ClearFrame

Browser extension that highlights authorial choices in text and shows neutral alternatives. Uses the CSS Custom Highlight API (no DOM pollution).

Quick Start

npm install
npm run build     # outputs dist/ (Chrome) and dist-firefox/
npm test          # runs match-count regression tests
npm run ci        # build + typecheck + lint + test

Detector Types

Color-coded categories track types of manipulation:

• yellow sensationalism: all-caps, clickbait, hype, reveal
• green intensification: absolute, exaggeration, superlative
• gray framing & sourcing: unsourced, authority, uncertainty, loaded-framing, distancing
• red hostility: aggression, derogatory
• pink value judgment: moral, loaded
• orange conflict & drama: conflict, minimizing, negative-framing
• purple urgency & fear: fear
• blue softening & agency hiding: euphemism, passive
• brown dysphemism: dysphemism
• teal style & voice: colloquialism, idiom, repetition, rhetorical-question

Disabled by default: absolute, exaggeration, superlative.

Data Model

Terms live in data/terms/*.csv:

phrase,type,neutral,aliases,stemmable,regex,remove
ain't,colloquialism,is not,,,,,
exclusive,clickbait,,,adjective,,true

• aliases: pipe-separated alternate forms
• stemmable: noun|verb|adjective — auto-generates regex for inflections (plural, past, -ing, adverb)
• regex: custom pattern for context-sensitive matches
• remove: mark term for deletion in remove-mode
• Every normalized phrase must be unique across all types (enforced at build)

Architecture

File	Role
build.js	Loads CSV terms, validates taxonomy, bundles with esbuild
src/content.js	Scans text nodes, matches phrases via trie+regex, applies CSS highlights, replaces text, shows hover tooltips
src/core/matcher.js	Trie-based phrase matcher with longest-match and word-boundary detection
src/core/term-utils.js	CSV parser, alias/stem expansion, duplicate validation
src/core/stemmer.js	Lightweight inflection for plural/past/-ing/adverb
src/popup.js	Customize/Detected tab UI, type toggle, drag-to-recolor
src/background.js	Badge sync across tabs
data/type-colors.json	Color-to-subtype mapping

Intentional Limits

• Phrase-based, no NLP or semantic disambiguation
• No deep literary-device inference (irony, satire, allusion)
• No shadow DOM penetration
• chrome.storage.sync — user settings only (term index is bundled)

TypeScript

The codebase is JS with tsc --noEmit checkJs and type declarations in src/types/. Run npm run typecheck.