Highlight to Enlight

Tagline: "Work smart, not harder. Just highlight and let AI do the rest."

Inspiration

"Work smart and not harder" - this was the philosophy for me. I like making easy things easier. I have lost count of the number of times I've prompted ChatGPT or any AI, and it gets annoying at some point - switching tabs, giving context, and what not. Being a student applying to jobs, writing cover letters and emails is my daily thing. I wanted a mechanism to just highlight stuff and send to LLM, and ask it anything.

What It Does

You can highlight anything on any webpage and get instant AI-powered responses:

Cover Letters Made Easy: Highlight a job description and get a tailored cover letter
Email Fixer: Highlight the most badly written emails and fix them
Smart Research: Highlight any text, give a prompt to get more information
Easy Copy: One-click copy functionality for all responses
Personalized AI: Configure your own system prompt with your profile and writing style
Zero Setup: Uses Chrome's built-in AI API - no API keys needed

Key features include real-time text selection from any webpage, custom prompts, personalized system prompts saved per user, one-click copy to clipboard, and it works offline with Chrome's native AI.

How We Built It

HTML, CSS, JavaScript
Chrome Extension Manifest V3
Chrome Built-in AI Writer API
Chrome Storage API for persistence
Content Scripts for text selection

Challenges I Ran Into

The challenge was to highlight text consistently. We had to make sure to test that every kind of text is highlighted properly. This took time as it needed consistent behavior across different webpage types - regular paragraphs, input fields, shadow DOM elements, iframes, and complex web applications. We implemented multiple fallback methods to ensure reliable text selection everywhere.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

Proud that I have been using it and it saved me time
Built a zero-dependency solution using Chrome's native AI
Achieved reliable text selection across all website types
Made it user-customizable so each user can set their own system prompt

What We Learned

Chrome Extension architecture and best practices
Working with Chrome's experimental AI APIs
Handling cross-origin iframe limitations
Shadow DOM manipulation techniques
Asynchronous storage API patterns
User experience design for browser extensions

What's Next for Highlight to Enlight

I want to make it better, faster. Potential improvements include:

Performance optimizations for faster response times
Better error handling
UI/UX improvements for better visual feedback
Multiple AI model support

Why This Matters

As AI becomes more integrated into our daily workflows, the friction of context switching and setup should disappear. Highlight to Enlight brings AI assistance exactly where you need it - right on the page you're reading - making AI tools more accessible and less intrusive. Perfect for students, professionals, and anyone who writes regularly and wants to work smarter, not harder.