A replacement for a web-browser's downloads menu that uses git-annex internally ([[`addurl`|tips/using the web as a special remote]] command for the download, and `drop` or `git rm` for the clean up) would be quite helpful:

say, when working on a topic, writing a paper or similar things, I usually have a Git repo with my text, all relevant data and processing code, and possibly other background information. It's nice to store the literature you needed at the same place where you work. (So that it is easy to catch up with what I was doing and thinking over when I left this work aside for a while, perhaps after cloning the repo from another location.)

When I find an interesting literature, I save the file to the directory with my work, and read it. Then I might return to it to re-read it. There might be references to this document from my work, so I'd like them to work as links (perhaps pointing at the local file, but also at the source URL for the case when my document is read by someone else not on my system).

I need to keep track of the source URLs for the documents I have saved which I read and use.

That's a task that fits well git-annex.

Note that doing the dull work of copying and pasting the URL and the downloading it and then opening it for reading is a pain to do every time I'm interested in a document I have found on the web. (Of course, I would need to fill out the bibliogrphic information for this document if I want to refer to it, but that can be done later. Initially, I wish I just don't lose the source URL of a document at the moment when I get interested in it and start reading.)

So, I could be assisted by a replacement of the "downloads" menu of, say, Firefox: whenever I want to open a file for viewing (like a PDF), it should ask me where to save it, and I'd choose the directory with my work, then it should register it with git-annex (so that the source URL is saved, and perhaps it should also write down the referring page's URL somewhere nearby automatically), download it, and open with a viewer for reading.

Then I'll have the interesting literature there when I'm offline; the source URLs would be saved, so that they can be put into the references. Also, if I distribute this work with Git, at another location git-annex can be used to easily get all the literature again.

(Hmmm... probably, the browser that this will be simplest for me to implement for is emacs-w3m; simply, some functions calling git-annex...)

> This seems fairly doable to implement since the git-annex [[design/assistant]]
> already has a webapp. So a javascript toolbar thing could be made that
> submits the current url (or maybe links dragged into it?) to the webapp
> for adding to the annex.
> 
> The only wrinkle is that the webapp runs under a new url each time
> it starts, due to using a high port and embedding some auth token in the
> url. --[[Joey]]

[[!tag /design/assistant]]