I built a Chrome extension that saves me from copy-pasting text to ChatGPT every time

Faxziah — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 21:48:46 +0000

How I Stopped Wasting Time Copy-Pasting Text to ChatGPT

If you work with text and use ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or other AI tools — you know this pain.

I dealt with it until I snapped and built a Chrome extension that solves it in one click. Been using it for a couple months now and loving the time saved: AI Text Tools on Chrome Web Store.

How I Got Here

I work with text every day. Reading articles in English — need translation. Writing an email to a client — want to check my wording. Studying documentation — need a quick summary. AI is everywhere.

And every single time it's the same routine:

Select text
Copy
Open ChatGPT
Paste
Write a prompt
Wait
Copy the response
Switch back to the page

Sound familiar?

At some point I caught myself thinking: I'm spending more time copying than actually working. It was annoying.

The Solution Seemed Obvious

Select text → click a button → get the result. Right on the page. No tab switching.

And... gradually the extension was ready.

What AI Text Tools Does

Select any text on a page — a menu with actions appears:

1. Summarize — compresses a wall of text to its essence. Great for long articles and documentation.

2. Rephrase — rewrites text in different words. I use it for emails when I want to sound more formal or casual.

3. Translate — translation to many languages. Works both ways.

4. Discuss — opens an AI chat right on the page. You can ask questions about the selected text.

5. Highlight Key Paragraphs — if you're worried about AI hallucinations and want to read the text yourself, but without all the fluff — perfect feature.

Everything runs through Google's Gemini API. You just need an API key (free).

What It Looks Like

Say I'm reading an article in a foreign language. I select a paragraph, a modal with a menu appears, I click Translate — in a second I see the translation right below the text. I don't leave the page, don't lose context.

Or I receive a long email. Select it, hit Summarize — get the gist in three sentences. Then decide if it's worth reading in full.

These little things actually save quite a bit of time and energy each day. Under the hood, it uses Gemini models (LLM from Google), accessed via API.

Why Gemini and Not ChatGPT?

The main reason — free API.

OpenAI's ChatGPT doesn't have a free tier. Google does. For most tasks it's more than enough. So I managed to keep the extension completely free, as originally planned.

Also, this meant I didn't need to connect to any external server. Your computer talks directly to Gemini via API, so the extension doesn't collect or store any user data.

Plus, Gemini's responses are generally just as good as ChatGPT's.

What's Next

The extension is free, but I really want to add:

Support for other models (DeepSeek, ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) — users could add their own API keys, keeping the extension server-free
Custom actions — so everyone can create their own prompts, like "Shorten to 280 characters for a tweet"
Keyboard shortcuts — for even faster AI access

If you want to try it: AI Text Tools on Chrome Web Store

I'd love your feedback in the comments. What are your most common text tasks that could be automated?

Install, try it out, and leave a review!

Thanks for reading.

DEV Community: Faxziah