intently

Intent-aware prefetching. Most prefetchers load every link in the viewport, or wait for a hover. intently watches where the cursor is actually heading — proximity and trajectory, the same prediction that powers a focus ring that warms as you approach — and prefetches (or prerenders, via the native Speculation Rules API) the link a beat before you click. Zero-config, ~4KB, framework-agnostic.

intentlyjs.com · npm · GitHub · the writeup

npm i intently

Quick start

One call binds every eligible same-origin link on the page:

import { intently } from "intently";

intently();

That's it. Move toward a link and intently prefetches its destination during the ~200ms between intent and click, so the navigation feels instant. React:

import { useIntently } from "intently/react";

function App() {
  useIntently();        // once, near the root
  return <Routes />;
}

Why another prefetcher

There are good ones, and intently borrows the best of each:

• quicklink prefetches links in the viewport when the browser is idle. Great coverage, but it can't tell the one link you want from the fifty you don't.
• instant.page prefetches on hover (a 65ms dwell). Precise, but hover is late — the decision is already made by the time you've parked the cursor.
• ForesightJS predicts intent from mouse trajectory — the right signal — but you register elements yourself and wire up the prefetch.

intently combines them: zero-config auto-binding (drop it in, every <a> is covered) + trajectory + proximity prediction (the link you're aimed at, not the one you happen to be near) + a tiered loader that uses the Speculation Rules API for real prefetch and prerender, degrading to <link rel=prefetch> and then fetch where that isn't supported.

The trajectory idea is old — there are patents on cursor extrapolation going back years, and ForesightJS does it well today. intently's bet is that prediction + the right modern loader + nothing to configure is the combination worth shipping.

How it works

Three things, kept small:

1. Predict. On every pointermove, intently keeps a smoothed velocity. For each on-screen link it computes two scores — proximity (distance to the link's nearest edge, on a squared falloff) and trajectory (the dot product of your heading with the direction to the link, gated by a forward cone). The higher of the two is the confidence that this link is your next click. (This is the same math as the input-anticipation focus ring — here it drives a fetch instead of a glow.)

2. Tier by confidence. Crossing intentThreshold (default 0.5) prefetches. Sustained high confidence past prerenderThreshold (default 0.85) upgrades to a prerender — the next page is fully built in a hidden tab, so the click is instant, not just fast. Prerender is expensive, so it stays rare and high-bar.

3. Load with the best available backend.

Tier	Used when	Does
Speculation Rules API	Chromium	real prefetch and prerender, cross-document, browser-prioritized
<link rel="prefetch">	most browsers	prefetch only
fetch() low priority	last resort	warms the HTTP cache

Only in-viewport links are scored (via IntersectionObserver), the scoring loop sleeps when the pointer is still, and every URL loads once. Offscreen links cost nothing.

Options

intently({
  origins: [location.hostname],   // hostnames allowed; or a (url, el) => boolean
  ignores: [/\/logout/, "?add-to-cart"], // never touch these (strings or RegExps)
  signals: ["trajectory", "proximity", "hover", "touch"], // which to use
  intentThreshold: 0.5,           // confidence (0–1) to prefetch
  prerenderThreshold: 0.85,       // confidence to prerender; false to disable
  proximityRadius: 80,            // px — how far a link "notices" the cursor
  hoverDelay: 65,                 // ms dwell before hover counts (instant.page's number)
  eagerOnPress: true,             // prefetch immediately on pointerdown / touchstart
  viewportPrefetch: false,        // also idle-prefetch in-view links (quicklink-style)
  limit: Infinity,                // cap total loads
  respectSaveData: true,          // skip on Save-Data / 2g
  onPredict: ({ el, url, confidence, signal }) => {}, // wire a visual affordance
  onLoad: (url, strategy) => {},  // "prefetch" | "prerender"
});

intently() returns a handle:

const i = intently();
i.prefetch("/pricing");   // force it
i.prerender("/checkout"); // force it (falls back to prefetch where unsupported)
i.loaded;                 // ReadonlySet<string> of URLs loaded this session
i.destroy();              // remove every listener/observer

Exposed prediction helpers

The prediction math is exported if you want to build your own affordance (a ring that warms as confidence rises, say):

import { distanceToRect, falloff, proximityScore, trajectoryScore } from "intently";

Safety & taste

• It only guesses same-origin links by default, and never touches anything in ignores. Put sign-out, "add to cart", language switches, and any link with side effects there — especially before enabling prerender, which runs the page.
• It respects the user. Save-Data and 2g connections turn it off. A still cursor predicts nothing.
• It degrades. No Speculation Rules → <link rel=prefetch> → fetch. SSR / no-DOM → a no-op handle.
• Prefetch is a hint, not a navigation. The real click always works whether or not the guess landed.

When it helps (and when it doesn't)

Biggest wins are multi-page apps and hard navigations — content sites, docs, e-commerce, blogs — where the next page is a real document fetch. For SPAs with a client router (React Router, Next.js), those frameworks already prefetch route data; intently still helps for outbound and non-router links, and its prediction layer is reusable.

Credits

Trajectory prediction by way of ForesightJS and a long line of cursor-extrapolation prior art; zero-config ergonomics from instant.page; viewport idle prefetch from quicklink; the prediction math from my own input-anticipation work. Built on the Speculation Rules API.

By Sean Geng. MIT.