DEV Community

henry
henry

Posted on

How I Shipped 3 Chrome Extensions as a Solo Developer in 3 Months

#ai #webdev #tutorial #productivity

Three months ago I had zero Chrome Extensions. Last week, my third one got approved.

Here's the honest timeline, technical stack, and what I'd do differently.

Month 1: The Contract That Started Everything

I signed a SaaS contract without reading the auto-renewal clause. Cost me money I didn't have. So I built PactLens — a Chrome extension that reviews contracts before you sign.

Key decisions that saved weeks:

  • WXT framework over raw Chrome APIs (hot reload, TypeScript, manifest generation)
  • Hono + Cloudflare Workers for the backend (zero cold start, global edge)
  • DeepSeek for AI inference (20x cheaper than GPT-4 for the same quality)

Month 2: Pivot to Problems, Not Features

I almost made the classic mistake: building features nobody asked for. Instead, I watched what freelancers were complaining about on Reddit
and Twitter.

That's how DocuVox (document OCR & chat) and JobPilot (1-click job autofill) were born — not from brainstorming, but from real complaints.

Month 3: The Chrome Web Store Is Not Your Friend

I got rejected twice. Here's what the review team flagged:

  1. No remote code — eval() anywhere = instant rejection
  2. Every host permission must be justified in your description
  3. Description must be under 132 characters (yes, that tiny)
  4. Remove all console.log before submitting
  5. Privacy policy MUST be linked in the manifest

What Worked for Getting Users

Not Product Hunt. Not Hacker News. Reddit comments. Finding people with the exact problem and giving them a helpful answer. One well-placed
comment brought more users than any launch post.

Stack Summary

  • WXT + TypeScript for extensions
  • Hono + Cloudflare Workers for backend
  • DeepSeek for AI
  • Lemon Squeezy for payments
  • Zero servers, zero databases, zero DevOps

What I'd Do Differently

  1. Submit to the Chrome Web Store on DAY ONE. Review takes 2-3 weeks.
  2. Don't optimize before you have users. My first extension had 500 lines of unused code.
  3. Talk to users before writing code. Every successful feature came from a Reddit complaint.

AMA in the comments about Chrome Extensions, solo dev, or the Chrome Web Store review process.

Top comments (0)