Treeclusion for Chrome

Click a link — it expands in place, no jarring page jump, no losing your spot. Try it on Obsidian vaults and GitHub markdown.

Every link in a browser is a burden. Do I click it? Or do I keep reading and maybe click it later? Click it and the page you were on is gone. Click Back and maybe you'll get back where you were. Maybe you won't. For one link, that's fine. But the new page has links too, and then the pages after those, such as documentation, wikis, API references and articles full of citations, it is a constant tax. Every link is a detour, and after enough detours you stop following links at all, which means you never see what was behind them. Treeclusion does the opposite. A link opens in place, as part of the page you are already reading. It expands. It stretches, in place. So the thing you followed it from is still in front of you. Open a branch to see its detail, collapse it again when the detail stops mattering. Nothing is rewritten and nothing moves. No jumps, no flashes, no getting lost. WHAT IT IS GOOD AT Treeclusion's payoff is the link graph, not any one page's prose. The pages worth using it on are the ones with plenty to expand: - Documentation sites, wikis and API references - GitHub repositories — it reads markdown straight from a repo, no setup - Local folders of markdown - Articles with real citations and related-reading links A single long essay with little to link out to has not got much for it to work with. That is worth knowing before you install it. HOW IT HANDLES PERMISSIONS Expanding a link on someone else's site means fetching that page, and most sites block that from another origin by default. The extension asks Chrome for access the first time you open a link that needs it, one site at a time, and you approve it in Chrome's own prompt. Grant it only to sites you would trust with any other extension. Per-site access is the default and is the right setting for almost everyone; there is an option to grant all sites at once if you would rather not be asked, but it is not the default for a reason. You can review or revoke any grant at any time under chrome://extensions. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO - No account, no sign-in - No server of ours — nothing you read is sent anywhere. The renderer runs entirely in your browser tab - No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting - No cookies - No ads, and nothing is sold Pages you open are fetched directly by your browser from the site they live on, exactly as a normal page load would. OPEN SOURCE The extension and the renderer behind it are developed in the open at github.com/ijames/treeclusion. It is an honest proof of concept rather than a finished product — it is used daily by its author, and it has rough edges. Bug reports are welcome and get read. A Shming project. More at treeclusion.shming.com