claude-nexus: folders, timelines and prompt export for claude.ai

What claude-nexus adds to a claude.ai account

claude.ai ships a flat conversation history. Once you have a few hundred threads, the sidebar becomes a scrolling list with no grouping and no way to jump to message forty of a two-hour debugging session. claude-nexus is a Chrome extension that layers five features on top of that interface: drag-and-drop folders for conversations, a right-hand timeline of message nodes you can click to jump and hover to preview, a floating ball that opens panels including a chat width control, a prompt library that inserts saved prompts into the chat input toolbar, and chat export to Markdown or JSON.

The audience is narrow and specific. It is for people who already use claude.ai in Chrome as their main working surface and who treat conversation history as a corpus worth organising. It is not a Claude Code tool, not an API client, and not a proxy. The README describes it as a browser extension for claude.ai, and the repository is a Manifest V3 extension built with React 19 and TypeScript. If you mostly talk to Claude through an editor or a terminal, none of this applies to you.

Architecture: a content layer over a page you do not control

The repository layout tells most of the story. There is a src/ directory, a public/ directory holding the icon assets, and three Vite configs: vite.config.base.ts, vite.config.chrome.ts and vite.config.firefox.ts. Two manifests sit at the top level, manifest.json and manifest.dev.json, plus nodemon.chrome.json and nodemon.firefox.json for the development loop. The build pipeline is Vite with the vite-web-extension plugin, and the runtime dependencies are small: react, react-dom, i18next, react-i18next, lucide-react for icons, and webextension-polyfill.

That dependency list is the design. There is no backend, no database driver, no HTTP client library, and no model SDK. Everything the extension does happens against the claude.ai page and against browser storage. The README states that folder structure is saved locally and persists across sessions. The floating ball, the timeline rail and the prompt panel are injected UI rendered by React inside the host page.

This is the central trade-off of the project. A content-script overlay inherits every weakness of its host: a claude.ai DOM change can move or break the timeline rail, and the extension has no contract with the site it decorates. In exchange, it needs no OAuth flow, no API key, no server to run, and no data leaves the browser except what claude.ai already sends. For a tool whose whole value is local organisation, that is a reasonable trade. It is also why the project cannot offer cross-device sync: local storage is local.

Installing claude-nexus from the Chrome Web Store or from source

The README gives two paths. The short one is the published listing, which the badge marks as live:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/claude-nexus/mjlaeohblnaalakaflnchcmpoojjejka

Open that URL in Chrome and install. After installation, the README says the extension icon in the browser toolbar opens a popup where you switch between 中文 and English.

The manual path is for development or testing. Clone the repository, install dependencies with yarn, build the Chrome target, then load the unpacked folder into Chrome:

git clone https://github.com/Qiuner/claude-nexus.git
cd claude-nexus
yarn install
yarn build:chrome

According to the README, the build writes to dist_chrome/. Open chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode, click Load unpacked, and select that folder. The package.json confirms the script mapping: build:chrome runs vite build with vite.config.chrome.ts, and a plain yarn build runs the same config.

For a first real use, go to claude.ai and drag a conversation into a folder. The README documents drag and drop as the folder mechanism, with rename, delete and reorganise available afterwards. Then open the Prompt Library panel, click Import, and select a gemini-voyager exported .json file. The README states duplicates are skipped and the result is shown. Export produces a file named claude-nexus-prompts-{YYYY-MM-DD}.json in the same compatible format, identified as gemini-voyager.prompts.v1.

If you are working on the extension itself, the development loop is:

yarn dev:chrome

The README notes that after each build you must open chrome://extensions, click the refresh button on claude-nexus, and then refresh the claude.ai page. Forgetting the second refresh is the usual reason a change appears not to have applied.

Where claude-nexus is the wrong tool

The README does not document rollback, and it does not describe any migration path for folder data between browser profiles. That silence matters. If folder assignments live in extension-local storage, then clearing site data, switching Chrome profiles, or moving to a new machine means starting the organisation work again. Anyone planning to curate thousands of conversations should treat that as an open question and test it before committing, because the documentation does not answer it.

The second limitation is platform. The repository contains firefox configs and a firefox build script, and the README's installation section only lists the Chrome Web Store and the unpacked Chrome build. The README does not claim Firefox support, and the badge row lists Chrome only. Treat Firefox as unfinished work in the tree rather than a supported target.

The third is the export format. Chat export produces Markdown or JSON, and the prompt library interoperates with gemini-voyager. If your downstream pipeline expects a different schema, you are writing a converter. The README names one compatible format and does not describe a general import path for arbitrary prompt files.

Finally, consider what the extension is not. It does not change how Claude responds, does not add models, and does not touch billing. The chat width control, adjustable from 38 to 90rem with a default of 48rem, is a good illustration of the scope: this is interface work, and interface work is only worth installing if the interface annoys you.

claude-nexus compared with gemini-voyager

The README credits gemini-voyager as the inspiration, describing it as an all-in-one enhancement suite for Google Gemini. The two projects share a shape: folders, timeline navigation, prompt management and export, delivered as a browser extension. The practical difference is the host. gemini-voyager targets Gemini's web interface; claude-nexus targets claude.ai.

The connection goes past inspiration. claude-nexus imports and exports prompts using the gemini-voyager.prompts.v1 format, and the v0.2.0 release is titled gemini-voyager Prompt Interop. So if you already maintain a prompt collection in gemini-voyager, you can move it into claude-nexus through the Import button rather than retyping it. That is a concrete migration path, and it is the strongest argument for the prompt library over simply keeping prompts in a text file.

The difference in approach is worth stating plainly. gemini-voyager is the older project and defines the interchange format; claude-nexus is the newer one and conforms to it. Choosing between them is not a feature comparison, it is a question of which chat interface you actually use. Running both is possible if you work across Gemini and Claude, and the shared prompt format is what makes that tolerable.

Maintenance, releases and the MIT licence

The repository is not archived, and the last push was on 2026-08-03, roughly six weeks before this writing. Release history shows v0.2.0 on 2026-03-11, v0.3.0 on 2026-03-22, and v1.4.1 on 2026-07-04, with package.json at version 1.4.1. That cadence suggests continued work, but the release notes are terse: v1.4.1 is described as folder and prompt injection fixes, which tells you those two areas have had defects recently. If you depend on folders for a large archive, read that title as a signal to test your own setup rather than as reassurance.

The upgrade cost is low by construction. There is no server, no schema migration documented, and no configuration file to edit. Updating means letting the Chrome Web Store push a new version, or pulling and rebuilding if you loaded unpacked. The one thing to watch is that a rebuilt extension still requires the manual refresh in chrome://extensions and a claude.ai page reload, as the README states.

The licence is MIT, stated in the README and present as a LICENSE file at the repository root. That permits commercial use, modification and redistribution provided the copyright notice and permission notice are retained. This is a description of the licence text, not legal advice; if you plan to redistribute a modified build, read the LICENSE file yourself.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt claude-nexus if you keep long claude.ai threads and want folders, a message timeline, a reusable prompt library and local Markdown or JSON export without leaving the tab. Skip it if you need Firefox today, if you depend on server-side sync across machines, or if your claude.ai workflow is stable enough that injected panels are just noise. Before installing, confirm the Chrome Web Store listing still matches version 1.4.1, check that the prompt interchange format gemini-voyager.prompts.v1 is what your other tooling expects, and verify where folder data is stored so you know what a browser profile reset would cost you.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MIT
3. Qiuner/claude-nexus on GitHub
4. README
5. Releases