ContentLens

Your feeds. Your rules.

ContentLens is a local-first browser extension that filters YouTube, LinkedIn, X, Reddit and Hacker News with rules you write. Block a channel, an author or a phrase. Every hidden item leaves a placeholder that explains the decision and brings the content back in one action.

The deterministic baseline runs in your browser profile. No account. No required backend. No telemetry.

Install for Chrome · Install in 2 minutes · Build from source · Read the manifesto

The store carries the signed package for the current stable version. Every release also publishes content-lens-<version>-chrome.zip for manual installation and verification.

Make the feed answer to you

Native controls such as "Not interested" are probabilistic hints. ContentLens turns your preferences into explicit, portable rules:

• Block channels, authors and exact terms immediately.
• Protect context with explicit allow rules and scoped exceptions.
• Preview every rule before it changes the feed.
• Reveal any hidden item from its explainable placeholder.
• Review corrections and carry a versioned profile between Chrome profiles.

See it across your feeds

The same rule model works across every supported platform. Each adapter stays inactive until you enable it and approve its origin.

LinkedIn and X

Install

Chrome Web Store

Requires Chrome 149 or newer.

1. Add ContentLens from the Chrome Web Store.
2. Pin ContentLens, open its panel, enable one platform and create your first rule.

The listing serves the signed package of the current stable release.

Manual package

Use this path to install an exact version or to verify the package yourself.

1. Open the releases list, select the version you want and download its content-lens-<version>-chrome.zip.
2. Extract the ZIP into its own folder. manifest.json must be at the top level of that folder.
3. Chrome: open chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode, choose Load unpacked and select the extracted folder.
4. Pin ContentLens, open its panel, enable one platform and create your first rule.

Verify the download

Every stable release includes checksums.sha256, an SPDX SBOM and in-toto provenance. After downloading the checksum file beside your chosen package, replace the values below and verify its SHA-256 digest:

VERSION=x.y.z
PACKAGE=chrome
grep "content-lens-${VERSION}-${PACKAGE}.zip$" checksums.sha256 | shasum -a 256 --check

On Windows PowerShell, use Get-FileHash -Algorithm SHA256 and compare its output with the matching line in checksums.sha256.

With the GitHub CLI installed and authenticated, you can also verify the package against GitHub's build attestation:

gh attestation verify "content-lens-${VERSION}-${PACKAGE}.zip" \
  --repo everton-dgn/content-lens

From source

ContentLens requires Node.js 24.x and pnpm 11.17.0 installed directly.

npm install --global pnpm@11.17.0
pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm build:chrome

Load .output/chrome-mv3 as an unpacked extension in Chrome.

The getting started guide covers local development requirements, permissions and the first rule in detail.

See every decision

ContentLens shows matches and protected exceptions before a rule is saved. Every hidden item keeps its reason and a one-action reveal path. Corrections remain available from the local review history.

Preview before saving	Privacy stays visible

Complete desktop workflow

One extension, every control

Everyday actions stay in the browser panel. The wider extension settings expose platform access, optional providers, privacy, diagnostics, exports and portable sources without hiding the underlying state.

Desktop control center

How it works

1. Enable only the platforms and surfaces you want ContentLens to inspect.
2. Create a block rule and add an allow exception when context matters.
3. Preview the rule to inspect matches before saving.
4. Review hidden items, reveal any item and correct the rule when needed.

Under the hood, each item follows the same explainable decision path:

Content extraction
  -> deterministic rules
  -> optional classifiers, when explicitly enabled
  -> decision policy
  -> reversible result with a reason

Known block and allow rules resolve first. Optional model-backed capabilities never override a decision your deterministic rules already made.

Supported platforms

These adapters ship in the current release:

Platform	Surfaces
YouTube	Home, search, recommendations, subscriptions, Shorts, channels, playlists and end screens
LinkedIn	Feed, reposts, promoted posts and comment previews
X	Following, For You, replies, quoted posts and threads
Reddit	Home, Popular, All, subreddits, search and comments
Hacker News	Front page, New, Best, Ask, Show, Jobs and item pages

Surface scoping is part of the rule: block a channel in recommendations and still find it through search. The interface ships in English, Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish.

ContentLens reads RSS and Atom subscriptions already stored in a profile and exports them with the rest of the portable data. Fetching new feeds over the network is disabled in this release for security reasons.

Privacy by default

• Observed content, rules, corrections and history stay in the browser profile by default.
• Host access is opt-in and scoped to each enabled platform.
• Deterministic rules resolve before optional model work.
• Provider credentials stay outside portable profile exports.
• Optional providers and user-owned synchronization require explicit setup, host permission and consent.

The packaged manifest declares optional https://*/* and http://*/* origin patterns so ContentLens can support its platform adapters and user-owned endpoints without a new package. The HTTP pattern exists only for loopback services such as localhost; endpoint validation rejects remote plaintext HTTP. A browser may describe this optional capability as access to "all sites." ContentLens ships with no static content scripts and requests an exact origin only when you enable a platform or configure an endpoint.

See the privacy policy and threat model for the full trust boundaries.

Optional capabilities

See what ships disabled by default

Some model-backed and network capabilities are built into the codebase but remain off until their quality, privacy and performance gates pass:

• Semantic topic rules and text archetype classification
• Thumbnail and preview-image signals
• Exact deduplication, similarity and a bounded content graph
• Editable AI-assisted rule drafts through a provider you configure
• Reviewed native platform feedback after a local action
• User-owned synchronization through an endpoint you control

Every capability stays off until you turn it on, and deterministic rules keep working with all of them disabled.

Development

Start the Chrome development build:

pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm dev

Before opening a pull request, run the full local validation:

pnpm ci:local
pnpm test:browser

Generated browser packages and source archives stay under .output/ and are ignored by Git. See the development guide for repository layout, command ownership and the validation matrix.

Documentation

• Getting started
• Product scope
• Architecture
• Privacy and security
• Architecture decisions
• Documentation index

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Start with CONTRIBUTING.md and the development guide for the repository layout and validation matrix.

Good first contributions include adapter selectors that broke after a platform update, translations for the three shipped locales and documentation fixes.

Behavior changes need a focused regression test. Changes to architecture, permissions, persisted data or trust boundaries need a matching contract update and an ADR review.

By participating you agree to the Code of Conduct. For vulnerabilities, follow SECURITY.md instead of opening a public issue.

License

ContentLens is available under the MIT License.