There's a Wikipedia phenomenon where you start on any article, click the first linked concept you don't fully understand, repeat, and eventually land on Philosophy. The path is the point — each hop reveals how much scaffolding you were missing.
I wanted that for every page on the internet, not just Wikipedia.
The problem with tab-based research is the context switch. By the time you've typed a search, skimmed a result, and navigated back, you've lost the sentence you were in. So you either interrupt yourself every paragraph or skim past the gaps and finish the article knowing less than you could.
rabbitholes is a Chrome extension built around staying in place. Highlight any text, and a shadow-DOM tooltip renders an explanation from Claude Haiku 4.5 next to your cursor — no new tab, no host-page pollution. Click any word in that explanation to go one level deeper. Drag across a phrase to do the same.
The part I find myself using most: a rabbit-hole counter that tracks how many hops deep you've gone. Hit the right article on a topic you're genuinely curious about and you can watch it climb. It builds a shareable trail — same mechanic as the Wikipedia philosophy game, but on any page, about anything.
Each answer ends with two suggested threads: the most interesting next topics from where you landed. One click continues the chain.
For when inline explanation isn't enough, a globe icon re-answers the query enriched with Brave Search results, with source chips you can click through. A pencil icon opens a free-form follow-up that inherits the current context as background.
No intermediary server. Requests go directly from your browser to api.anthropic.com and api.search.brave.com. Zero telemetry, zero analytics. Your Anthropic API key lives in chrome.storage.sync — encrypted, never leaves the browser. Manifest V3.
Highlight → explanation inline
Click word in explanation → one hop deeper
Repeat → counter increments, trail builds
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