Building a Chrome Extension is easier than I thought — but still a bit of a hassle

To my surprise, building a Chrome Extension is technically quite straightforward. You need:

A bit of HTML (the popup UI)
A bit of JavaScript (your logic)
And a $5 one-time fee to publish in the Chrome Web Store

The Chrome Extensions API is pretty minimal, but it covers all the basics:

✅ You can persist data (e.g. auth tokens)
✅ You can query open tabs, grab the current URL
✅ You can even inject JavaScript into pages — though this last bit triggers stricter review from Google, especially if you request broad access (like "<all_urls>").

For poketto.me, I scoped this down to just my own domain, so the extension can piggyback on the app’s authentication.

What helped a lot: Claude. With a simple prompt, it generated a working boilerplate extension — no frills, just plain HTML + JS.

Since the main app is built with Angular, there’s not much reuse between codebases. Having the AI create a minimal standalone version of the “Save…” workflow saved me hours.