Memex (https://github.com/WorldBrain/Memex/) provides for searching your history and bookmarks. That might help alleviate the need to maintain sets of tabs.
The Vimium extension for Firefox also happens to provide basic filtering of open tabs, although I've never tried it with anywhere near 1600. YMMV.
Other commenters have already mentioned Tree Style Tabs and similar extensions which can aid in grouping and managing things efficiently.
> URLs bit rot and their contents change. If you have a browser session that's old enough, the RAM contents are a saving grace.
This is a serious problem in my experience. To that end, Zotero is an invaluable research tool with browser extensions for (among other things) taking a snapshot of an open webpage. Its library exists externally to your browser though which might add friction to your workflow.
The Vimium extension for Firefox also happens to provide basic filtering of open tabs, although I've never tried it with anywhere near 1600. YMMV.
Other commenters have already mentioned Tree Style Tabs and similar extensions which can aid in grouping and managing things efficiently.
> URLs bit rot and their contents change. If you have a browser session that's old enough, the RAM contents are a saving grace.
This is a serious problem in my experience. To that end, Zotero is an invaluable research tool with browser extensions for (among other things) taking a snapshot of an open webpage. Its library exists externally to your browser though which might add friction to your workflow.