Ollama Sidebar

A browser sidebar chat extension that connects to a self-hosted Ollama instance. Built for Orion (WebKit) with full Chrome support. No cloud, no accounts, no bundler — loads unpacked directly from disk.

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Requirements

• Ollama running locally or on a remote host
• Chrome 114+ or Orion (beta Chrome extension support)
• At least one model pulled in Ollama
• OLLAMA_ORIGINS=* set on the Ollama instance if proxied through Nginx or another reverse proxy

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Browser Compatibility

Browser	Status	Notes
Orion	✅ Main supported browser	File picker button does not open a picker — drag and drop files onto the chat instead. Under investigation.
Chrome	✅ Fully working	All features including file picker. sidebar_action manifest warning is expected and harmless.
Firefox	🔜 Not yet supported	Possible future support.

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Installation

1. Clone or download this repository
2. Open the icons/ folder — if the PNG files are missing, open generate_icons.html in a browser and save the three icons into the icons/ folder
3. Chrome: go to chrome://extensions, enable Developer Mode, click Load unpacked, select the project folder
4. Orion: go to Tools → Extensions → Install from Disk, select the project folder
5. Click the extension icon in the toolbar to open the sidebar

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First-time setup

1. Click the ⚙ Settings button in the sidebar header
2. Set your Ollama Base URL (default: http://localhost:11434)
3. Click Test Connection — connected models will appear in the dropdowns
4. Set a Default Chat Model
5. Click Save Settings

If Ollama is behind a reverse proxy with bearer token auth, enter the token in the Bearer Token field.

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Features

Chat

• Streaming responses with stop, regenerate, and edit
• Thinking/reasoning block support (collapsed by default)
• Full markdown rendering with syntax-highlighted code blocks
• Token metrics per response (tokens, tok/s, duration)

Context

• Add the current page as context with the 🌐 button — uses a Readability-style algorithm to extract main content, strips navigation and noise
• Drag and drop files onto the chat to attach (.txt, .md, .csv, .pdf, images)
• PDF text extraction via PDF.js
• Image support for vision-capable models (llava, qwen-vl, etc.)
• Keyword and semantic RAG — relevant chunks are selected before being sent, scaled to your model's context window

Sessions

• Multiple named chat sessions with create, delete, search, and export as Markdown
• Auto-generated session names from the first message
• Session history persisted in browser storage

Personas

• 8 built-in personas (Assistant, Code Reviewer, Study Buddy, Writing Editor, Rubber Duck, Devil's Advocate, Technical Writer, Be Brief/BLUF)
• Create and save custom personas
• Each session tracks its active persona's system prompt

Prompt Templates

• 10 built-in templates triggered with / in the input
• Create and save custom templates

Models

• Per-session model selector
• Pull new models from the Settings page without leaving the browser
• Multi-model comparison mode — send the same prompt to two models side by side
• Semantic RAG via Ollama /api/embed endpoint (configure embedding model in Settings)

Settings

• Dark/light theme
• Compact message density
• Auto-scroll during generation
• Response language lock
• Model parameters (temperature, top-p, top-k, repeat penalty, seed, context length, max tokens)
• Default system prompt
• Debug panel with live log, system info, and connection status

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Enter	Send message
Shift+Enter	New line
Ctrl+K	New chat
Ctrl+L	Clear conversation (press twice to confirm)
Ctrl+/	Open templates
Ctrl+,	Open settings
Ctrl+?	Show all shortcuts
Esc	Close panels and overlays

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Project structure

├── background.js          # Service worker — message routing, stream relay
├── content.js             # Content script — page text extraction
├── sidepanel.html         # Sidebar UI
├── sidepanel.js           # Sidebar logic
├── sidepanel.css          # Sidebar styles
├── settings.html          # Options page
├── settings.js            # Options page logic
├── settings.css           # Options page styles
├── manifest.json          # Extension manifest (MV3)
├── marked.min.js          # Markdown rendering
├── highlight.min.js       # Syntax highlighting
├── hljs-github-dark.min.css  # Highlight.js theme
├── pdf.min.js             # PDF.js v3 — PDF text extraction
├── pdf.worker.min.js      # PDF.js worker
├── pdf-init.js            # PDF.js worker initialisation
└── icons/
    ├── icon16.png
    ├── icon48.png
    └── icon128.png

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Notes

• File upload: Chrome supports the native file picker via the attach button. Orion does not currently open the file picker — drag and drop files directly onto the chat area instead. This is under investigation.
• Semantic RAG: Requires an embedding model pulled in Ollama (recommended: nomic-embed-text-v2-moe). Configure it under Settings → Models → Embedding Model. If not configured, keyword matching is used.
• Multi-model comparison: Results are not saved to session history.
• Debug panel: Available in Settings → Debug (collapsed by default). Logs auto-clear after 30 minutes.
• Ollama CORS: If requests are blocked, ensure OLLAMA_ORIGINS=* is set in your Ollama environment or your reverse proxy passes the correct CORS headers.

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License

MIT