Some releases are one big feature. This one is a dozen — built and shipped in a single monster session, in three batches, each tested before the next began. Together they change what Chervil is: the AI stops being something that only composes pages and starts working with the web you're already on, and the browser underneath grows the engine a daily driver deserves.
Let's take it from the top.
Sprig on every page
Until now, Sprig's superpower lived mostly in the pages it composed. As of 0.15.0, Sprig works with any live website you're viewing:
- Ask about this page (💬). "Summarize this." "What does it say about pricing?" In chat mode it just works — Sprig sees the site you're on. Not in chat mode? Click 💬 and your next message goes to chat with the page as context, then everything returns to normal. Highlight a confusing paragraph first and "explain this" means exactly that paragraph.
- Translate this page (🌐). Any site, translated in place — layout, links, and images untouched, only the words change. Any language you can name, with one-click Show original. This is the feature I'd missed most from mainstream browsers, and honestly, Sprig's version is better: it's a real language model doing the translating.
- Read aloud (🔊). Sprig narrates the article — pick the voice and speed in Settings → Voice. Select a passage to hear just that part. Works on live sites and composed pages alike.
- Snip (✂). Drag a box around anything — a chart, an error message, a product photo — and hand it straight to Sprig: "what is this?" Or copy it, or save it. The screenshot tool and the AI input turn out to be the same feature.
- Compare your open tabs. "Compare the three laptops I have open." "Which of my tabs mentions a free tier?" Sprig reads your other tabs' actual content and answers across them. (It only gets your tabs when the question is about them — ordinary chat shares nothing.)
Every one of these is a toolbar button you can show or hide like the rest.
Every tab is alive now
Here's a secret about Chervil before today: only the tab you were looking at was actually running. Switch away from a YouTube video and it didn't pause — it was torn down. Switch back and the whole site reloaded. Fine for an AI-first tool; not fine for your only browser.
0.15.0 rebuilds the engine. Every website tab now runs in its own live view:
- Background tabs keep going. Music keeps playing when you switch away. The 🔊 badge appears on whichever tab is making sound — background included — and clicking it mutes that tab without switching to it.
- Switching is instant. No reload, no white flash. Your scroll position, your half-filled form, the video's timestamp — all still there.
- Memory stays sane. Your most recent background sites stay warm; older ones quietly reload when you come back to them, exactly like every tab used to.
And the change I care most about: private tabs are now truly private. Each one gets its own isolated, in-memory session — separate cookies, separate storage, gone the instant the tab closes. A site in a private tab can't see the accounts you're logged into elsewhere. Before today, "private" meant "not recorded in your history"; now it means what you'd expect it to mean. Private sessions keep all the normal protections too — per-site permission prompts, ad blocking, safe downloads.
Tab groups, and finding the tab you already have
Two more for the heavy-tab lifestyle (I see you — I am you):
- Tab groups. Right-click a tab → Add to group… — name it, and it gets a color. The group's colored chip sits in the tab strip: click to collapse or expand, right-click to rename, recolor, ungroup, or close the whole thing. Groups keep their tabs together when you drag things around, and they're still there after a restart.
- Tab search. Start typing in the address bar and your open tabs appear first as "Switch to tab." The tab you're about to re-open? You already have it. Now you'll land on it instead of duplicating it.
The switcher's welcome mat
0.13.0 built the moving van — import your bookmarks, history, passwords, and autofill from Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, or Opera. 0.15.0 builds the front door: a Welcome setup that greets a fresh install and walks through the whole switch — bring your stuff over, pick your search engine, make Chervil your default. Three steps, all optional, all skippable. (Already running Chervil? You'll never see it — but you can open it anytime from Settings → Browser.)
And the small stuff, because it's never small
- Per-site zoom memory — the site you always bump to 125% stays at 125%; everything else keeps your default. Like Chrome, like it should be.
- Spell-check — red squiggles and right-click suggestions in every text field, tuned to your system language, with Add to Dictionary.
- Send this page to your phone (📱) — a QR code your phone's camera opens. Directions to the car, an article to the couch.
Twelve features later
That's the day: five ways Sprig now works with the page you're on, a rebuilt multi-tab engine with honest private browsing, tab groups, tab search, a welcome flow for switchers, and three quality-of-life fixes that mainstream browsers taught us to expect.
Grab 0.15.0 from the GitHub releases page — and if you're coming from another browser, let the Welcome setup do the moving. As always, Chervil is open source and built in public; come tell me what to build next on Discord.