chrome-extension-test-loader

Overview

The unpacked-extension flow is the canonical Chromium developer test loop per the Chrome Extensions "Hello World" tutorial: toggle Developer mode in chrome://extensions, click Load unpacked, point at the source directory containing manifest.json.

Automated launchers reproduce this same load through browser launch flags rather than the UI (see CI integration below). Knowing the manual flow directly is what lets you reason about why a launcher fails to see the extension, which surface a regression hit, and what a "service worker reload" actually re-evaluates.

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