Best Tech Stack for Building a Chrome Extension as a Solo Developer

Chrome extensions are weird. They look like web development, and they mostly are, but they have their own set of constraints that change which tools make sense. I've built three Chrome extensions, and the stack I settled on after the third one is dramatically different from what I started with.

My first extension was vanilla JavaScript with no build step. It worked, but managing 15 files without imports or TypeScript was chaos. My second used a full React setup with webpack, which was overkill for a popup that showed three buttons. The third one hit the sweet spot. Here's what I'd use now.

The Recommended Stack

Why This Stack Works for Solo Developers

The biggest challenge with Chrome extension development is the development experience. Without proper tooling, you make a change, rebuild, go to chrome://extensions, click reload, open your extension, and test. That cycle is painful.

CRXJS (the Vite plugin for Chrome extensions) fixes this completely. It gives you hot module replacement for your popup, options page, and even content scripts. Change a file, see the result immediately. No manual reloading. This alone saves hours per week during development.

The other thing that matters for solo developers is keeping the stack minimal. Chrome extensions have strict content security policies, limited access to web APIs in certain contexts, and multiple execution environments (popup, background worker, content script, options page). Each extra tool is another thing that might break in one of those environments.

Popup/Options UI: React or Svelte

Your extension popup and options page are just web pages. Use whatever frontend framework you're comfortable with. React works great if that's your daily driver. Svelte is my personal preference for extensions because the bundle size is smaller and there's no virtual DOM overhead, which matters when your popup needs to open instantly.

The popup has a hard constraint that most developers don't realize initially. It closes the moment the user clicks outside of it. This means you can't do async operations that take more than a second or two without the user seeing the popup disappear. Long-running operations should happen in the background service worker, with the popup just displaying results.

For the options page, you have more freedom. It opens in a full browser tab, so it can be as complex as you want. I've built options pages with tabbed layouts, import/export functionality, and real-time previews. Treat it like a mini web app.

Bundler: Vite + CRXJS

This is the combination that changed Chrome extension development for me. Before CRXJS, I used webpack with a custom configuration that I copy-pasted between projects and barely understood. CRXJS reads your manifest.json and automatically configures Vite to build all the entry points (popup, background, content scripts, options page) with the right settings.

The hot reload is the killer feature. In content script development, you traditionally had to reload the extension AND refresh the page to see changes. With CRXJS, the content script updates live. This makes iterating on content scripts (which modify other websites) much faster.

One gotcha. CRXJS works with Manifest V3, which is the current standard. If you find old tutorials using Manifest V2, ignore them. V2 is deprecated and Chrome won't accept new V2 extensions.

Storage: Chrome Storage API

Most Chrome extensions don't need a backend database. Chrome's Storage API gives you two options: chrome.storage.local (stays on the device, 10MB limit) and chrome.storage.sync (syncs across the user's Chrome instances, 100KB limit).

For user preferences, feature toggles, and small datasets, chrome.storage.sync is perfect. Your users sign into Chrome on their laptop and their desktop, and the extension settings are the same on both. This is genuinely one of Chrome's best features for extension developers.

For larger data (cached content, history, logs), use chrome.storage.local. The 10MB limit is generous enough for almost any extension that doesn't store media files.

I'd only add a backend (Supabase, Firebase, or Cloudflare Workers) if you need user accounts, cross-browser sync beyond Chrome, or server-side processing. For a v1 extension, try to stay client-side only. Every backend you add is infrastructure you maintain.

Content Scripts: The Tricky Part

Content scripts run on web pages and are the most error-prone part of any Chrome extension. They execute in an isolated world but share the DOM with the page. This means your CSS might conflict with the page's CSS, and vice versa.

Use Shadow DOM for any UI you inject into pages. This isolates your styles completely. Without Shadow DOM, your Tailwind classes might affect the page, or the page's styles might break your injected elements. I spent an embarrassing amount of time debugging why my extension's button looked different on every website before learning about Shadow DOM isolation.

For communicating between content scripts and the background service worker, use chrome.runtime.sendMessage(). Keep messages small and serializable. Don't try to pass DOM elements or complex objects between contexts.

What I'd Skip

Webpack. Vite with CRXJS is simpler, faster, and has better DX. There's no reason to use webpack for a new Chrome extension in 2026 unless you have a very unusual requirement.

A full backend for v1. Resist the urge to add user accounts, analytics, and a server right away. Ship the extension with client-side storage, get users, and add server features when you have a real reason to.

Manifest V2 tutorials. If a tutorial mentions background.scripts or browser_action, it's V2 and outdated. Look for tutorials that reference background.service_worker and action.

Complex state management. For a Chrome extension, Zustand or even React's built-in useState/useContext is plenty. You don't need Redux for a popup with three buttons and an options page.

End-to-end testing frameworks. Unit test your business logic with Vitest. Manually test the extension in Chrome. Automated E2E testing for Chrome extensions is possible with Puppeteer, but the setup cost isn't worth it until your extension is complex and has paying users.

Getting Started

Here's what I'd do this afternoon.

1. Scaffold the project. Use npm create vite@latest my-extension -- --template react-ts, install CRXJS Vite plugin, and create your manifest.json. CRXJS has a great getting started guide on their docs.

2. Build the popup. Create a simple popup with your extension's core action. One button that does the main thing. Add Tailwind for styling.

3. Add a content script. If your extension interacts with web pages, create a content script that modifies a specific site. Start with just one site and expand later.

4. Load and test. Run npm run dev, load the extension in Chrome developer mode (pointing to the output directory), and verify everything works with hot reload.

5. Publish. Create a Chrome Web Store developer account ($5 one-time fee), take screenshots, write a description, and submit. Review takes 1-3 days.

Chrome extensions have a massive distribution advantage through the Web Store. The stack I've outlined gets you from idea to published extension as fast as possible while keeping the codebase maintainable as your extension grows. Start simple. Ship fast. Add complexity only when users ask for it.