I built a PDF-to-Excel converter as a Chrome extension - here's why I regret the name

Built this as a solo dev using an AI coding assistant (Claude). Thought it'd be straightforward. It wasn't.

What it does:

• Converts PDF tables to Excel right in the browser (no upload needed for text-based PDFs)
• Only scanned documents hit my backend (Mistral OCR, ~$0.004/page)
• Also does Excel->PDF via Chrome's native Save-as-PDF (solved all CJK/cyrillic font issues instantly)

Technical bits that ate my time:

• OCR kept leaking markdown bold artifacts into Excel cells from digital documents. Had to build a regex filter for what Mistral thought was formatting
• Rate limiting - 50 conversions/day per browser fingerprint, x3 per IP. Wrote this after one abuser ran 2000 conversions in 4 hours
• The Excel->PDF direction: rendering tables in a new tab + native Chrome print. Way more reliable than generating raw PDF bytes yourself

The naming mistake:
The extension is called Convert PDF to Excel. Problem is - there's already a competitor with the exact same name and 10,000+ users. Google physically cannot rank my listing above theirs with 2 users. Zero organic discoverability from day one. Lesson learned: never name your extension after a generic keyword phrase.

Current state: ~2 users, no monetization (free tier, backend costs are mine). Building it was fun, distribution is the real puzzle. Same story as my last extension, honestly.

If you want to check it out: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hboeifcemhbamnoakkbalaemdleehfnf