Veritas

A Fact-Check Companion built in Chrome Extension App, Powered by Gemini AI.

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Veritas

Behind: Veritas and What's the Point?

The core inspiration is actually driven by my concern of the growth of AI-generated misinformation materials. The complexity and volume of false content now far outpace human ability to fact-check, multiple studies reported.

Nowadays within the rises of AI in our age, i witnessing lot of misinformation materials. The one that goes famous is deep-fake AI face, fake AI tone, fake AI-Images or videos, and also not to mention fake AI generated articles. To be precisely, AI can be dangerous when it falls into a wrong hand, with a malicious intent to create a chaos.

I witnessing myself that i see some of "political' move in my country, and the "mastermind" are using AI to create a chaos and uncertainty. Later then, thanks to the algorithm and the "not-so-noticed" people, the materials themselves found their audience. This got me thinking that: "How can we utilize AI ethically and effectively to amplify the truth?"

From here, Veritas was conceived to turn the tide. We want to provide a safe environment directly into the user's browsing experience, transforming the browser from a passive consumption tool into an active defense mechanism against digital deceit.

Research Reference

AI-Generated Misinformation: A Case Study on Emerging Trends in Fact-Checking Practices Across Brazil, Germany, and the United Kingdom
link

✅ What It Does

Veritas is a full-stack Chrome Extension designed to be the ultimate digital shield.

Unlike standard LLMs that perform only surface-level validity checks, Veritas uses deductive reasoning and a triangulation method to analyze information.

Fact-Checking Modes (v1.0.0)

  1. Client-side: Highlight any text on a webpage → right-click to verify.
  2. Text: Copy/paste or write your own claims.
  3. Image: Upload an image + provide context → Veritas performs grounding search.
  4. URL: Paste any link + context to guide the AI.

Key Features

  • Instant Verification: Context-aware, multimodal fact-checking directly in the browser.
  • Structured Results: Clear verdicts (FACT / MISINFORMATION / CAUTION) with reasoning + source links.
  • Seamless Context: Results displayed as a floating, non-intrusive panel on the webpage.

🛠️ How We Built It

I built the engine of Veritas on a Cloud-First Hybrid AI Architecture, grounding its power in strategic technical decisions:

"I decided to use the Gemini 2.5 Flash API as the primary Core Reasoning engine in the cloud, handling complex analysis and image processing. Crucially, to defeat hallucination and ensure factual timeliness, I configured all cloud API calls to mandatorily activate Gemini's googleSearch Tool. This guarantees that every verification is grounded in the latest, live information from the web.

For a true Hybrid solution, I integrated Local Logic using Gemini Nano via chrome.ai.generateContent. This function acts as a local claim pre-processor, simplifying long claims directly on the user's device. This clever Hybrid step demonstrates efficiency, reduces cloud costs, and protects user privacy by processing basic text locally.

The entire system is managed by the Manifest V3 Service Worker, which handles asynchronous communication, caching, and history management, making Veritas robust, scalable, and efficient."

🧩 Challenges We Ran Into

  1. Multimodal & URL Context Stability
    Ensuring fetch() and chrome.runtime.sendMessage remained stable with multimodal Base64 image uploads and URL fetches caused recurring hangs and crashes.
    Endless debugging + coffee.

Solution: Implemented fail-safe checks using chrome.runtime.lastError and defensive logic across all API calls to prevent Service Worker crashes when the popup closes or network issues occur.

🏆 Accomplishments We're Proud Of

Everything! Getting the MVP done is huge, and improving it even further with community feedback keeps the momentum alive.

📚 What We Learned

Gained deep expertise in Manifest V3 Service Worker Lifecycle Management and Asynchronous Error Handling.
Resilience matters as much as innovation—late nights, caffeine, timing bugs, and cross-thread debugging taught us more than any single feature.

🚀 What's Next for Veritas

  1. Internationalization (i18n) — Starting with full Indonesian support.
  2. Right-Click URL Check — Automatically verify active tab URLs.
  3. User-Defined Rulesets — Allow users to configure custom flags and risk tolerance.

Built With

  • chrome-extension-manifest-v3-(service-worker)
  • chrome.contextmenus
  • chrome.notifications
  • chrome.storage.local
  • content-scripts
  • css3
  • gemini's-googlesearch-tool
  • gemini-2.5-flash
  • gemini-nano-(chrome.ai)
  • google-gemini-api
  • html5
  • javascript-(es6+)
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