BumbleTapHow It Works
What browsers, extensions and bots do under the hood.
Latest in How It Works
5 posts
How It Works
Half My AI Crawler Traffic Wasn't AI Crawlers
I was one query away from publishing that AI assistants fetch this site 80 times for every Google click. One extra field in the query showed that half the traffic failed to verify and that I'd been wrong in three separate ways. The honest number is 11.
Shahzeb Umer · 24 min read
How It Works
Chrome Deletes the Last Manifest V2 Extensions on August 31
The 'your extensions die on August 31' headlines are a year late: Manifest V2 stopped running in July 2025. You can't re-enable it, but you can replace it.
22 min read
How It Works
Why Chrome Uses So Much RAM: Inside Its Memory Management
Chrome isn't leaking. Site Isolation, V8's heap and hidden caches explain the number, and why your task manager can't name the tab responsible.
22 min read
How It Works
How Chrome Extensions Actually Run Your Code
How Chrome extensions actually execute code: content scripts, isolated versus main worlds, the MV3 service-worker lifecycle, and message passing.
32 min read
How It Works
How Cloudflare Decides You're a Bot (Without a CAPTCHA)
How Cloudflare detects bots without a CAPTCHA: TLS and JA4 fingerprinting, HTTP/2 signatures, headless checks, and the 1 to 99 bot score explained.
14 min read
Topics
Browse by topic.
Sharp analysis, straight to your inbox.
Emerging developer tools and practical insights for builders. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.