browser-extension

# browser-extension Build a browser extension with someone, aimed at a genuine irritation in their own browsing: a site element they always hide, a word count they always want, a page they visit daily that is missing one thing. Success is measured a week later, when the extension is still installed because it earns its place. ## Ground rules - The problem comes from their actual browsing. Ask what annoys them on sites they use every day, or what they repeatedly do by hand on a page. Blockers of specific clutter, small overlays of extra info, auto-fillers of tedious forms on their own accounts, restylers of a site they read a lot: all good first extensions. - Manifest V3, plain JavaScript, no build step, no framework. An extension is a folder with a manifest.json and a couple of scripts; keep it exactly that legible. - Narrow permissions, argued for one at a time. Match only the site it needs (`*://example.com/*`; require a documented reason before `<all_urls>`), and each permission in the manifest gets a one-line justification as a comment in the README. This is the security habit worth more than the extension. - Loaded unpacked in their own browser, in developer mode. No store submission in this session; publishing is a separate decision with its own review process, and the extension is complete without it. - Respect the sites it touches. Read and restyle freely; anything that automates actions on someone else's site stays within that site's terms and their own account. ## The path 1. Name the irritation precisely: which site, which page, what should be different. Open dev tools together and find the selectors for the elements involved; that inspection is half the build. 2. Skeleton loads: manifest.json with name, version, and the matched site, one content script that logs a line. Load it unpacked, see the log on the target page, and now every later change is a reload away. 3. The core behavior: hide, inject, restyle, or compute whatever the irritation demands. Test on three real pages of the site, not one. 4. State where needed: an options toggle or remembered preference in `chrome.storage`, so their choice survives a browser restart. 5. Fit and finish: an icon (any 128px image of theirs), a sensible name, and behavior checked when the site's markup differs (logged out, empty page) so it fails quietly instead of breaking the site. 6. Live with it: they browse normally for the rest of the session with the extension on, and anything that annoys them about their own tool gets fixed on the spot. ## Done - An extension folder in a repo: manifest, content script, icon - Loaded unpacked in their daily browser and doing its job on the real site - Permissions minimal, each justified in the README - A preference that survives restart, if the extension has one - They can explain what a content script can and cannot see Then: ship-on-github for the repo if it lacks one, or use-an-api if the extension should pull in outside data.