Browser Companion

The Browser Companion is a Chrome extension that connects the Jira Cloud or Linear tab you are already looking at to a SprintBee room. It is the one way to estimate tracker work without an API connection at all.

What it is, and what it is not#

A Jira or Linear connection is made once by an organization owner, authorized through the tracker's API, and attached to a Workspace. The Companion authorizes nothing. It reads the page you have open, in the browser session you are already signed in to, and talks only to SprintBee.

That makes it the fallback when API access is out of reach — the OAuth app is not approved, the Jira admin has a queue, the team is on Free — and a convenience even when a connection exists.

It is deliberately thin, and by design rather than by omission. It never searches your tracker, never imports more than the one issue in front of you, and never writes anything back to Jira or Linear — not through an API it does not have, and not by typing into the page. Search, bulk import and estimate write-back belong to the Jira and Linear connections.

Installing it#

The Companion is published as SprintBee Companion on the Chrome Web Store. Anyone on the team can add it to their own browser; nobody has to be a SprintBee owner or a Jira administrator, and there is no account to create.

Pin it to the toolbar afterwards. Opening an issue in Jira Cloud or Linear and selecting the toolbar icon opens the side panel with that issue already detected, which is where pairing starts. Detection comes from the tab's URL and title, so an issue has to actually be open — including one selected on a Jira board, which carries its key in the URL. A project or backlog page with nothing selected gives the panel nothing to work with.

How pairing works#

Pairing joins one browser tab's issue to one room, and the extension's side panel is where it happens: the panel shows the issue detected in the current tab and connects to your room.

Prefer to have the room open in another tab — the Companion bridges to it, so your presence in the room is the tab you already have, never a second connection for the same person. When no room tab is open, the panel can open one for you, from a room code, a room link, or your own rooms list if you sign in from the panel. Signing in is optional; detection, capture, voting and nudges all work without it.

Pairing lasts as long as the browser session. Nudge preferences and the room credentials behind them persist, so reminders survive a restart.

What it can and cannot see#

The extension holds host permissions for three places only: Jira Cloud (*.atlassian.net), Linear (linear.app), and SprintBee's own site. No other site you browse is visible to it, and it asks for no broad host access.

It reads	It never touches
The issue key, from the URL or tab title	The description
A best-effort title — tab title, plus one summary selector on Jira board views	Comments, attachments, custom fields
Nothing else on the page	Anything writable — no field, no story-point value

There is no Jira or Linear API token, OAuth grant or password involved, which is why no tracker administrator has anything to approve. The only background requests it makes are to SprintBee: a periodic check for voting-window activity in your paired rooms, which is what lets nudges arrive with no SprintBee tab open. It never calls your tracker in the background.

Locally it keeps what its own features need: which tabs are paired and your auto-follow choice, your visibility preferences, nudge settings with the room tokens that power them, and — only if you signed in from the panel — your SprintBee session.

What appears on a Jira or Linear page#

Beyond the panel, the Companion paints two small surfaces directly on the tracker page, both of which you can silence globally or for one site.

An edge tab appears when an issue is detected and expands into a capture card. Capture is moderator-only; participants see the room's activity instead.

A voting dock appears while the paired room has a round live, or while an open async voting window includes the issue on screen, so you can cast an estimate without leaving the issue.

Participants also get follow mode: when the room moves to a new tracker-linked round, their tab offers to jump to that issue, or navigates automatically if they opted in. It waits rather than navigating out from under an unsent comment. A moderator's tab is never auto-navigated — moderators drive the room by capturing.

How captured items behave in the room#

A captured issue becomes an ordinary queue item carrying the key, the title and a link back to the tracker — nothing more, because nothing more was read. It is marked as a linked source rather than a connected one.

Capturing works whether or not the room's Workspace also has a Jira or Linear connection; the two are independent. Where write-back is configured, it still applies only to items imported through the connection, never to captured ones.

What it costs#

Capturing into the room you are paired with is free on every plan, and so are follow mode and your own voting reminders. Two things are paid: routing a capture into a room other than the one you are paired with, and keeping the Companion connected in the background with no room tab open. If you manage a single room, the first has nothing to route between and stays free.