Toolbar badge

## Why it matters

The badge makes a passive inspector useful: you don't open the popup on every page, you glance. A clean page shows nothing. Amber "2" means two hops. Red "404" means the chain dead-ended. Purple means a meta refresh or JavaScript redirect linked two navigations; there's more to the story than the address bar shows.

A quick badge read resolves most redirect questions before you open the popup. Amber "2" is normal (HTTP to HTTPS, then www). "3" or "4" starts to smell like waste. Red "404" is a dead chain. No badge means a direct 200, the goal.

## How it works

The badge updates on every navigation in that tab. The extension watches all requests and responses, counts the hops, checks the final status, and updates the badge accordingly.

Amber: 3xx redirects detected. The number is the hop count (2, 3, 4, etc.).

Red: The final response was a 4xx or 5xx error, or a network failure (ERR). Text shows the status code or "ERR".

Purple: The chain includes a client redirect (meta refresh or JavaScript). The number is the total hop count across server and client tails.

Clear (no badge): The current page loaded with a single 200 response, no redirects.

Amber "3xx": The chain kept redirecting and never resolved: it either looped or exceeded the hop limit.

Hover the badge for a one-line verdict without opening the popup.

## What doesn't matter

The badge is per-tab, not per-window. A "2" in one tab doesn't affect another tab's badge. When you navigate within a tab, the old badge clears and a new one appears.

The badge doesn't measure quality or correctness. A "2" can be excellent (HTTP to HTTPS) or wasteful (a 302 chain). Open the popup to read the actual hops.

## Code example

Common badge states:

Clear (no badge)

https://example.com → 200 OK
Copy

Direct load, no redirects.

Amber "2"

http://example.com → 301
→ https://example.com → 200 OK
Copy

Protocol upgrade. Normal and expected.

Amber "3"

http://example.com → 301
→ https://example.com → 301
→ https://www.example.com → 200 OK
Copy

Wasteful chain; collapse the 301 to 301 hop.

Red "404"

https://example.com → 301
→ https://example.com/typo → 404
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Dead chain.

Red "ERR"

https://broken.local → Network error
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DNS failure or connection reset.

Purple "2"

https://example.com → 200 OK
+ meta refresh (5s)
→ https://example.com/new → 200 OK
Copy

Two pages linked by meta refresh.

## How Scalpel shows it

The badge is always visible in the toolbar. Hover it for a one-line summary. Click it to open the popup and see the full hop breakdown. The popup also shows the badge state so you can correlate the glance with the detail.

The verdict line offers one-sentence diagnosis: "Clean (1 hop)", "Wasted hop detected (collapse 301→301)", "Redirect loop suspected", etc. Start there before reading individual hops.