Theia

AI-powered Chrome extension that uses React, Express, and Gemini API to summarize Terms of Service, Terms & Conditions, and Privacy Policies into clear, simple highlights.

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Inspiration

The inspiration came from the frustration of scrolling through endless Terms of Service (ToS), Terms & Conditions (T&C), and Privacy Policies that most people agree to without reading. Companies often bury crucial details in legal jargon, leaving users unaware of what they are truly consenting to.

Our mission is clear: to educate people on knowing what they are signing before they unknowingly sign their rights away. By making these documents transparent and digestible, we want to empower users to make informed decisions in the digital world.

Our Tech Stack:

  • Frontend: React
  • Backend: Express.js
  • AI Engine: Gemini AI
  • AWS: Cloud Computing

Workflow:

  1. User highlights or selects a policy.
  2. The extension scrapes and forwards text to our backend.
  3. The backend sends text chunks to Gemini AI.
  4. Gemini returns bullet-point summaries, key highlights, and data practices.
  5. Results are displayed in a clear, educational format directly in the extension.

What We Learned

  • The power of prompt engineering in making AI summarize legal text faithfully.
  • Building trust into a product where accuracy and clarity directly affect user awareness.
  • How Chrome extension APIs differ from standard React apps and the quirks of combining them with a backend.

Challenges

  • Messy formatting — Extracting clean, structured text from ToS pages was more difficult than expected.
  • AI consistency — We had to refine prompts to ensure Gemini stayed accurate and avoided vague generalizations.
  • UI/UX clarity — Designing summaries that are short, easy to read, and educational without oversimplifying.
  • Mission-driven trade-offs — Choosing between summarization speed and detail, knowing that users’ digital rights were at stake.

With Theia, we created more than just a Chrome extension, we built a digital literacy tool. By combining React, Express, and Gemini AI, we are making legal documents understandable, empowering users to protect their rights online, and bringing transparency to an area where it is sorely lacking.

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