● a Project Nothing experiment (exp-0030) — what happened to it.
This is an experiment. It might be gone next month. The contract is
EXPERIMENT.md; the running record is LOG.md.
Editorial selection over AI conversations, on your phone. While reading a
ChatGPT (or Claude) response in a mobile browser, tap a word — it
highlights with a small action bar. Tap the highlight to widen the scope
(word → sentence(s) → paragraph(s) → back to the word); tap other words in
the same reply to grow the selection toward them, word by word — across
paragraph boundaries too. A selection lives inside one reply: tapping a
different reply (or empty space, or ✕) starts over, keeping deselection
intuitive. Long-press selection still works for arbitrary spans. ＋ Add collects; ✎ Note
annotates now, with the note placed before or after the quote; the sheet
lets you annotate later. Each fragment takes the next of six rotating
highlight colors and its mark stays tinted on the page for the session. The
fragment sheet is non-modal — the pill toggles it while the conversation
stays scrollable, and taps keep collecting. ↗ To composer writes just
the fragments and annotations into the site's composer — no wrapper prompt,
the annotations carry the intent — for you to review and send.
⭳ .md / ⭳ .txt download the entire current conversation — roles, text,
code blocks — with the collected fragments appended, all locally, as
assay-<chat title>-<timestamp>.md/.txt (verbatim
export captures what's loaded on the page, so scroll up first on very long
threads). Note controls and the sheet track visualViewport, so the
on-screen keyboard never covers them.
No API keys, no backend, no account. One core payload, three delivery
formats. Fragments live in the browser's localStorage, scoped per
conversation (keyed by the /c/<id> or /chat/<id> URL; a batch started
in a brand-new chat follows it once the id appears). The keying leaves room
for a shared cross-conversation list later.
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
src/assay.core.js |
The single source of truth — all logic and UI. |
assay.user.js |
Generated: userscript header + core (Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey). |
extension/ |
Generated content script + manifest.json (MV3, Chrome + Firefox). |
assay-extension.zip |
Generated extension package for store submission / sideload. |
install.template.html |
Mobile install page with a __USERSCRIPT_SOURCE__ placeholder. |
install.html |
Generated install page; it also derives the bookmarklet from the embedded source. |
build.js |
Regenerates all of the above: node build.js. |
- Userscript (Firefox Android + Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey) — auto-loads on every visit. Copy it from the install page into the manager.
- Bookmarklet (any browser, incl. Chrome Android) — zero install, tap once per visit. Generated on the install page from the same source.
- WebExtension — for distribution. Load
extension/unpacked in desktop Chrome/Edge, or submitassay-extension.zipto Firefox Add-ons (free signing; then it installs normally on Firefox Android) and the Chrome/Edge stores.
No boilerplate. Numbered only when there are multiple fragments:
1. connect to the garbage collector:
“The garbage collector becomes the allocator of life.”
2. “Creators rarely bear the cost of rejection.”
→ formalize this
A pre note renders as a leading clause; a post note renders as a →
line after the quote. .txt export is exactly this payload; .md export is
a dated document with blockquotes.
- Tap handling uses
caretPositionFromPoint/caretRangeFromPoint+Intl.Segmenter(regex fallback) to find the tapped sentence inside the tapped block, restricted to assistant messages (with a length-gated fallback for unknown DOM). Highlights are overlay rectangles fromRange.getClientRects()— the site's DOM is never mutated, so React re-renders can't break it. - All UI lives in a shadow root appended to
<body>, re-attached on SPA navigation. - Composer injection: synthetic paste event into the ProseMirror editor,
with
execCommand('insertText')and clipboard fallbacks. Nothing is auto-sent — you always review before sending. - Exports are
Blob+<a download>; nothing ever leaves the device except the message you choose to send.
The same tap surface should eventually work while editing the book, with a verb palette per fragment instead of just add/annotate:
tap → keep · annotate · slide confidence · reword · …
The action bar is the natural extension point: today it's Add / Note /
cancel; the book-editing mode swaps in a different verb set operating on the
same tap-to-sentence engine, and the collected items gain typed operations
({verb, confidence, replacement, …}) rather than a single note. Parked
deliberately — the reading/deep-dive loop needs to prove itself first.
- A shared cross-conversation fragment list, and an archive across sessions.
- Editable payload templates.
- Claude-specific selector hardening; store submission for one-tap installs.
site/ is the public site, deployed from this repo as its own Vercel
project at assay.projectnothing.ai (root directory site, no build
step). It serves the landing page with browser-aware store buttons, the
install page, and the raw assay.user.js — which
Tampermonkey can install straight from the URL and auto-update from, via the
@updateURL in the script header. node build.js refreshes the generated
files in site/. The umbrella site only needs projectnothing.ai/assay to
redirect here.
PRIVACY.md is the source text, published at
https://www.projectnothing.ai/assay/privacy — on the studio domain, so the
URL the stores hold outlives this experiment's own subdomain.
The code is released under the MIT License. The Assay name, the rows-and-dot mark, and the Project Nothing name are trademarks of Project Nothing and are not covered by that license: you are free to fork, modify and redistribute the code, but a fork distributed to the public must use its own name and icon so users can tell it apart from the official builds on the extension stores.