Grind Time

A Chrome extension that offers a quick and convenient way to manage and grind through your applications. Save and autofill your apps with the click of a button! Start/pause if and when you need it.

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Inspiration

As Computer Science majors who recently worked through a particularly tough recruiting season plagued by COVID-19, we understand the various pain-points of job applications. As such, we hoped to create an easily accessible yet simple to use browser extension that can alleviate these pain-points.

What it does

Saves application URLs that will persist across browsing sessions Convenient navigation between applications Configure a wide range of data fields for autofilling common application fields Play/pause your grind session for quick context-switching

How we built it

We built our Chrome extension using vanilla HTML/CSS/JavaScript. We also used Chrome’s special-purpose APIs like chrome.storage and chrome.runtime to access the browser’s current state and for storing data.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into issues with cross-site scripting policies due to some application forms being embedded in other domains. Also, much of the Chrome API functions we used were asynchronous, so we had to design our utility functions to mitigate race conditions.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Reliable persistence of data and comprehensive autofilling

What we learned

The anatomy of a Chrome extension and the various APIs that Chrome offers Promisifying functions to mitigate race conditions Message passing to workaround cross-site scripting policies

What's next for Grind Time

Ability to save form progress mid-way Incentivising/rewarding users for completing applications Improve the UI and add support autofilling file fields

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