CRXJS

CRXJS is a Chrome extension development tool that provides true HMR for popup, options, content scripts, and side panels. It reads your manifest to auto-generate the extension output, handles content script injection, and manages the service worker build. Under the hood it is a Vite plugin (@crxjs/vite-plugin).

Current status

• Package: @crxjs/vite-plugin (v2.x stable, latest v2.4.0 as of March 2026)
• Scaffolding: npm create crxjs@latest (always use @latest)
• Maintained by: @Toumash and @FliPPeDround (since mid-2025)
• GitHub: github.com/crxjs/chrome-extension-tools (~4k stars)
• Vite compatibility: v3 through v8-beta

Quick start

# Scaffold new project (picks framework interactively)
npm create crxjs@latest