Blander — News Headline Neutralizer

A Chrome extension that neutralizes sensationalist headlines on nytimes.com using Anthropic's Claude AI (claude-haiku-4-5). Emotional language and partisan framing are replaced with dry, deadpan, and slightly absurd rewrites — like mundane bureaucratic memos about dramatic events — while preserving all original information, casing style, and proper nouns. After the model responds, a small casing normalizer (casing.js) adjusts capitalization so headlines match the original’s sentence case vs title case (for example fixing all-lowercase API output) without turning intentional sentence-style rewrites into full title case.

Features

• Automatically detects and neutralizes headlines on the nytimes.com homepage only (not article pages or other URLs)
• Covers the main story area, NEWS well-section grid, the Watch Today's Videos carousel (headlines are resolved with shadow-DOM traversal — data-testid lives under Betamax custom elements, so plain querySelector cannot see them), egyhip-styled headline paragraphs (including when egyhip appears on the p but not the parent wrapper), and dynamically loaded content
• Skips the homepage Games block (daily puzzles promos under .package-title-wrapper titled Games) so those headlines and blurbs are left unchanged
• Rewrites headlines at a 3rd-grade reading level with a dry, absurdist tone while preserving factual information
• Preserves original headline casing (with deterministic post-processing when the model drifts), abbreviations, acronyms, and proper nouns
• Works with dynamic and lazy-rendered content via mutation observer and scroll detection
• Persistent caching of neutralized headlines (48-hour expiration)
• Efficient batch processing of multiple headlines in a single API call
• Simple on/off toggle in the popup
• Blue dot indicator on headlines whose text was actually rewritten

Installation

Chrome Web Store

Install Blander directly from the Chrome Web Store (coming soon). The options page will open automatically on first install so you can enter your API key.

Listing graphics (marquee tile, small promo tile, and screenshot) live under images/store/.

Manual / Developer Install

1. Clone this repository
2. Open Chrome and navigate to chrome://extensions/
3. Enable Developer mode in the top right
4. Click Load unpacked and select the project directory
5. The extension will appear in your Chrome toolbar

Configuration

Open the extension's Options page (right-click the toolbar icon → Options) and enter your Anthropic API key. The key is stored locally via chrome.storage.local and never leaves your device.

Usage

1. Open the nytimes.com homepage (/ — not individual articles)
2. Headlines on that page are automatically neutralized when the extension is enabled
3. Toggle on/off using the toolbar popup
4. Click any headline to open the article and see the original text

Daily API Limit

The extension enforces a daily limit of 50 API calls to manage Claude API usage. Each call can neutralize up to 10 headlines via batch processing, and results are cached for 48 hours across tabs and sessions.

Cost Tracking

The Options page displays estimated API costs based on actual token usage reported by the Anthropic API. Both daily and all-time totals are shown, along with a token-level breakdown. Cost estimates use Claude Haiku 4.5 pricing ($1/MTok input, $5/MTok output). Daily token counters reset alongside the daily API call counter at midnight.

Error Recovery

The extension handles two classes of runtime errors:

• Transient failures (service worker timeout, message channel closed) — failed headlines are automatically re-queued for retry on the next processing cycle.
• Permanent context invalidation (extension reloaded or updated while a tab is open) — the content script detects this, stops all processing, and shows a small banner prompting the user to reload the page.

The MV3 service worker is kept alive during active API calls via a periodic keepalive ping, preventing Chrome from terminating it mid-request.

Debug Logging

Both content.js and background.js include a DEBUG flag (default false). Set it to true to enable verbose console logging for development and troubleshooting. Error logging (console.error) is always active regardless of the flag.

Chrome Web Store package (blander-extension.zip)

For store submission, build the zip locally from the project root (it is gitignored and not pushed to GitHub):

zip -r blander-extension.zip manifest.json background.js casing.js content.js \
  popup.html popup.js options.html options.js \
  images/bored16.png images/bored48.png images/bored128.png

Upload that file in the Chrome Web Store Developer Dashboard. Listing screenshots and promo images under images/store/ (for example store-screenshot.png) are not included in the zip; add or replace them in the store listing UI. End users set the API key in Options after install.

Privacy

• Your API key is stored in chrome.storage.local on your device and never leaves your machine.
• Headlines are sent to the Anthropic Claude API for neutralization — no other third-party services are contacted
• No tracking, analytics, or telemetry of any kind are collected
• The content script runs on nytimes.com, but headline rewriting runs only on the homepage (/)