SmartCite

Smart Cite — Turning Highlighted Text into Academic Insights, Powered by Chrome AI.

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Inspiration

While researching for university assignments, I often found myself repeating the same steps — copying a sentence, opening Google Scholar, pasting it, and then scanning through dozens of results. This repetitive process inspired me to build SmartCite, a Chrome extension that makes academic exploration faster and smarter.

I wanted to create a tool that integrates directly into the browser and uses Chrome’s built-in AI (Gemini Nano) to find relevant academic resources instantly, without ever leaving the page.

What I Learned

Building SmartCite taught me how to: Use Chrome’s new AI APIs like the Summarizer API with Manifest V3. Design an efficient message flow between a service worker, content script, and popup interface in a Chrome Extension. Build a sleek and minimal UI using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that feels natural within Chrome. Understand how AI can enhance web productivity tools for real-world use cases.

How I Built It

Designed the user flow — highlight → right-click → get instant sources. Created a Chrome Extension using Manifest Version 3 for improved security and background service handling. Integrated the Summarizer API (Gemini Nano) to understand highlighted text contextually. Tested across multiple articles and research papers to fine-tune relevance.

Challenges I Faced

Connecting APIs with Manifest V3: The new service worker model in MV3 doesn’t allow persistent background scripts, so handling API requests efficiently requires restructuring logic between scripts. Cross-Origin Restrictions: Fetching external academic data sources required handling CORS and permissions carefully. Debugging Context Menu Actions: Handling communication between the background and content scripts for right-click actions was tricky initially.

Impact

SmartCite streamlines the way students, researchers, and writers find citations. It eliminates unnecessary steps and reduces cognitive load, allowing users to stay focused on reading and understanding — not searching.

Built With

  • api
  • canva
  • css-frameworks:-none-(pure-js-for-lightweight-performance)-platform:-chrome-extension-(manifest-v3)-apis:-chrome-ai-summarizer-api-(gemini-nano)-tools:-chrome-devtools
  • css3
  • github
  • html
  • html5
  • javascript
  • manifest3
  • summarizer
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