Format & Schema

Gestura menus and search engines can be exported, shared and imported as portable JSON files. This index stores and distributes them, but the format itself does not depend on it: the browser extension can import and export these files directly, with no server involved.

The extension works entirely without this index. Sharing here is an optional, free add-on — nothing in the extension depends on this backend being reachable.

Menus

A menu file has the marker "gesturaMenu": 1 at the top level and describes an in-page menu: a list of items (links, searches or actions such as scrolling and navigation) that appears on matching websites. Each item needs a unique id; a non-separator item must use one of a fixed set of allowed actions.

Search engines

An engine file has the marker "gesturaEngine": 1 and describes a single custom search engine or quick link: a name, an https url template, and optional settings such as result formatting or other behaviour flags. An engine may include transformCode, a small JavaScript snippet that reshapes the search result before it is used.

Common fields

Every entry has an id (a short, reverse-domain-style identifier, e.g. example.com.my-menu) and a version following semantic versioning (major.minor.patch, e.g. 1.2.0). name and, where present, description accept either a plain string or an object keyed by language code, such as an "en" entry alongside a "de" entry, with English used as the fallback when a viewer's language is missing. Menus use patterns (URL match patterns) and items; engines use a url template instead.

Validation rules

The server validates every submission with the same rules the extension itself enforces: all URLs (homepage, item links, engine url) must start with https:; ids, names, descriptions and URLs are limited in length; a menu holds at most 100 items and at most 50 patterns; item ids must be unique within a menu; a searchLink item needs either an engineId or a url. Entries that contain transformCode always go through manual moderation before publication, since executable code needs a human look.

Minimal examples

{
  "gesturaMenu": 1,
  "id": "example.com.quick-links",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "name": "Quick links",
  "patterns": ["*://example.com/*"],
  "items": [
    { "id": "back", "action": "back", "label": "Back" },
    { "id": "sep-1", "type": "separator" },
    {
      "id": "open-docs",
      "action": "openCustomUrl",
      "label": "Docs",
      "customUrl": "https://example.com/docs"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "gesturaEngine": 1,
  "id": "example.com.search",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "name": "Example Search",
  "url": "https://example.com/search?q={searchTerms}"
}