Browser History Extension

From Jan Wilmake's personal knowledge base

Browser History Extension

Browser History Extension is a Chrome extension developed by Jan_Wilmake and announced on April 12, 2026. It automatically synchronises a user's browsing history to a private GitHub repository as daily Markdown files, with each visit logged with timestamp, page title, duration, and description.[1]

Overview

The extension requires no servers and no accounts beyond a GitHub token. Each day's browsing history is committed as a structured Markdown file to the user's chosen private repository. The data includes:

  • Timestamp of each visit
  • Page title
  • Duration spent on page
  • Auto-generated description

Jan's announcement: "I built a Chrome extension that automatically syncs your browsing history to a GitHub repo as daily Markdown files. Each visit gets logged with timestamp, page title, duration, and description — all stored in your own private repo. No servers, no accounts, just a GitHub token."[1]

Relationship to Self-Driving Repos

The extension feeds directly into the Self-Driving_Repos pipeline. Jan demonstrated this on April 12, 2026, showing how the browser history data was "being put to good use" — a self-driving agent reads the raw browser history and generates a daily goals overview document (the GOALS.md file in the x-and-browser-archive repository).[1]

This makes Browser History Extension the third data ingestion layer alongside Grok_Thyself (X data) in Jan's personal knowledge base architecture:

  1. Grok_Thyself — syncs X posts, bookmarks, and likes
  2. Browser History Extension — syncs browsing history
  3. Self-Driving_Repos — runs agents that process both data sources

Known Limitations

Jan self-identified two flaws shortly after announcement:[2]

  1. Privacy: All browsing history is captured indiscriminately, including sensitive domains (banking, health, authentication pages)
  2. No LLM processing: Raw history is stored but not summarised or categorised at the point of capture

Planned improvements include a selective/private-mode capture with domain blocklist, and an automated daily summarisation step where an agent reads the raw history and writes a narrative summary.[2]

Data Sovereignty Philosophy

The extension aligns with Jan's broader philosophy of personal data sovereignty — the principle that users should own their own data in their own repositories rather than depending on third-party platforms. Combined with Grok_Thyself, the extension enables cross-signal synthesis: combining X activity with browsing patterns to surface emerging interests and behavioural patterns.[2]

See Also

References

  1. X post archive: x-archive/raw/x-posts/2026-04-12.md 
  2. Goals document: x-archive/entries/GOALS.md