Six calm systems. No account bloat.
Cove combines a custom new-tab dashboard, a clean RSS reader, procedural focus audio, and on-device workflow tools inside a single 166.2 KB gzipped Manifest V3 package that sends no telemetry to Cove.
1. Midnight Cobalt workspace & keyboard stages
Cove applies its boot theme before first paint to avoid a white flash. The new-tab workspace, Discover, reader, and focus tools stay inside the documented 170 KB gzipped budget.
- Midnight Cobalt dark theme plus an Alabaster light option and automatic OS theme sync
- Four keyboard stages (keys 1-4): spatial bento, ambient monolith, focus sanctuary, and a calm 4K still
- Eight bundled 4K scenic wallpapers that work offline
- Responsive layout designed from 360px split-screen panes to 3840px ultrawide monitors
2. Cove Discover & the floating news reader
Discover lives in a dedicated side-navigation section (press D). A two-stage flow keeps story briefs separate from the full reading view.
- 11 curated RSS/Atom sources and 3 keyless public APIs, plus custom feed URLs
- Stage 1: a story brief with context and the publisher's lead image when available
- Stage 2: a clean reading view extracted locally; Cove does not bypass paywalls
- Reader typography options (serif, sans, and mono) with glass, warm-paper, and deep-ink surfaces
3. RAM and IndexedDB reading cache
Feed metadata and extracted articles are cached locally to reduce loading spinners and make cached reading available offline.
- Tier 1: an in-memory map for fast category switching within the current session
- Tier 2: an IndexedDB feed store shows cached stories on a cold tab and refreshes in the background
- Tier 3: an LRU cache of up to 120 extracted articles for offline reading when cached
- A Read Later queue opens saved stories in the clean reader
4. Cove Smart Engine
A local ranking model adapts card order and focus suggestions from recent activity. It does not use an LLM API, an account, or a Cove ranking server.
- Recency-weighted signals from local tab, reading, and focus activity
- All ranking data stays in browser storage; no Cove telemetry endpoint
- Whisper Mode hides ranking hints while keeping the underlying ordering
- A local reset clears the stored model and workflow memory
5. Procedural focus audio
A Web Audio synthesizer generates harmonic pads and filtered noise at runtime. There are no MP3 loops in the package.
- Deep Work, Creative Flow, Calm Reading, and Recharge presets
- Optional speech-masking texture; it can soften background sound but is not a medical device
- Layered pads, filtered noise, and focus-timer phase transitions
- Works offline with no streaming bandwidth and smooth crossfades
6. Offline typography, search & settings
Four bundled font families and a full settings surface keep the workspace adjustable without a web-font request.
- Inter, Plus Jakarta Sans, Instrument Serif (regular and italic), and JetBrains Mono
- Omnibar with prefix or suffix !bangs (!g, !gh, !w, !yt, !mdn, !hn) plus aliases such as !github and !wiki
- 14 one-click search provider presets plus custom HTTPS templates validated with a {q} placeholder
- Local instant answers for math, units, dates, base conversion, timestamps, tips, colors, and word counts
- Background tab triage and duplicate detection plus a declarativeNetRequest focus blocker
- One-click JSON workspace export, import, and a local reset
Verified Production Bundle Budget (v0.1.3)
Enforced on every commit by tests/core.test.mjs and GitHub Actions CI:
| Subsystem / Asset | Gzipped Size | Runtime Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| boot-theme.js + boot-theme.css | 3.9 KB | Synchronous pre-paint Midnight Cobalt and font-pair lock |
| All JavaScript (newtab + boot + triage + background) | 141.0 KB | Local MV3 bundle with no external CDN scripts |
| All CSS (newtab + boot theme) | 25.2 KB | GPU-composited transitions for responsive layouts |
| background.js + triage.worker.js + triage-core.js | 3.0 KB | Event-driven MV3 service worker + Web Worker tab clustering |
| Focus Audio Samples | 0.00 KB | Real-time Web Audio synthesis |