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dismech curator (browser extension)

A small Manifest V3 Chrome/Edge extension that turns the paper or disease page you are looking at into a dismech curation GitHub issue — one click, like a "send to dismech" bookmarklet.

Download dismech curator (ZIP) · Installation steps · Source code

Watch the demo

This subtitled walkthrough shows how to turn a journal article into a dismech curation issue, from the toolbar preview through submission on GitHub.

Watch the demo on YouTube.

What it does

When you are on a recognized page and click the toolbar button, the extension reads the page's identifiers and metadata (never sending the page anywhere), picks the right issue template, and lets you review and file the issue.

  • Papers (PubMed, PMC, doi.org, bioRxiv/medRxiv, most publisher pages that emit citation_* meta tags) → a "Curate from literature" issue with the PMID/DOI/PMCID, journal, authors, and a curation checklist that reminds the curator to use exact-quote snippets and just fetch-reference.
  • Diseases (Monarch, OMIM, Orphanet, OLS/purl.obolibrary.org MONDO pages) → a "Curate issue mirroring the claim-disease template, linked to the priority tracker (#1079).
  • Any text you have highlighted on the page is captured into the issue as a blockquote.

Two ways to file

Set in the extension's Settings page:

  1. Pre-filled issue form (default, no token). Opens GitHub's issues/new?title=…&body=…&labels=… for monarch-initiative/dismech. You are already signed in to GitHub, so you just review and click Submit. Nothing but opening a URL — no credentials, no backend.
  2. One-click with a token. Store a fine-grained GitHub PAT (Issues: read & write on the target repo, ideally with a short expiry) in the browser; the extension POSTs to api.github.com directly and opens the new issue. The token stays in chrome.storage.local — plaintext on disk — and is sent only to GitHub. If you would rather not persist a token, prefer the default form mode above, which needs no credentials. Selecting token mode on the Settings page requests the optional api.github.com host permission there (a stable context), so the popup only needs to check it at create time.

Owner/repo, labels, and the tracker issue number are all configurable, so the extension also works against a fork or a different Monarch repo.

Install (unpacked)

You need Chrome or Edge on a desktop computer. The extension is not yet on the Chrome Web Store. Install it from the download below; no Git, terminal commands, or repository checkout is needed. “Unpacked” means the folder you get after extracting the ZIP file.

  1. Download dismech-extension.zip and find it in your Downloads folder.
  2. Extract the ZIP: on Mac, double-click it in Finder; on Windows, right-click it in File Explorer and choose Extract All…, then Extract. Open the extracted folder and find dismech-extension, containing manifest.json, popup.html, and an icons folder. Windows may put it inside another folder with the same name: use the inner folder containing those files.
  3. Move that dismech-extension folder to Documents (or another permanent location). Keep it there while the extension is installed: the browser loads its files from this folder.
  4. In a new browser tab, paste chrome://extensions into the address bar and press Enter. For Edge, use edge://extensions. Turn on Developer mode.
  5. Click Load unpacked. In the folder picker, go to Documents, select dismech-extension (the folder containing manifest.json), and click Select / Select Folder. Select the folder, not the ZIP or an individual file. A dismech curator card should now appear on the extensions page.
  6. Open the browser's Extensions menu (the puzzle-piece icon) and pin dismech curator to the toolbar. Open a PubMed paper, click the curator icon, review the preview, and choose Create issue. By default this opens a GitHub form for you to review and submit; sign in to GitHub if prompted.

The preview can take 1–2 seconds to appear after clicking the toolbar icon while the extension reads the page. Wait briefly before clicking again.

If you are stuck in the folder picker

  • Only unrelated files in Downloads? Click Cancel, then download and extract the ZIP using steps 1–3 above. Opening the source-code page on GitHub does not download the extension to your computer.
  • ZIP or files are greyed out? That is expected: this dialog selects folders. Choose the extracted folder containing manifest.json.
  • “Manifest file is missing or unreadable”? You selected the wrong folder. Open it in Finder/File Explorer and locate manifest.json; select its enclosing folder in Load unpacked.

Updating

Download and extract a fresh ZIP, replace the files in your installed dismech-extension folder, then click Reload on its card at chrome://extensions (or edge://extensions). Unpacked installations do not update automatically.

If you already have the repository checked out

You can select the local repository's extension folder directly in Load unpacked. It contains manifest.json and needs no build step. On Mac, press Command–Shift–G in the folder picker to enter its full path, for example ~/repos/dismech/extension.

Permissions

activeTab + scripting (read the current tab only when you click), storage (settings), and the optional host permission https://api.github.com/* (requested only if you turn on token mode).

Development

Pure vanilla JS — no build step. Logic that can be unit-tested lives in extension/issue.js (issue templates) and extension/extract.js (page metadata extraction). Run the tests with:

just test-extension   # or: node extension/test/run.mjs

These run in CI (just test-extension) whenever anything under extension/ changes.

Toolbar icons are generated (teal medical disc + cross) by python3 extension/icons/gen_icons.py.