ExplainIt

ExplainIt.AI is a Chrome extension that turns online reading into an interactive learning experience. It acts like an AI teacher simplifying, summarizing, and translating complex information directly on any webpage. Instead of just summarizing, ExplainIt.AI helps users truly understand what they’re reading while retaining their critical thinking skills.

Inspiration

I was inspired by the challenge students, professionals, and everyday users face when trying to digest dense, technical, or multilingual content online. While AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini can summarize text, they often require users to manually type follow-up prompts to simplify content or explain it in “child-friendly” terms. This is particularly cumbersome for native speakers who are trying to understand complex material quickly on web pages or documents. I wanted to create a seamless, browser-integrated AI teacher that automatically simplifies, explains, and teaches content in one step, without requiring repeated prompts, making online reading more accessible, intuitive, and learning-focused.

What it does

• Highlights or captures text from any webpage or document. • Uses Chrome’s built-in AI APIs to: o Simplify complex language. o Summarize long paragraphs. o Translate content into multiple languages. o Provide Text to speech • Encourages users to understand the material deeply and retain critical thinking.

How we built it

• Chrome Extension built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. • Integrated Chrome Built-in AI APIs: Summarizer, Translator, and Prompt API. • Designed a clean, responsive popup UI for displaying AI-generated explanations and interactions. • Built everything to run locally, ensuring privacy and offline capability.

Challenges we ran into

• Formatting output (summaries, simplified text, and even highlighting certain words) for easy display in the pop-up. • Designing a compact yet informative UI for displaying complex explanations • Learning to debug Chrome’s experimental AI features and implementing fallback behavior for reliability. • Gemini Nano issues, despite enabling all required APIs, the model did not initialize properly, preventing full local testing.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Successfully created a privacy-first AI teaching tool that works offline. • Integrated multiple AI modes (simplify, summarize, translate) into a single extension. • Produced a demo-ready MVP that clearly shows the AI acting as a teacher.

What we learned

• How to use Chrome’s built-in AI APIs for practical, client-side applications. • The importance of offline-first design for accessibility and privacy. • How to turn AI outputs into actionable learning experiences that go beyond simple summarization.

What's next for ExplainIt

• Add audio and short video explanations • Expand support for more languages and accessibility features • Improve Gemini Nano integration once APIs become stable

Built With

• chromeapi
• css
• html
• javascript
• storage.sync