Guidepost¶
Guidepost is a Chromium (Manifest V3) browser extension for building guided tours, tips and announcements on top of web applications you do not own the source of. You record a walkthrough in the browser, preview it on the live page, and publish it. The player draws the guidance over the page at run time.
It was built for line-of-business apps: Dynamics 365, Angular and React front ends, Java portals and .NET WebForms pages that still use iframes.
What it does¶
- Records walkthroughs by clicking through the application, and stores several ways to find each element so a tour survives small UI changes.
- Draws tooltips, spotlights, hotspots, inline hints, validation hints, modals, banners, toasts, slide-outs, launchers, checklists and a resource centre.
- Links help documentation to steps and fields.
- Keeps everything in the browser profile (IndexedDB) and moves content between machines as
.guidepost.zipbundles. - Ships as a store build with no standing site access, or as a managed build for force-install by policy.
What it is not¶
- Not a hosted service. The MVP is local-only: there is no backend, no account and no sign-in. A remote store is a planned extension point, described under extension seams.
- Not an analytics product. Guidance events are produced by the player, but the service worker discards them today. Nothing is collected or transmitted.
- Not an audience-targeting tool. Segments and roles exist in the schema and are not evaluated in the MVP (decision 10).
- Not a survey or NPS tool.
- Not able to reach into closed shadow roots or cross-origin iframes beyond the supported single hop. See known limits.
Supported browsers¶
| Browser | Status |
|---|---|
| Google Chrome (Chromium, MV3) | Built and covered by the Playwright end-to-end suite. |
| Microsoft Edge (Chromium, MV3) | pnpm build:edge succeeds and the generated manifest has been checked. The end-to-end suite has not been run on Edge. Treat Edge runtime behaviour as unverified. |
| Firefox, Safari | Not supported. |
The e2e helper can target an installed Edge by setting GUIDEPOST_BROWSER=msedge. That run has not happened yet.
Where to go next¶
| If you want to | Read |
|---|---|
| Build and load the extension | Getting started |
| Author content | User guide |
| Deploy to a managed fleet | Admin guide |
| Understand the internals | Architecture |
| See what the player can draw | UI patterns |
| Prepare a store submission | Store readiness and Privacy policy |
Status¶
Version 0.1.0, MIT licence, maintained by Nitin Singh. The extension is not yet published on the Chrome Web Store or Edge Add-ons.