AI & BYOK Setup Guide

TabBoy provides a 3-tier semantic AI pipeline designed around local-first privacy, zero telemetry, and zero mandatory subscription fees.

Level 0: Deterministic Local (TF-IDF & TextRank, 0ms, 100% offline)
  └── Level 1: On-Device Gemini Nano (window.ai in Chromium, zero-config, 0€)
        └── Level 2: BYOK (Google Gemini Free Tier, Groq, OpenAI)

1. Zero-Config On-Device AI (Gemini Nano)

If you are using Chrome 128+ or modern Chromium:

Open Options > Chrome Built-in AI (Gemini Nano).
Ensure the toggle is enabled.
TabBoy will automatically use your local CPU/NPU for smart tab group clustering and reading-queue summaries.

No API keys, no accounts, and no configuration are required.

2. Google Gemini API (100% Free Tier, No Credit Card)

If you want the power of cloud LLMs (gemini-2.0-flash) without paying or adding a credit card:

Visit Google AI Studio.
Sign in with any Google account and click Get API key > Create API key.
In TabBoy Options > AI Summary (Bring Your Own Key):
- Click the preset ⚡ Google Gemini (Free Tier).
- Paste your API key (AIzaSy...).
- Click Save and Test connection.

Google AI Studio Free Tier Quotas

15 requests per minute (RPM)
1,500 requests per day (RPD)
1,000,000 tokens per minute (TPM)
Completely free for personal use.

3. Privacy & Security Invariants

No Automatic Uploads: TabBoy never sends tab contents or URLs to AI models in the background. AI summaries are only generated on explicit user click.
Ephemeral Credentials: BYOK API keys are stored strictly in chrome.storage.session and are purged whenever your browser closes.
Exact Origin Scoping: Permission is requested only for the specific host you configure.