Stax Devlog 2!!! / What I did

Before this update, Stax could only group a tab if I had explicitly hardcoded its exact domain into the background script. Anything else just got dumped into a generic grey group, which meant the extension barely worked unless I had manually added the site beforehand.

I overhauled the classification logic so it looks for broader patterns instead of fixed domain lists. It now checks domain endings like .shop or .bank, path keywords like /cart or /checkout, platform routes like /pull/42, and active page titles as a fallback so a tab named “Your boarding pass” gets caught under Travel even on a random airline site.

I also cleaned up the codebase structure. popup.js and sidepanel.js were sharing a bunch of copy-pasted helper functions. I moved those out into a shared script file so I’m not maintaining the exact same logic in two places.

Issues I ran into and fixed

• Keyword classifier false positives. The old string check was matching shop anywhere inside a URL string. That meant photoshop.adobe.com was getting sorted straight into Shopping. Switched it to match proper hostname boundaries so creative tools don’t end up in shopping groups.

• Code duplication across UI files. Having identical helper functions in both popup.js and sidepanel.js meant any bug fix had to be applied twice. Extracted them into a common utility script to keep both views in sync.

What’s next

• Workspaces. Saving full tab group setups to chrome.storage.local so you can close an entire session and restore it later.
• Command Palette. Adding a Cmd+K / Ctrl+K search overlay to quickly search across all open tabs and jump to them instantly.