Beyond Tabs and Bookmarks: How Meh.ai Became My Chrome Sidekick #

When I signed up for the Google Chrome Built-In AI Hackathon, I thought I’d just spend a weekend tinkering with extensions and a few lines of code. Little did I know, I was about to embark on a whirlwind journey that would turn a humble idea into a digital Swiss Army knife – enter Meh.ai. But before I dive into the nitty-gritty, let’s rewind to where it all began: with my eternal frustration with the internet.

A Problem Born in Chaos #

Picture this: you’re juggling 20 tabs, trying to remember where you saw that one golden nugget of information, all while an important email notification lurks in the background like a ticking time bomb. My online life had become a circus, and I was the juggler, hoping not to drop the ball (or my sanity). There had to be a better way to make sense of it all. Enter Meh.ai, the answer to my digital chaos.

The Lightbulb Moment #

What if Chrome could do more than just be a browser? What if it could read my mind (or at least my tabs)? The idea was simple: build an AI-powered extension that’s not just an assistant but a true sidekick. One that could extract, organize, and answer questions about the content I was swimming in without breaking a sweat.

I wanted to give Meh.ai the superpower to dive into webpages, scrape relevant information, and make it instantly usable. Think of it as the Jarvis to my Tony Stark. My vision? To eliminate the phrase “Wait, where did I see that?” from every internet user’s vocabulary.

Building the Magic #

Creating Meh.ai wasn’t just about coding—it was about rethinking how we interact with information online. Using Mozilla’s Readability engine, the extension could extract clean, structured text from messy webpages. I coupled that with a cutting-edge vector store and the Gemini Nano LLM for real-time embedding and answering user queries.

But here’s where it got exciting: Meh.ai wasn’t just answering questions. It was highlighting sources directly on the webpage, acting as a true detective. Ask it a question, and boom – not only would you get the answer, but the exact spot it came from would glow like buried treasure.

The Hackathon Experience #

Hackathons are adrenaline-fueled marathons of creativity, caffeine, and camaraderie, and the Chrome Built-In AI Challenge was no exception. From brainstorming features to debugging glitches at 3 AM, every moment was electric.

Meh.ai in Action #

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB2bhBTzYPM

Final Thoughts #

The internet is a wild, wonderful place, but without the right tools, it can feel overwhelming. Meh.ai was my way of taming the chaos and turning the browser into something smarter, faster, and more intuitive. And while the journey started as a hackathon project, it’s now so much more—a digital sidekick ready to help anyone make the most of their online adventures.

So next time you’re drowning in tabs and wondering if there’s a way out, remember: Meh.ai is here to save the day, one webpage at a time.