PageParcel

Pack a web page into a portable, inspectable record.

PageParcel is a local-first Chrome extension that captures the visual page and its useful structure together. One click creates a Trace Bundle with lossless screenshots, structured Markdown, reader Markdown, source metadata, and SHA-256 integrity hashes. Nothing is uploaded by the extension.

It also handles the everyday screenshot work: full-page, visible-area, and region capture; annotation; clipboard copy; and PNG, JPEG, WebP, or PDF export.

Why PageParcel

A screenshot preserves appearance but loses structure. A page export preserves structure but often misses what was actually rendered. PageParcel keeps both in one portable bundle:

• Visual record: full-page PNG segments, bounded to avoid browser canvas limits.
• Useful text: structured and reader-focused Markdown generated locally.
• Source context: URL, title, capture time, dimensions, method, and extraction status.
• Integrity register: byte counts and SHA-256 hashes for every bundled artifact.
• Small permission surface: active-tab access only, with no broad host permissions.

What a Trace Bundle contains

PageParcel-20260721T194500Z-example-page.zip
├── page.md
├── page-reader.md
├── page.json
└── page.png

Very tall pages are split into page-001.png through page-NNN.png. Raw HTML is deliberately excluded. The bundle schema documents every field.

Explore the public example Trace Bundle, generated from a harmless static demonstration page and verified with the same command-line verifier used for real bundles.

Install from source

PageParcel is currently distributed as an unpacked extension.

1. Clone this repository.
2. Open chrome://extensions in Chrome.
3. Enable Developer mode.
4. Select Load unpacked.
5. Choose the repository's assets/extension-dist folder.
6. Pin PageParcel.

Click Trace Bundle to create a local PageParcel-*.zip, or choose one of the standard screenshot modes.

Verify a bundle

python3 scripts/verify_bundle.py /path/to/PageParcel-example.zip

The verifier checks the ZIP structure, safe paths, required artifacts, PNG signatures, byte counts, and every registered SHA-256 hash.

Build and test

Node.js 22 and Python 3 are recommended.

bash scripts/build_extension.sh

The build performs a clean dependency install, runs the unit suite, produces the extension, applies the security audit, and refreshes assets/extension-dist.

To run the gates individually:

cd assets/extension
npm ci
npm test
npm run build
cd ../..
python3 scripts/security_audit.py assets/extension
python3 scripts/verify_bundle.py --self-test

Security model

PageParcel is explicitly invoked and local-first by design. It has no analytics, upload endpoint, hosted viewer, sync storage, remote capture service, or host permissions. The extension content security policy limits connections to itself.

Secret-like form values are redacted from generated Markdown. They cannot be reliably removed from screenshot pixels, so review the page before capturing. Read the security contract and security policy before changing permissions, networking, or extraction behavior.

The privacy notice explains exactly what PageParcel processes, where temporary state is stored, and what the extension does not collect or transmit.

Releases

GitHub Releases contain a versioned unpacked-extension ZIP and a SHA-256 checksum. The release workflow rebuilds, tests, audits, and packages the extension from the tagged source before publishing those files.

Limits and honest claims

• Dynamic pages can change while a full-page capture scrolls.
• Cross-origin iframe content may be visible in screenshots but unavailable to Markdown extraction.
• Canvas-rendered text is visual only.
• A bundle's hashes detect later file changes; they are not an independent timestamp, signature, or proof of origin.
• Chrome-protected pages such as chrome:// URLs cannot be captured.

Codex integration

The repository is also a self-contained Codex skill. Install it with:

mkdir -p "$HOME/.codex/skills"
ln -s "$(pwd)" "$HOME/.codex/skills/pageparcel"

Then ask Codex to use $pageparcel when a durable browser handoff is useful.

Project provenance

PageParcel grew from a teardown of modern full-page capture workflows and a security-first extension design. The capture and annotation foundation is a pinned MIT-licensed fork of OpenScreenShot. Direct dependencies and the exact upstream revision are recorded in source provenance; license notices are retained in the source tree.

Creator

Created and maintained by Andrew Greene (@apcar).

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the engineering and security gates.

License

MIT. See LICENSE and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.