web-recap

Extract browser history from Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Firefox, Safari, and Edge browsers and output it in JSON format suitable for analysis by LLMs and other tools.

Privacy: This tool runs entirely on your machine and never transmits data. Your browser history stays local unless you explicitly pipe it to an external service (like an LLM API).

Features

Multi-browser support: Chrome, Chromium, Edge, Brave, Firefox, and Safari
Cross-platform: Works on Linux, macOS, and Windows
Automatic detection: Auto-detects installed browsers or specify manually
Date filtering: Extract history for specific dates or date ranges
Timezone support: Parse dates in your local timezone or specify any timezone
Time filtering: Extract history for specific hours or time ranges
LLM-friendly output: JSON format optimized for consumption by language models
Minimal dependencies: Pure Go implementation with no CGO required for better cross-platform compilation

Installation

Download Binary

Download the latest binary from GitHub Releases:

Platform	Binary
Linux	`web-recap-linux-amd64`
macOS (Intel)	`web-recap-darwin-amd64`
macOS (Apple Silicon)	`web-recap-darwin-arm64`
Windows	`web-recap-windows-amd64.exe`

# Linux
curl -L https://github.com/robzolkos/web-recap/releases/latest/download/web-recap-linux-amd64 -o ~/.local/bin/web-recap
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/web-recap

# macOS (Apple Silicon)
curl -L https://github.com/robzolkos/web-recap/releases/latest/download/web-recap-darwin-arm64 -o ~/.local/bin/web-recap
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/web-recap

# macOS (Intel)
curl -L https://github.com/robzolkos/web-recap/releases/latest/download/web-recap-darwin-amd64 -o ~/.local/bin/web-recap
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/web-recap

Note: Ensure ~/.local/bin is in your PATH. Add export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH" to your shell config if needed.

Build from Source

Requires Go 1.21+

git clone https://github.com/robzolkos/web-recap.git
cd web-recap
go build ./cmd/web-recap
./web-recap --help

Usage

Basic Commands

# Show help
web-recap --help

# List detected browsers
web-recap list

# Show version
web-recap version

Extract History

# Extract today's history from default browser
web-recap

# Extract from specific browser
web-recap --browser chrome
web-recap --browser firefox
web-recap --browser safari

# Extract from specific date
web-recap --date 2025-12-15

# Extract date range
web-recap --start-date 2025-12-01 --end-date 2025-12-15

# Extract from all browsers
web-recap --all-browsers

# Save to file
web-recap -o history.json

# Custom database path
web-recap --db-path /path/to/History

# Timezone support (dates interpreted in your timezone)
web-recap --date 2025-12-15 --tz America/New_York

# Explicit UTC mode
web-recap --date 2025-12-15 --utc

# Time filtering - extract history for specific hours
web-recap --date 2025-12-15 --start-time 12:00 --end-time 13:00

# Shorthand for single hour
web-recap --date 2025-12-15 --time 12  # Extracts 12:00-12:59

Command Examples

# Get Chrome history from last 7 days
web-recap --browser chrome --start-date 2025-12-09 --end-date 2025-12-16

# Export all browser history to file
web-recap --all-browsers --output all-history.json

# Check what browsers are available
web-recap list

# Extract yesterday's activity between 12pm and 1pm (in your local timezone)
web-recap --date "$(date -d yesterday +%Y-%m-%d)" --start-time 12:00 --end-time 13:00

# Extract from a specific timezone
web-recap --date 2025-12-15 --tz Europe/London --time 14

# Explicitly use UTC (useful in scripts or CI)
web-recap --start-date 2025-12-09 --end-date 2025-12-15 --utc --all-browsers

JSON Output Format

The tool outputs history in the following JSON format:

{
  "browser": "chrome",
  "start_date": "2025-12-15T00:00:00Z",
  "end_date": "2025-12-15T23:59:59Z",
  "timezone": "America/New_York",
  "total_entries": 343,
  "entries": [
    {
      "timestamp": "2025-12-15T09:15:23Z",
      "url": "https://example.com/page",
      "title": "Example Page Title",
      "visit_count": 3,
      "domain": "example.com",
      "browser": "chrome"
    },
    ...
  ]
}

Output Fields

browser: Browser name (chrome, firefox, safari, edge)
start_date: Report period start (ISO 8601 UTC format)
end_date: Report period end (ISO 8601 UTC format)
timezone: Timezone used for date interpretation (e.g., "America/New_York", "UTC")
total_entries: Number of history entries in the report
entries: Array of history entries, each containing:
- timestamp: Visit time in ISO 8601 UTC format
- url: Full URL visited
- title: Page title
- visit_count: Total visits to this URL
- domain: Extracted domain name
- browser: Browser source

LLM Usage

The JSON output is designed to be easily consumed by language models. You can pipe the output directly to your LLM:

# Get chrome history and pass to Claude
web-recap --browser chrome --date 2025-12-15 | claude --prompt "Summarize my web activity"

# Or save to file for later analysis
web-recap --all-browsers --output history.json
# Then use with your LLM as context

Supported Browsers

Chrome/Chromium/Edge/Brave

Platforms: Linux, macOS, Windows
Database: SQLite (History file)
Timestamp format: Microseconds since 1601-01-01

Firefox

Platforms: Linux, macOS, Windows
Database: SQLite (places.sqlite)
Timestamp format: Microseconds since Unix epoch

Safari

Platforms: macOS only
Database: SQLite (History.db)
Timestamp format: Seconds since 2001-01-01

Database Locations

Linux

Chrome: ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/History
Chromium: ~/.config/chromium/Default/History
Edge: ~/.config/microsoft-edge/Default/History
Brave: ~/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/History
Firefox: ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/places.sqlite

macOS

Chrome: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/History
Chromium: ~/Library/Application Support/Chromium/Default/History
Edge: ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft Edge/Default/History
Brave: ~/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/History
Firefox: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/*/places.sqlite
Safari: ~/Library/Safari/History.db

Windows

Chrome: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\History
Chromium: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Chromium\User Data\Default\History
Edge: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\History
Brave: %LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\History
Firefox: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\*/places.sqlite

Technical Details

Database Locking

The tool automatically handles browser database locking by copying the database to a temporary file before reading it. This allows you to extract history while your browser is running.

Timestamp Conversion

Each browser uses a different timestamp format which is automatically converted to ISO 8601 UTC format for consistency.

Timezone Support

By default, web-recap interprets dates in your system's local timezone. You can:

Explicitly specify a timezone with --tz America/New_York
Force UTC interpretation with --utc (useful for scripts and CI/CD)
Extract by time of day with --start-time and --end-time (in 24-hour format)
Use the --time shorthand for single-hour extraction (e.g., --time 12 extracts 12:00-12:59)

All dates are converted to UTC for database queries, and timestamps in the JSON output are always in UTC format.

Date Filtering

When using --date, it extracts history for the entire 24-hour period in the specified timezone. When using --start-date and --end-date, both dates are inclusive and cover the full 24-hour period. Use --start-time and --end-time to narrow results to specific hours of the day.

Development

Build

go build ./cmd/web-recap

Test

go test ./...

Cross-compile for all platforms

make build-all

Release Process

Releases are created manually by pushing a version tag. The GitHub Actions workflow will automatically build binaries for all platforms and create a GitHub release.

# Create and push a version tag
git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0

This triggers the release workflow which:

Builds binaries for Linux (amd64), macOS (amd64, arm64), and Windows (amd64)
Creates a GitHub release with the tag name
Uploads all binaries as release assets

Troubleshooting

"No browsers detected"

Ensure your browser is installed at the default location. You can specify a custom database path:

web-recap --db-path /path/to/History

Permission errors

Make sure you have read access to the browser database. On macOS, you may need to grant permissions:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./web-recap

Browser running errors

The tool should handle locked databases automatically, but if you get errors, close your browser or try again later.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details

SKILL.md

See SKILL.md for integration instructions with Claude and other LLMs.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 3 Commits
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
cmd/web-recap		cmd/web-recap
internal		internal
.gitignore		.gitignore
LICENSE		LICENSE
Makefile		Makefile
README.md		README.md
SKILL.md		SKILL.md
go.mod		go.mod
go.sum		go.sum

Folders and files

Latest commit

History

Repository files navigation

web-recap

Features

Installation

Download Binary

Build from Source

Usage

Basic Commands

Extract History

Command Examples

JSON Output Format

Output Fields

LLM Usage

Supported Browsers

Chrome/Chromium/Edge/Brave

Firefox

Safari

Database Locations

Linux

macOS

Windows

Technical Details

Database Locking

Timestamp Conversion

Timezone Support

Date Filtering

Development

Build

Test

Cross-compile for all platforms

Release Process

Troubleshooting

"No browsers detected"

Permission errors

Browser running errors

Contributing

License

SKILL.md

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