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Sourav Dutta
Sourav Dutta

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Too Lazy to Skip Intros, So We Built a Chrome Extension (Now 350+ People Use It Daily)

#opensource #tools #software #development

It started with a couch, a laptop, and zero willpower

Picture two friends. One laptop. A web series on JioHotstar. And two humans lying in bed like the concept of sitting up had personally offended them.

Great show. One problem: every single episode opened with a long intro. And for reasons known only to the streaming gods, there was a neat little "Skip Credits" button at the end… but no "Skip Intro" at the start.

So the ritual began. Episode starts → I reach across the bed → tap the screen → episode plays → we relax → episode ends → next episode → intro again → reach across the bed again.

It was, without exaggeration, the hardest workout of my week.

The sentence that started it all

Somewhere around episode six, my friend — without moving a single muscle — said:

"Bro… can't you just make it skip the intro by itself?"

And I actually stopped and thought about it for a second.

I mean… the "Skip Intro" button was right there on the screen. What if something just… pressed it for me? It didn't need to be smart. It didn't need AI. It didn't need a pitch deck. It just needed to be lazier than me, which honestly is a low bar.

One late night + GitHub Copilot = a working extension

So I stayed up.

Armed with GitHub Copilot (student subscription, generously borrowed from the very same friend — thank you for funding this scientific breakthrough), I started building a tiny Chrome extension with exactly one job in life:

Find the "Skip Intro" button. Click it. That's it. That's the whole app.

About an hour later… it worked. On JioHotstar, the intro would pop up and — click — gone. No reaching. No effort. Pure horizontal victory.

We went to sleep that night like we'd cured a disease.

The next morning: "send me the link"

The next day my friend goes:

"That was actually sick. Send me the link, I'll install it on my laptop too."

And that's when I froze. There was no link. It was a folder. On my laptop. Loaded in developer mode. I could zip it and send it over… but that felt deeply cursed.

Then it hit me like a plot twist:

I could just put this on the Chrome Web Store.

Then anyone could install it in one click — including me, on any new browser, without digging through folders like it's 2009.

The $5 that started something

I looked it up. Google charges a one-time $5 to become a Chrome Web Store developer.

I paid it. I published my dumb little extension. I sent my friend a real, actual, clickable link.

His reaction was perfect:

"Wait… you paid money for this?"

…and then he smiled.

It was the exact smile you give someone who just lit five dollars on fire for a script that clicks a button. But it was also the smile of "…huh. That's kind of an investment, though."

Reader: it was an investment.

Turns out I'm lazy on other websites too

Once you automate laziness in one place, you can't stop.

Same intro problem showed up on Netflix. Then Crunchyroll. So I added them too. Now the extension auto-skips intros across Netflix, Crunchyroll, and Hotstar/JioHotstar — with Prime Video next on the list.

What started as "press one button on one website" slowly became an actual little product that handles the boring part of your binge for you.

And now… 350+ people use it every single day

Here's the part that still genuinely gets me.

350+ people use this thing daily. Strangers. People I've never met and probably never will. People who, right now, are watching a show and not getting annoyed by the intro — because two lazy friends couldn't be bothered to lift a thumb one night.

That's wild. That's the whole reason I keep building.

The idea was dumb. The code was simple. But watching real people use something you built at 1 AM does something to your brain that no tutorial ever will.

That $5 wasn't really for an extension. It was the cheapest motivation subscription I've ever bought. It taught me the most underrated lesson in building things:

Ship the dumb thing. Someone out there has the exact same tiny problem — and they'll love you for solving it.

So if you've got a silly idea sitting in your head right now… build it. Publish it. Worst case, you're out five bucks and one night of sleep. Best case, 350 strangers quietly thank you every day.

Try it / stalk my other stuff 👇

Built out of pure laziness. Maintained out of pure joy. Skip responsibly. ✌️

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