSIONS.md		PERMISSIONS.md
README.md		README.md
VO_SCRIPT.md		VO_SCRIPT.md
design.md		design.md
install.ps1		install.ps1
install.sh		install.sh
launch_video.html		launch_video.html
setup.ps1		setup.ps1
setup.sh		setup.sh

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Anya

What you get

Repo layout

Install

Requirements

One-line install (recommended)

Developing locally

How registration works on each OS

Load the extension in each browser

Smoke test

Updating

Uninstalling

Using the sidebar

Header

Tools panel

Chat drawer

Context attachments

Attachment kinds

How it reaches the model

/ — slash commands

Hotkeys

Per-message actions

Stop generating

Browser automation (Playwright)

Debug panel

Development

File-by-file

Uninstall

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`/` — slash commands