TypeThrough

TypeThrough turns the current article—or a selected passage—into a focused typing session. It is a dependency-free Chrome Manifest V3 prototype, works in Chrome and ChatGPT Atlas, and processes article text entirely in the browser.

Try the extension

1. Open chrome://extensions in Chrome.
2. Enable Developer mode.
3. Choose Load unpacked and select this typethrough folder.
4. Visit an article and click the TypeThrough toolbar action.

Press Command + Shift + Y on macOS (Ctrl + Shift + Y elsewhere) to toggle it with the keyboard. Press Escape to close it.

While a session is open, press Command + Enter on macOS (Ctrl + Enter elsewhere) to skip the current paragraph.

TypeThrough runs on regular websites. Browser-owned pages such as chrome://extensions and atlas://extensions cannot be modified by extensions; TypeThrough shows an explanation if invoked there.

If at least 20 words are selected when TypeThrough starts, it uses that selection instead of extracting the full article.

The methodology

Reading can become almost frictionless: the eyes keep moving even when attention has drifted. TypeThrough adds a small, deliberate act of production. Instead of only recognizing a sentence on the page, you have to reconstruct its words through your hands.

The experience is built around a few practical ideas:

• Active production. Typing asks you to produce each word, making it harder to skim past a sentence without processing it.
• Paragraph-sized chunks. The article is divided into manageable units so attention stays on the current thought rather than the entire page.
• Immediate feedback. Live progress and accuracy make omissions visible, while automatic advancement keeps the session moving.
• Content over copy-editing. Capitalization, punctuation, symbols, and spacing are ignored. Missing or incorrect letters and numbers still count, so the exercise stays focused on meaning-bearing content.
• Useful friction. Paste is disabled because the physical act of typing is the point. A paragraph can still be skipped with Command + Enter on macOS or Ctrl + Enter elsewhere.
• Local-first privacy. Article text is extracted, compared, and displayed on the current page. It is not sent to a server.

TypeThrough is a focus and learning aid, not a claim that transcription guarantees retention. It is designed to make attentive reading more likely and to give you a concrete way to notice when your attention slips.

How it works

The source paragraph stays visible while you transcribe its content. TypeThrough normalizes both strings for comparison and automatically advances when their letters and numbers match. Your progress is saved locally so a session can be resumed later.

Matching is content-first: capitalization, punctuation, symbols, and spacing do not affect completion or accuracy. Missing or incorrect letters and numbers still count as errors. Paste is intentionally disabled.

Local demo

From this directory, run:

python3 -m http.server 4173

Then open http://localhost:4173/demo/. The demo launches TypeThrough automatically, without installing the extension.

Privacy and permissions

The extension asks for activeTab, scripting, storage, and access to regular HTTP/HTTPS pages. The web-page access is needed because Atlas temporarily reports its visible sidebar tab as inactive while an extension popup has focus. TypeThrough still runs only when you invoke it. Article text remains in the page; local storage contains only a URL-derived key, progress, accuracy counters, and a content fingerprint.

Verify

npm test