Winter break 2025 will be remembered as the time of vibe coding. Several noteworthy projects were launched by a tidal wave of claude code sessions over the holidays.
And I wrote a pretty good junk drawer chrome extension, Chrome Cool Copy.
Recently I switched back to Chrome and found myself reaching for a few “missing” features. So, of course, it started modestly. A chrome extension to add a simple feature, well, two simple features:
- Copy link to current page
- Copy that link as markdown
Things progressed from there. I had some more features I wanted to add:
- Universal dark mode / page theme tweaks
- Smart copy elements
- Reader mode / page clips
and because that’s all a lot of keyboard shortcuts to remember,
- Command palette
Then, simply because I could, I added the now-ubiquitous AI-browser must-have:
- Chat with the current page
Of course, chatting with the current page wasn’t enough. What if I could prompt an agent to write code to modify the current page? Like a greasemonkey script, but modern and dynamic. Finally hackernews will bend to my will and open tabs on new pages!
- Agent-authored JavaScript “boosts” for any page
By now I had reached the “hedonic agentic treadmill phase” of cyberpsychosis. Reader and clips need some much needed bells and whistles:
- Highlights and comments
- text-to-speech mode
- Clip elements as screenshots, text, and html content
- Save images
- Sharing by republishing to my website
Coding feels like it has completely changed over the past year. If you can imagine and describe a feature, you can develop it. I’ve been working closely with Augment on new ways to plan and orchestrate agents and my chrome extension would not have nearly as many features without them!