How I shipped Tabsmith in a weekend

Two extensions I always ran together, tab dedupe plus meeting-tab, each wanted full tab access. So I merged them into one minimal build and added the “jump to Meet” hotkey I always wanted.

What Tabsmith does

• Duplicate handling that knows intent. A tab you deliberately duplicate is kept and self-closes if unused. An accidental re-open jumps you to the existing tab.
• Alt+Shift+M focuses any open Google Meet call from anywhere.
• Auto-close Meet tab after a call ends, never during.
• Clean tabs now groups the current window by host into native tab groups in one click.

What worked

• Four permissions total: tabs, alarms, storage, tabGroups. No host permissions, no content scripts, no page reads.
• Intent detection off the tab’s origin state, not page content. A tab that reaches a URL after starting as the new-tab page is a redirect. A tab born on a URL is a deliberate copy.
• An 8-second startup grace so restored tabs on browser open are never touched.

What I’d change

Meet call-end detection watches URL changes. Reliable when Meet redirects post-call, silent when it does not. A single-origin content script would fix it at the cost of one host permission. Deliberate trade-off, may revisit.

Try it

Loading unpacked works today. Chrome Web Store listing next.