I built a browser checklist tool for SEO audits and QA

Dan Pan — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 05:27:03 +0000

Every time I do a website audit I run into the same problem. The checklist is open in one tab, the page I'm auditing is in another, and every time I need to mark something off I lose my place. Multiply that across 15 pages and it turns into a lot of unnecessary context switching.

I looked for a browser extension that would keep a checklist open next to the page I'm working on — something that lives in the side panel, not in a separate tab or window. I didn't find anything that fit, so I built it.

What it does

CheckRun is a Chrome extension that runs in the browser side panel. The core model is simple: build a template once, run it against any page.

When you open a run, the extension captures the URL and page title automatically. You go through each item marking it Pass, Fail, or N/A, leave comments where needed, and save the run when done. Every completed run is stored in history with its date, URL, and full item-level results.

The side panel stays open while you navigate — so you can check an item, click to a different part of the page, come back, and your checklist is exactly where you left it.

The features that actually matter for audits

A few things made this useful beyond just a basic checklist:

Per-template statistics. After running the same audit template a few times, you get a pass rate trend and a breakdown of which items fail most often. Useful for identifying where a site consistently has problems — or where your audit process has gaps.

Run history tied to URLs. Every run is stored with its URL. If a client asks "did we check this page last month?" — you have the answer, with item-level results.

Template sharing. You can export a template as JSON, a short token, or a deep-link URL that opens it directly in the extension. Useful for sharing a standard audit process across a team.

Google Sheets export. Results push to a spreadsheet with one click — one tab per run. If you're doing audits for clients and need to hand off a structured report, this saves a lot of manual work.

The audit template

There's a ready-made website audit checklist template that covers the standard on-page and technical checks — title tags, meta descriptions, heading structure, canonical tags, image alt attributes, page speed signals, mobile rendering, structured data, internal linking. It imports into the extension in one click.

You can customize it from there — add sections for your specific process, remove items that don't apply, reorder as needed.

What I learned building it

The hardest part wasn't the checklist logic — it was working within Chrome's MV3 restrictions. Service workers instead of background pages, stricter CSP, the side panel API which is still relatively new. A few things that caught me:

The side panel doesn't persist across browser restarts by default — you have to handle state restoration explicitly
chrome.storage.local has a 10MB limit per item that's easy to hit if you're storing large run histories — had to add pagination
The side panel can't be opened programmatically without a user gesture, which changes how you handle the first-run experience

Nothing insurmountable, but worth knowing if you're building something similar.

Try it

CheckRun is free, no account required. Everything is stored locally — no server, no telemetry.

Chrome Web Store: CheckRun