I'm surrounded by tabs

First of all, I must emphasize that i'm an info addict, I just love following the news, especially about politics, diplomacy, science, tech, etc. I like to be on the edge of information all the time and that means that I have lots of tabs opened, with articles, youtube videos, last-minutes updates, etc. I don't think I'm any special in this, but I think this is the main reason I had this problem and I made this solution.

It was a relatively minor problem: every time i had to search something on a web page not suitable for a Ctrl+F, or when I wanted to get a quick summary of said web page content, or quickly get a specific info about it, the process was the same. I had to manually copy the URL of the page, switch to the ChatGPT tab, paste the URL and then ask the Chatbot what I wanted to do with this content.

It was a bit cumbersome. On a particular day where I had to do this more than 5 times, I told myself that this needed to stop. I briefly searched on the Chrome Web Store if there was a ChatGPT Chrome Extension available, and there was none. Ok, let's build one as a real project then! I know I could use the free LLM APIs from Mistral for simple queries, and if other people wanted to use it, they will be able too and it would be cool!

Don't break the flow

After learning about all the specificities of Chrome Extension development (and there are quite a few), I decided to go with a very simple application that would encompass the goal that I had: don't break the flow. I needed an app that would not steer me away from what I was doing! I needed something that would appear on the page, answer my question, and disappear as if it was never there.

Absolutely no side panel please

There was one thing that I really didn't want with this project: A SIDE PANEL. Oh my god no. I remember my horror when I first tried the now prehistoric LLM chatbot of Microsoft inside Edge, Bing Chat, Sydney or something? Back then it was the first credible alternative to ChatGPT (~ February 2023). It opened as a side panel and I don't really know why but, inside a browser, it just felt unholy to me. I guess all the websites I'm used to appeared a bit weird because of the slight resizing the side panel was bringing. I just didn't want this.

A resizeable overlay is the way

So I decided to go with an overlay window on top of the actual page. In the same style as my previous web app Zenkan, the window is fully resizable to easily adapt it to the web page you're trying to extract information from.

Quick and efficient interactions

I also wanted the interaction with the AI window to be quick and efficient. Quickly appears, gives me the answer, quickly disappears. I settled on CTRL+K as the main shortcut to open/close the window because it's the same shortcut as the inline AI edit inside Cursor. I was used to that for "quick AI answers" so I thought that other programmers and AI-infused people would also be used to it. The open/close shortcut is also remappable by the way if you really want the "go to search bar" shorcut associated to CTRL+K that some websites use.

The name of the app logically came from this shortcut: CTRL KAI. Simple, I didn't want to think too much about it (most people think too much about their creations, me included).

You can also add multiple pre-filled prompts (in the settings) for an even quicker experience: CTRL+K open the AI, you click on a prefilled prompt, you get the answer, you close, done.

Which models at which price

For the actual models used in the app. First of all, I wanted transparency, so you know at all times which model you're using. I'm so annoyed at apps that are foggy about this. But of course, since API prices are quite expensive, and I really can't pay for other people out of my good heart right now (personal finances not ideal lol), i'm just going to use the free API that I have on hand, and if people really want to use Claude or GPT-5 to summarize a news article, they will have to pay for it. The free API I'm talking about here is Mistral's Experimentation tier, which is an amazing product, because it's well.. free (with rate-limits). Mistral's API models are very good for professional work, even if not super-ultra SOTA like the other big boys. But it's free so what are you complaining about again?
I just put a collective rate-limit on my own free calls to be sure to not overload their nice little servers. Given that i will probably be the main user of this app, it will be more than enough for the foreseeable future. I will solve my rich people's problems when I'm rich.

Try it owo

You can still try it if you want though! It's pretty cool, kinda useful, not all the time, but sometimes, and you know what? That's enough. Mistral Small is the free model, and all the rest is paid. But to be fair, Mistral Small is more than enough to summarize any web content or to find an information inside a big wall of text. As long as you don't ask it to write a paper in theoretical physics you're good.

CTRL KAI

It's a flexible and powerful little summarizer, and you can keep it on the side until you need it.