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🧠 Cerebr - Intelligent AI Assistant

!screenshot

The name "Cerebr" comes from a Latin root related to "brain" or "cerebrum". This etymology reflects our vision: to integrate powerful AI capabilities from Claude, OpenAI, and others, making Cerebr your second brain for deep reading and understanding. Cerebr is a powerful browser AI assistant extension, available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, focused on enhancing your work efficiency and learning experience.

Born from a need for a clean, efficient browser AI assistant, Cerebr stands out with its minimalist design and powerful features. While other solutions often come with limitations or cluttered interfaces, Cerebr focuses on delivering a seamless, distraction-free experience for your web browsing needs.

✨ Core Features

• 🎯 Smart Sidebar - Quick access via hotkey (Windows: Alt+Z / Mac: Ctrl+Z) to chat with AI anytime, anywhere
• 🔄 Multiple API Support - Configure multiple APIs to flexibly switch between different AI assistants
• 🔁 Config Sync - Cross-browser API configuration synchronization for seamless device switching
• 💻 Multi-Platform Support - Available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, bringing a consistent experience across browsers.
• 📝 Comprehensive Q&A - Support webpage content Q&A, PDF document Q&A, image Q&A and more
• 🎨 Elegant Rendering - Perfect support for Markdown text rendering and LaTeX math formula display
• ⚡ Real-time Response - Stream output for instant AI replies
• ⏹️ Flexible Control - Support stopping generation at any time, sending new messages will stop the current generation
• 🌓 Theme Switching - Support light/dark themes to protect your eyes
• 🌐 Web Version - Support web version, no installation required, accessable from any browser, support vercel, GitHub Pages and cloudflare pages deployment

🛠️ Technical Features

• 💾 State Persistence - Automatically save chat history, sidebar status, etc.
• 🔄 Config Sync - Cross-device configuration sharing through browser's native sync API
• 🔍 Smart Extraction - Automatically identify and extract webpage/PDF content
• ⌨️ Shortcut Operations - Support hotkey to clear chat (Windows: Alt+X / Mac: Ctrl+X), up/down keys for quick history recall
• 🔒 Secure & Reliable - Support multiple API key management with local data storage
• 🎭 High Compatibility - Officially supports Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, adapting to various webpage environments.

🎮 User Guide

1. 🔑 Configure API

1. 💬 Start Chatting

1. 📚 Webpage/PDF Q&A

💡 Tips & Shortcuts

• ↔️ Resize Sidebar - Drag the sidebar’s left edge to resize; double-click the edge to reset to default width
• ⌨️ Send Message - Enter to send, Shift+Enter for a new line, Esc to blur the input
• ⬆️⬇️ Recall Previous Questions - When the input is empty, press ↑/↓ to cycle through your recent questions; press ↓ at the newest item to return to an empty input
• 📋 Context Menu - Right-click a message (or long-press on touch devices) for copy/regenerate/delete; Esc to close
• 🖼️ Image Preview - Click an image to preview; press Esc or click outside to close

🔧 Advanced Features

• 📋 Right-click Copy - Support right-click to directly copy message text
• 🔄 History Records - Use up/down arrow keys to quickly recall historical questions
• ⏹️ Stop Generation - Show stop button when generating messages, can stop generation at any time
• 🖼️ Image Preview - Click images to view full size
• ⚙️ Custom Settings - Support customizing hotkeys, themes and more

🚀 Web Version Deploy

1. You can quickly deploy the web version of Cerebr to Fugue with one click:

1. You can quickly deploy the web version of Cerebr to Vercel with one click:

1. Cloudflare Pages: connect this repository, use Node.js 24, set Build command to npm run build and Build output directory to dist. Initialize the htmd submodule when building outside the Git integration. No server or API proxy is required.

1. GitHub Pages: fork the repository, open Settings → Pages, and choose GitHub Actions as the source. The included workflow runs the tests and Vite build and publishes dist. Project URLs such as https://.github.io/cerebr/ work with the relative asset base.

Vercel uses the same build command and output directory via vercel.json. Deploy the build output, not the source tree. API keys are entered by users in the app; do not put secrets in Vite environment variables.

Web Version Features

• 🌐 Access Cerebr from any browser without installation
• 💻 Same powerful features as the Chrome extension
• ☁️ Deploy your own instance for better control
• 🔒 Secure and private deployment

📦 Desktop Application

After installing the dmg file, you need to execute the following command:

sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Cerebr.app

This project uses Pake to pack the dmg file, the command is as follows:

iconutil -c icns icon.iconset
pake https://xxx/ --name Cerebr --hide-title-bar --icon ./icon.icns

https://github.com/tw93/Pake

🚀 Latest Updates

• 🆕 Added image Q&A functionality
• 🔄 Optimized webpage content extraction algorithm
• 🐛 Fixed math formula rendering issues
• ⚡ Improved overall performance and stability

📝 Development Notes

This project is developed using Chrome Extension Manifest V3, with main tech stack:

• 🎨 React 19 + Vite 7 + CSS
• 📦 Chrome Extension API
• 🔧 PDF.js + MathJax + Marked.js

Requires Node.js 22.12+ (CI uses 24). For local development, run npm run build and load the repository root as an unpacked extension; its manifest runs only the compiled dist assets. Existing root-directory installations can keep their extension ID and data: reload Cerebr in the extension manager, then refresh the host page. For distribution, build and package, then load artifacts/chrome or the Firefox archive. Both Web and extension use the same compiled React UI.

In Firefox / Zen, open about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox, click Load Temporary Add-on, and select the root manifest.json. Selecting manifest.firefox.json also loads manifest.json from the same directory; it does not switch manifests. The root manifest declares both a Chrome service worker and Firefox background scripts, requiring Chrome / Firefox 121+. For the dedicated Firefox manifest, run npm run package:extension and select artifacts/firefox/manifest.json or artifacts/cerebr-firefox.zip.

To avoid Chrome's warning for the Firefox-only background.scripts fallback, run npm run package:extension and load artifacts/chrome instead of the repository root. Firefox / Zen can load artifacts/firefox/manifest.json.

git submodule update --init --recursive
npm ci
npm run dev                  # React + Vite development server
npm run check                # tests and production build
npm run preview              # serve the static dist output
npm run package:extension    # artifacts/cerebr.zip and cerebr-firefox.zip

🤝 Contribution Guide

Issues are welcome for discussion. To reduce maintenance cost, this project does not accept any feature PRs (new/improved features); please discuss feature requests in Issues. PRs are only accepted for bug fixes.

Before submitting a bug-fix PR, please ensure:

• 🔍 You have searched related issues
• ✅ Follow existing code style
• 📝 Provide clear description and reproduction steps

📄 License

This project is licensed under the GPLv3 License

Desktop app

The Electron app lives in the desktop/ workspace and shares the React frontend with the web app and extension. Run npm run dev:desktop to develop or npm run package:desktop to package. It supports paired local history synchronization with the browser extension. See desktop setup, synchronization and data boundaries.