Take Logos with you across the entire web.
The gap
Our users also spend time reading outside Logos.
Bible references, theology terms, and book mentions they encounter on DesiringGod, The Gospel Coalition, a seminary PDF, or a Substack newsletter are moments Logos could be present — and isn’t.
The handoff is broken. Readers either retype a reference into Logos, use Google, or just keep reading — and the opportunity to go deeper is lost.
The vision
Make the open web
Logos-aware.
A quiet, intelligent layer that detects biblical content anywhere a Logos user reads — then offers the shortest possible path back into Logos: a verse preview, a deep-link, a Factbook entry, a store search, a passage list.
Ambient presence
Logos becomes visible everywhere our users already read. No workflow change.
Zero-friction handoff
Hover to preview. Click to open in Logos. That’s the whole interaction model.
Complementary, not competing
A companion to the flagship app — it makes Logos more valuable, doesn’t replace it.
What it is
A Chrome extension.
That’s it.
Manifest V3. Zero servers of our own. The entire product lives inside the browser the user already has open.
- Hover tooltips on biblical content
- Side panel browsing of everything detected on a page
- Built-in PDF viewer with the same detection
- Deep-links to Logos desktop, Logos Web, and Factbook
- ESV, LEB, KJV verse previews via Crossway + Biblia APIs
Where we are today
Quiet progress, real surface area.
Four of five planned phases are substantially shipped. 430 tests passing, clean build, ready to put in colleagues' hands.
Phases shipped
Scripture Sense, Library Bridge, Study Companion, Research Hub.
Full viewer
Lazy-rendered, all 5 detectors, sidebar-integrated.
Translations
ESV, LEB, KJV, NIV, NASB95, NLT, NET, CSB, MSG, and 14 more.
Content script
Gzipped. Light footprint on every page.
Existing features · five detectors
Five ways it sees biblical content on the page.
Bible references
John 3:16, Rom 8:28–30, Ps 23. Verse previews across 23 translations (ESV, LEB, KJV, NIV, NASB95, NLT, NET, CSB, …). Deep-links to Logos desktop, Logos Web, and Biblia.
Biblical entities → Factbook
~200 curated entries with BK-verified DTRs. Apostles, prophets, places, events. Right prefix, right slug, no 404s.
Theology terms → Factbook
~300 entries across attributes of God, soteriology, covenants, canon, creeds, Christological controversies.
Greek & Hebrew words
Transliterated and native-script lemmas (agape, hesed, logos, πίστις) link to lemma lookup.
Books → Logos Store
~400 curated titles with title+author gating. ISBN, citations, Amazon pages. “Available in Logos” banner.
Surface area
Detection shows up everywhere readers are.
Any web page
Content script injects detection + tooltips into every user-allowed site. Reftagger and ESV CrossRef compatibility: we replace third-party markup with ours so tooltips don’t collide.
Built-in PDF viewer
Right-click any PDF link → open in our viewer. Lazy-rendered, ligature-normalized (fi/ff → fi/ff), all five detectors run per page. Unblocks the 1000-page liturgy benchmark.
Side panel
Three tabs: Verses / Topics / Books. Sort, filter, verse lookup, per-occurrence rows, prev/next navigation. Click-to-pin sync with the page. Copy All for citations in either tab.
Toolbar + context menus
Right-click the icon to quick-disable the current site. Context menu to open PDFs in the viewer. Omnibox verse lookup keyword.
Welcome tab
First-run tab opens on fresh install. Brand mark, three-beat explanation, primary CTA to a live sample page (Desiring God article — dense refs + theology + entities).
Popup + options
Quick toggle in the popup. Granular per-feature settings for detection, tooltips, intercepts, and Logos product links.
Who we’re building for
Two audiences, ordered.
Primary · the serious Logos user
A companion for the committed Logos user who wants every blog article, Substack essay, seminary PDF, and even a Google search to connect back into their study environment.
- Retention. Ambient Logos presence across their reading day.
- Engagement. Every outbound deep-link is an extra session in Logos desktop or Logos Web.
- Habit. “Logos is where I study, always” — even when study starts on a blog.
Secondary · TOFU for new users
A low-friction first touch with the Logos ecosystem. A free Chrome extension is a lighter commitment than a desktop install — and still shows the depth behind every reference, term, and book.
- Discovery funnel. “Available in Logos” banners surface on Amazon + publisher book pages.
- Lighter entry point. Free install, no up-front purchase — the open web becomes the onboarding path.
- Positioning. Logos as the trusted biblical reference layer of the open web.
CPO experiment framing: low-cost, low-risk, a complement to the flagship — not a replacement. Success compounds Logos’s presence in the user’s daily life.
Go-to-market
Three-phase soft launch. Cheap to retreat, cheap to expand.
Internal dog-food
Zip + README to Logos product, design, and exec teams. Iterate on feedback.
CWS unlisted
Published but not discoverable. Share link with Logos power users via newsletter / Partner channel.
CWS public
Open discovery once messaging, positioning, and detection quality are proven with a real user cohort.
Firefox + Edge
Same codebase, parallel store submissions once Chrome usage signals are strong.
Distribution mechanics. CWS publisher:
philgons@gmail.com, trader status with Faithlife
business address. Name: Logos Link. Assets
already in store-assets/.
How we’ll know it’s working
Primary: engagement. Secondary: transactions.
Primary · engagement
More users logging more sessions in Logos.
- Outbound CTR to Logos — UTM-tracked on every deep-link.
-
Deep-link → app-open conversion — how many
logos4:/ref.lyhandoffs actually land in Logos desktop or web. - DAU / WAU retention — is the extension part of daily reading?
- Detection rate + quality — refs, entities, books per active tab; self-reported false positives.
Secondary · transactions
Book detections and intercepts driving Logos.com orders.
- Store clickthroughs — from “Available in Logos” banners on Amazon + publisher PDPs, and from Books-tab deep-links.
- Attributable orders — UTM chain from extension → Logos.com checkout.
-
Bible-verse intercept volume — redirects
from Bible Gateway & peers into
app.logos.com.
Attribution caveat. Every link ships with
full UTM parameters. ref.ly redirects may
drop them before Google can log the session — we need to
verify pass-through and add a first-party sink if it’s lossy.
Roadmap
What’s next — and what’s waiting on us.
Object entities
Ark of the Covenant, Tabernacle, Bronze Serpent, Menorah, Urim & Thummim. DTRs already verified from BK dataset.
Multi-line PDF reference stitching
Merge adjacent text-layer spans by Y-coordinate so
Rom 8:28–30 matches even when the dash breaks a line.
Deeper entity & book expansion
Biblical-scope slice of the 49k BK Factbook dataset. Book index is already at ~400 titles; next push is topical breadth (minor prophets, apocryphal figures, theological loci beyond the current ~300).
PDF full-override mode
DNR rule redirects any .pdf response to our
viewer. New permission, triggers CWS re-review.
Save-as-passage-list · Save-as-note · Send-to-sermon
Side panel has the UX stubs. Needs Logos API endpoints.
Ask Study Assistant · Intelligent Assistant phase
Contextual questions about the current page, sent to Logos Study Assistant. The whole of Phase 5.
What would unlock the next level
What I need from the team.
The MVP is usable without any of this. But each of these unlocks meaningful depth — especially the API items, which gate Phase 5 entirely.
OAuth + Passage Lists + Notes + Sermon + Study Assistant
Unlocks save-as-note, save-as-passage-list, send-to-sermon, and all of Phase 5. Largest multiplier on product depth.
Tooltip & side panel polish pass
The product is functional but could be more brand-aligned. Welcome UX, tooltip type hierarchy, empty states.
Positioning + internal launch comms
How we talk about Logos Link to existing Logos users: companion product, not flagship. Email + Partner channel plan.
BK dataset refresh + book index curation
Pipeline for keeping our Factbook slug map current as BK evolves. A sourced list for scaling the book index.
Trader status + brand use + privacy policy hosting
Review the Faithlife business address for CWS trader declaration, the brand-mark usage, and host the privacy policy at a Faithlife/Logos URL.
Community browser matrix + detection sampling
Sample real reading sessions on DG, TGC, Crossway, Bible Gateway, seminary syllabi PDFs. Catch false positives before public launch.
Next 90 days
A concrete plan, if we say go.
Ship to internal
Distribution channel live. Object entities. PDF line stitching. Feedback loop with dog-food users.
CWS unlisted + power users
Unlisted submission clears. Invite 100–300 Logos power users. Design polish pass. Detection-quality metrics baseline.
Public listing + Logos API integrations
Public CWS listing. First Logos API endpoint integrated (passage list or notes, whichever lands first). Marketing co-launch.
Phase 5 + cross-browser
Study Assistant integration. Firefox + Edge parallel launches. PDF override mode with CWS re-review.
Decisions we need to make together
Three strategic questions.
The MVP is working. Where it goes from here is an organizational question, not an engineering one — and these three need engineering leadership + exec alignment.
Official or unofficial?
Do we want to publish Logos Link as an official Logos extension — or does it stay a personal, unofficial side project under my CWS publisher account?
Code review or rewrite?
If it becomes official, does that require a full engineering rewrite, or would a thorough code review suffice to adopt the existing codebase as-is?
Who owns it, and how much do we invest?
Who maintains it going forward? Do we invest beyond the current feature set — auth, Save to Notes, Ask Study Assistant, passage lists, sermon handoff? SoSO integration may make several of these meaningfully cheaper to ship.
The ask
everywhere our users read.
It’s the cheapest experiment we can run that meaningfully expands where Logos lives in the user’s day. The MVP is already here — let’s put it in people’s hands and learn what they do with it.
→ Install and try it (companion walkthrough for the feature surfaces)
Questions, objections, counter-proposals all welcome.