Lessons I Learned from Building My First Chrome Extension

I recently decided to experiment with building a Chrome Extension (GPT Pro)

Lesson 1: Learn the basics first
Go through the official tutorials before building upon frameworks that abstract the basics

Lesson 2: You can view the source code of any extension that you install

1. Navigating to chrome://extensions/
2. In another window open chrome://version/ and copy the the 'Profile Path'
3. Open up the Profile Path and cd into Extensions
4. Map the extension id from step 1 to the folders in step 3

Lesson 3: Use a framework
To develop your Chrome Extension you can either choose JS + HTML or use popular Front End frameworks (React, Vue) etc.

Since I'm very familiar with React I opted for this [React boilerplate] (https://github.com/Jonghakseo/chrome-extension-boilerplate-react-vite). I ended up building my entire chrome extension with it but have some regrets particularly around the issues with turbo.

After building GPT Pro, I built a more complex Chrome Extension Zano AI using WXT instead and had a much better DX.

Lesson 4: Chrome extensions are perfect for finding niches

You could build a chrome extension to enhance any website, for example ChatGPT doesn't have a export chat functionality so I built that!

I suspect there are many other opportunities in this space, building something for TikTok perhaps?

Lesson 5: Monetization isn't that hard
I opted for in-app monetization via a Gumroad product link but any other payment provider will do. It's best if you redirect the user to another page and avoid having to cater for permission to allow communication with your payment provider from the Chrome Extension

Drop a comment if you would like me to go more into the technical aspects around Zano AI (auth, navigation etc.)