Findable

Everything is findable

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Our Inspiration

Imagine you're searching a dense, 50-page research paper for "a tool to see distant objects." Your browser's Ctrl+F finds "0 matches," completely missing the word "telescope."

For students, researchers, and anyone who reads complex documents, this isn't just a small inconvenience—it's a barrier to efficient learning and research. We were inspired to build Findable, a Chrome Extension that uses the power of the on-device Chrome AI API to find meaning, not just exact text.

What It Does

Findable revolutionizes in-page search by integrating AI directly into your browser. It's a simple UI with three powerful, "intelligently orchestrated" modes:

  • Find Mode: The classic, instant Ctrl+F you're used to for exact text matching.

  • Basic Mode: A smart enhancement for everyday use. It instantly finds your keyword, then automatically calls the on-device AI in the background to find and highlight related synonyms and concepts.

  • Deep Scan Mode: Our "power mode" for serious research. Deep Scan reads the page's actual content and uses a more advanced AI analysis. This unlocks its most impressive feature: the ability to find descriptive phrases. A user can type "an animal with a good sense of smell," and Findable will analyze the text and highlight the actual sentence containing the word "dog" or "canine."

Because we use Chrome's Built-in AI, all this analysis happens 100% on-device, ensuring your data is private and the tool works offline.

Challenges We Conquered

Building a tool that intelligently orchestrates AI in real-time was a major challenge. Our biggest hurdle was handling AI Race Conditions.

Fast typing would trigger multiple, slow AI requests, all trying to update the page at once. We solved this by building a robust cancellation system in our background script using an AbortController. This ensures that only the user's most recent search request is ever processed, keeping the extension fast and stable.

What We Learned

We learned that the true power of on-device AI isn't just in a chatbot, but in its ability to be "orchestrated" to enhance existing tools in a fast, private, and seamless way. We also learned a great deal about the inner workings of Chrome extensions and managing asynchronous AI tasks in a responsive way.

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