🧩 I Built a Privacy-First Chrome Extension to Collect Public Emails from LinkedIn

Yagnesh — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 11:37:54 +0000

While job hunting and doing outreach, I kept running into the same problem:

A lot of LinkedIn posts and profiles already have email addresses in plain sight, but finding them is slow and repetitive. You scroll, click “see more”, copy one email, scroll again… repeat.

I tried a few tools that claimed to solve this, but most of them had at least one of these issues:

They sent data to external servers
Required accounts or logins
Over-automated things in a way that felt risky
Or clearly wouldn’t pass Chrome Web Store review

So I decided to build a small tool myself.

That’s how ReachIn was born.

👉 Repo: https://github.com/yagnesh97/reach-in

What ReachIn Is (and What It Isn’t)

ReachIn is a Chrome extension that helps collect publicly visible email addresses from LinkedIn search result pages.

What it does

Works only when you explicitly click a button
Scrolls through LinkedIn search results
Expands visible content
Extracts email addresses already shown on the page
Stores everything locally in your browser
Lets you copy results or view past collections

What it does not do

No background scraping
No credential access
No analytics or tracking
No servers
No remote APIs
No automation running on its own

Privacy From Day One

Chrome reviewers care far more about intent and data handling than fancy features.

So I set a few non-negotiable rules early:

Everything runs locally
No network requests
User action triggers everything
The behavior must be easy to explain in plain English

Under the Hood (High Level)

ReachIn is a plain Manifest V3 Chrome extension. No frameworks, no build step.

Structure looks like this:

├── assets/
│   ├── css/
│   │   └── popup.css
│   ├── js/
│   │   ├── background.js
│   │   ├── content.js
│   │   └── popup.js
│   ├── icons/
│   │   ├── icon-16.png
│   │   ├── icon-32.png
│   │   ├── icon-48.png
│   │   └── icon-128.png
│
├── popup.html
├── manifest.json
│
├── README.md
├── PRIVACY.md
├── LICENSE
└── .gitignore

The flow is simple:

The popup controls everything
The content script runs only on linkedin.com
Scripts are injected only after user action
Data is stored with chrome.storage.local

Content Script

The content script does three things:

Scrolls the page
Clicks “see more” where needed
Extracts emails from visible text and mailto: links

That’s it.

No DOM mutation beyond expanding content.
No hidden scraping.
No background execution.

This was critical for staying within Chrome Web Store policies.

What’s Next

I’m keeping the roadmap intentionally conservative:

Minor UX improvements
Performance tweaks
Optional export formats

If you’re curious, feel free to check out the repo:
👉 https://github.com/yagnesh97/reach-in

Happy building.

Building a Modern Web App: FastAPI + React TypeScript Template

Yagnesh — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 22:32:59 +0000

Hey developers! 👋 I'm excited to share a template I've created that combines FastAPI and React with TypeScript, aimed at helping you kickstart your full-stack projects faster. Whether you're building a new web application or looking to modernize your stack, this template provides a solid foundation with best practices baked in.

Why This Stack? 🤔

The combination of FastAPI and React offers several compelling advantages:

Backend (FastAPI)

Lightning-fast performance with async support
Automatic OpenAPI documentation
Type hints and validation with Pydantic
Easy to learn and highly productive

Frontend (React + TypeScript)

Type safety and better developer experience
Modern React features and hooks
Scalable component architecture
Reduced runtime errors

Infrastructure

MongoDB for flexible document storage
Redis for high-performance caching
Docker for consistent environments
Poetry and Yarn for dependency management

Template Features 🚀

Containerized Development
- Run everything in Docker or use a hybrid approach
- Consistent development environment across team members
- Production-ready Docker configurations
Development Tools
- Code formatting utilities
- Development scripts for common tasks
- Environment configuration templates
Modern Dependencies
- Python 3.11 with Poetry management
- Latest React 18 with TypeScript
- MongoDB and Redis integration

Getting Started 🌟

The template is designed to be easy to use. Here's how you can get started:

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/yagnesh97/fastapi-react-template
cd fastapi-react-template

Set up your environment files:

# Backend environment
cd backend
cp .env-example .env

# Database environment
cd ../database
cp .env-example .env

Choose your development mode:

Option 1: Full Docker Setup

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up --build -d

Option 2: Hybrid Setup (Local Development with Dockerized Database)

# Start MongoDB and Redis
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up mongo redis --build -d

# Start Backend
cd backend
poetry install
./cmd.sh start

# Start Frontend
cd frontend
yarn install
yarn start

Project Structure 📁

├── backend/          # FastAPI application
├── frontend/         # React TypeScript application
├── database/         # Database configuration
└── docker-compose.yml

Development Workflow 💻

The template supports a flexible development workflow:

Local Development
- Hot-reloading for both frontend and backend
- Local dependency management
- Easy debugging
Docker Development
- Consistent environment across team
- Easy service orchestration
- Production-like setup
Production Deployment
- Optimized Docker builds
- Environment-specific configurations
- Ready for CI/CD integration

What's Next? 🌅

Future improvements planned for the template:

Authentication boilerplate
Testing setup and examples
CI/CD pipeline templates
More development utilities
Performance optimization examples

Acknowledgments 🙏

This template was inspired by and builds upon the excellent work of @dpills in his article FastAPI Production Setup Guide. His guide provided valuable insights into structuring a production-ready FastAPI application, which I've extended by:

Adding React with TypeScript for the frontend
Integrating MongoDB and Redis
Security enhancements to the Docker
Including additional development utilities
Providing multiple deployment options

I highly recommend checking out his original article for in-depth insights into FastAPI production setups.

Contribute 🤝

This template is open source and contributions are welcome! Whether it's:

Bug fixes
New features
Documentation improvements
Best practices suggestions

Feel free to:

Fork the repository
Create your feature branch
Submit a pull request

Get Started Now 🚀

Check out the template on GitHub: fastapi-react-template

If you find it useful, don't forget to give it a star ⭐️

Have questions or suggestions? Feel free to:

Open an issue
Submit a pull request
Comment below

Let's build something amazing together! 💪

DEV Community: Yagnesh