TIHNT or the Tile Information & Hidden Node Toolkit (holy backronym) is a project that serves as an overlay/cheat for https://minesweeper.online.

2-part system

• desktop overlay written in cpp with a small Windows UI layer and websocket server for game data
• browser extension (Manifest V3) that injects content scripts to get data for the overlay

FEATURES!! woo

• on screen overlay with capture exclusion where Windows and the capture app support it
• discrete keyboard shortcuts for toggles
• advanced chording (toggleable), and a safe mode that filters left-button presses using suggested cells
• bounded solver searches, background calculations, and incremental board updates

keybinds

• Shift + M — Enter mine amount (helps with guesses); Enter or Shift + M saves, Escape cancels, and an empty entry resets to unknown
• Ctrl + Alt + X — Close overlay
• Ctrl + P — Toggle chording
• Ctrl + Alt + Shift + W — Toggle capture exclusion
• Ctrl + Alt + S — Toggle safety
• Ctrl + Q — Resend full board
• Ctrl + Shift + L — Toggle extension logging

The mine amount is remembered, so update or clear it when changing difficulty. Flags are assumed correct. Green is safe, red is a mine, and orange is a guess. Blue marks show a chord and mines to flag first; yellow marks show a chord ready to use. Guesses can still hit mines, including with safety enabled. Right clicks and scrolling pass through.

Safety checks the cell where a left-button press starts. Drag releases, middle clicks, and the site's swapped-button/flag modes are not protected.

Hints hide on rotated, reflected, or skewed boards and during detected transform animations. They return when supported geometry is restored.

Page overflow clips the hints to the visible part of the board. Detected unsupported masks, rounded clips, and disconnected visible regions hide them until a supported layout returns.

Hints also respect cutouts in the browser's native windows, including holes and separate visible pieces.

Hidden or displaced cells on a clipped board also hide hints until the grid is restored.

Rapid updates can briefly hide clipped hints while a fresh visibility measurement is pending.

If a desktop shortcut is already taken, TIHNT shows which one and exits. Close the conflicting app or release its shortcut before starting again.

compiling..

Windows, Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools with the C++ desktop workload, and CMake 3.20+:

cmake -S . -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64
cmake --build build --config Release --parallel
.\build\cpp\Release\tihnt.exe

Release enables compiler optimizations without requiring AVX2. The exe needs the Microsoft Visual C++ x64 runtime.

In Chrome/Chromium 116+, open the extensions page, enable Developer mode, click Load unpacked, and select extension. Open a game and run the exe. The extension connects to 127.0.0.1:8765 and reconnects automatically. Only the active game tab supplies the board; switching away or disconnecting clears its hints.

Capture exclusion uses Windows display affinity, so support depends on Windows and the capture app. The overlay follows a visible Chromium rendering window and hides when another app is foreground.

checks

Node.js 20+ enables the extension and websocket tests alongside the native solver, parser, session, and rendering tests:

ctest --test-dir build -C Release --output-on-failure
.\build\cpp\Release\core_tests.exe --benchmark
.\build\cpp\Release\core_tests.exe --benchmark-frontier
.\build\cpp\Release\overlay_tests.exe --benchmark

For the real extension/native server browser check:

npm ci --ignore-scripts
npx playwright install chromium
$env:TIHNT_WS_FIXTURE = (Resolve-Path .\build\cpp\Release\ws_fixture.exe).Path
npm run test:browser

Set $env:TIHNT_CAPTURE_BENCHMARK='1' before the browser check to measure capture latency and burst work on an offline expert board.

GitHub Actions checks Windows and Linux, including the browser test and sanitizers. Linux builds the portable solver/parser tests; the overlay is Windows-only.