NovelForge

NovelForge is a Chrome extension that turns web novels into downloadable EPUB 3 books. It provides a single workflow for inspecting a novel, choosing its content, editing its metadata, and creating an offline ebook.

The extension uses a site-adapter architecture so support for new sources can be added without coupling the user interface or EPUB generator to a particular website.

Features

• Reads novel metadata, volumes, and chapters from Hako/docln, UU看書 (uukanshu.cc), Novel543, and 69書吧 (69shuba.com).
• Joins chapters split across multiple Novel543 pages before packaging them.
• Rebuilds paragraphs for sources that publish chapters as <br>-separated text.
• Lets you edit the title, author, description, tags, and cover.
• Supports selecting complete volumes or individual chapters.
• Preserves the original reading order.
• Uses a configurable delay between chapter requests.
• Handles source-specific protected content through site adapters.
• Downloads chapter images for offline reading.
• Packages metadata, navigation, cover art, chapters, and images into one EPUB 3 file.
• Continues producing a usable ebook when a non-essential remote image cannot be downloaded.

Requirements

• Node.js
• pnpm
• Google Chrome or another Chromium-based browser

Development

Install the dependencies:

pnpm install

Start the development build:

pnpm dev

Open chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode, select Load unpacked, and choose the generated dist directory. CRXJS updates the extension while the development server is running.

Usage

1. Open a novel page from a supported source.
2. Select the NovelForge icon from the browser toolbar.
3. Review and edit the detected book information.
4. Choose the volumes and chapters to include.
5. Adjust the delay between chapter requests if needed.
6. Generate and download the EPUB.

NovelForge performs the crawl from its configuration tab. You may switch to another tab during the process, but keep the configuration tab open until the download is complete.

Validation and production build

Run the complete validation pipeline:

pnpm check

This command runs:

1. The Node test suite.
2. Oxlint.
3. The TypeScript type-check.
4. The production build.

Each stage can also be run separately:

pnpm test
pnpm lint
pnpm build

After a successful production build, load the dist directory as an unpacked extension.

The repository uses UTF-8, LF line endings, two-space indentation, and final newlines as configured in .editorconfig.

Architecture

NovelForge separates generic application behavior from source-specific parsing.

Browser action
    ↓
Configuration UI
    ↓
Workflow hooks
    ↓
Browser and crawl services
    ├── Site adapter registry → Source-specific adapters
    └── EPUB builder

• Components render the interface and bind user actions.
• Hooks manage state and workflow transitions.
• Services coordinate browser APIs and chapter crawling.
• Site adapters recognize URLs, read book metadata, enumerate chapters, and parse chapter content.
• The EPUB module builds standards-based book documents and packages their assets.

Source-specific selectors, URL rules, decoding, and HTML cleanup belong inside the relevant adapter. Generic hooks, components, and crawl services must not branch on website domains.

Adding a source

The adapter contract is defined in src/sites/types.ts, and available adapters are registered in src/sites/registry.ts.

To add another source:

1. Create a source module that implements SiteAdapter.
2. Implement URL recognition and normalization.
3. Implement book metadata and chapter-list extraction.
4. Implement chapter fetching and content parsing.
5. Register the adapter in src/sites/registry.ts.
6. Add the required origins to host_permissions in manifest.config.ts.
7. Add tests for URL validation, metadata, chapter ordering, and content parsing.

Keep all source-specific behavior inside the adapter module. Shared behavior should only be promoted to a generic module when it has the same semantics for multiple sources.

Project structure

.
├── public/
│   └── icons/         Product logo and browser extension icons
├── src/
│   ├── components/    Feature-based user interface
│   ├── hooks/         Application state and workflows
│   ├── services/      Browser integration and crawl orchestration
│   ├── sites/         Adapter contract and registry
│   ├── epub/          EPUB documents, assets, and ZIP packaging
│   ├── App.tsx        Configuration page
│   ├── background.ts  Browser action entry point
│   ├── config.ts      Shared configuration and defaults
│   └── types.ts       Shared application types
└── tests/             Framework-independent module tests

Internal imports use the ~/ alias. The Node test runner registers the same alias through tests/register-alias.mjs.

Technology

• React
• TypeScript
• Vite
• CRXJS
• JSZip
• Chrome Manifest V3

License

Copyright (C) 2026 Trịnh Ngọc Sơn.

NovelForge is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later. See LICENSE.