I built yet another chatgpt chrome extension

Hello hello fellow indie hackers 👋,

I’m here to introduce you my first of hopefully-many-projects-to-come this year: ReadPal.ai, a chrome extension that let you chat with ANY web pages while browsing.

Let’s first address the elephant in the room: there are tons of chrome extensions of sorts out there…Why did I choose to work on this? Over the years, I’ve had many projects started that never crossed the finishing line; and also many ideas that’s dauntingly ambitious that I never even started. I'm sure a lot of you can relate. So I chose this project, in the hope that its moderate size & scope can help me finally exercise the build→ship muscle. And I must say, it has served its purpose.

I thought it would just be a weekend project, however, end up dragging it for months…With the pressure of the year-end and the free time in the holiday season, I finally got to the ship phase!

During the process of building, testing, and beta testing, I came across two revelations about the product:

• Having AI side by side with access to the same information as you is very helpful! It's not just about summarizing long research papers, but even simple day-to-day activities can benefit from it. e.g. asking “is this miso good for making ramen?” on a miso product page on amazon, etc.

• Despite a lot of similar extensions, there is still room for differentiation! The average user who isn’t intentionally following the developments in the AI field, can benefit from a tool that simplifies the complexity of various models & prompting techniques, and focuses on providing a user experience that seamlessly integrates with their workflows.

There is still a long way to go in terms of the second point. Your feedback would be very helpful with that! 🙏

Also if you're a fellow indie hacker who is also working towards your dream one side project at a time, would love to connect on twitter (@lululi_lululi) and cheer each other along.

Thank you!!