MakeItSimple
Hackathon: Nexora Hacks 2026
Track: Artificial Intelligence and LLM applications, Developer tools and infrastructure, Open innovation track for any high-impact solution
Problem Statement and Motivation
We have all been there: You open a documentation page, a research paper, or a "Terms and Conditions" document, and you are immediately hit with a wall of dense text and jargon. The internet is full of information, but it is often locked behind complexity.
We realized that while we have access to all human knowledge, we lack a tool to make it digestible in real-time. We did not just want a summarizer; we wanted a companion. We wanted the feeling of having a genius friend sitting next to you, ready to tap on the shoulder and ask, "Hey, what does this paragraph actually mean?"
MakeItSimple was born from the desire to turn the entire internet—and your local documents—into a simple, two-way conversation.
Solution and How It Works
MakeItSimple is a smart Chrome Extension that lives in your browser's side panel, acting as an intelligent reading assistant. It creates a seamless bridge between the user and the content they are consuming, whether it is a live website or a local file.
Key Functionalities:
- Universal Document Support (Web & PDF): Unlike standard extensions that only read HTML, MakeItSimple works on local files too. You can open a PDF contract or research paper stored on your hard drive, and the extension will read, summarize, and chat with it just like a normal website.
- Instant Summarization: Turns long articles into 3 concise, digestible bullet points.
- Context Menu Integration: You can highlight any complex sentence, right-click, and choose "MakeItSimple: Explain this." The AI instantly explains that specific jargon in plain English without you needing to leave the page.
- Context-Aware Chat: You can have a full conversation with the page content. Ask specific questions like "What is the pricing model mentioned here?" or "Who is the author arguing against?"
- Smart Session History: The extension is intelligent enough to remember your chat history specifically for that tab. If you switch tabs, the chat context switches with you. If you reload, it clears—keeping your browsing clean and organized.
Technologies, Tools, and Frameworks Used
We prioritized an industry-standard architecture, separating the client from the server for security and scalability.
Frontend:
- Chrome Extension API (Manifest V3): Utilized for the Side Panel API and Service Workers.
- HTML5, CSS3, Vanilla JavaScript: For a lightweight, fast, and dependency-free client.
- PDF.js (Mozilla): Implemented to render and extract text from binary PDF files directly in the browser.
- Marked.js: For rendering Markdown responses from the AI into clean HTML.
Backend:
- Node.js & Express: Acts as a secure proxy server to handle API requests and protect credentials.
Artificial Intelligence:
- Google Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite: Chosen for its extremely low latency and high token efficiency, ensuring the UI feels snappy and responsive.
Team Member Roles and Contributions
- Jayesh Chaudhari: Full Stack Development. Responsible for the Chrome Extension architecture (Manifest V3), integrating the Gemini API, implementing the PDF.js pipeline, and designing the CSS/UI. * ## How We Built It
- Frontend Architecture: We utilized the modern Side Panel API for a seamless, non-intrusive UI. Content Scripts were written to interact with the DOM to scrape text and listen for user highlights.
- Backend Proxy: Instead of exposing API keys in the extension (a major security risk), we built a proxy server. The server handles data cleaning, prompt engineering, and communication with the AI.
- The Intelligence: We integrated Google Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite. The "flash" nature of the model ensures the UI feels snappy.
- UX Polish: We implemented custom Chrome Storage logic to handle the complex state management of "per-tab" chat history.
Challenges We Ran Into
- The "Local File" Hurdle: Chrome sandboxes extensions from reading local files (file://) by default. We had to implement specific error-handling logic to detect these URLs and guide the user to enable the specific permission in Chrome settings to unlock the PDF feature.
- Manifest V3 Restrictions: Moving from the old background pages to Service Workers was tricky. Handling asynchronous message passing between the Content Script, Background Service Worker, and Side Panel was a logic puzzle.
- Model Hallucinations & Availability: We initially faced issues where the model would try to hallucinate context if the webpage text was too short. We had to implement strict prompt engineering to force the model to stick only to the provided context.
- The "Context" Problem: Users switch tabs constantly. We had to architect a robust state management system using tabId as a unique key in local storage to keep conversations distinct.
Accomplishments We Are Proud Of
- True Hybrid Support: Successfully getting the extension to handle both live websites and local PDF files seamlessly.
- Security First: We successfully kept our API keys off the client-side, which is a common pitfall in hackathon projects.
- The "WhatsApp" Feel: We spent extra time on CSS to make the chat bubbles, auto-scrolling, and animations feel native and smooth, rather than clunky.
- Seamless Context Menu: Getting the Right-Click -> Open Panel -> Explain flow to work instantly without the user having to manually open the extension felt like a magic moment.
Future Scope and Roadmap
- Local LLM Support: Adding an option to run local models (like Llama 3) for privacy-focused users who do not want data leaving their machine.
- Export Notes: A feature to one-click export your summaries and chat insights to Notion or Obsidian.
- Voice Mode: Adding text-to-speech so you can listen to your article summaries while multitasking.
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