I built a Chrome extension that grades any privacy policy A to F — feedback wanted
Hey makers 👋
I'm Tharun. Spent the last few months building Termly AI — a Chrome extension that reads the privacy policy of any website and grades it A to F, so you don't have to wade through 30 pages of legalese to know if a site respects you.
WHY I BUILT IT:
Most of us click "I Agree" without reading. Not because we're lazy, but because privacy policies are deliberately written to be unreadable — 8,000+ words of conditional clauses no normal person should have to parse. I wanted to know what I'm agreeing to in under 10 seconds.
HOW IT WORKS:
- Open the side panel on any site
- It auto-detects the privacy policy, terms of service, and cookie policy links
- Sends the policy text to an AI backend (Groq + Llama 3.3 70B)
- Returns a grade (A–F) + plain-English breakdown of risks and protections
- Bonus: paste any document (NDA, lease, employment contract) and grade it the same way
WHAT I LEARNED BUILDING IT:
- Chrome's side panel API in MV3 is way harder than the popup API — the lifecycle is weird
- Llama 3.3 70B is incredibly accurate on legal text triage (better than GPT-4 in my testing, ~50x cheaper)
- Designing for narrow vertical space forced a much tighter UX than a popup would have
- Got rejected once by the Web Store for keyword stuffing in the description — lesson learned
WHAT I'M ASKING:
1. If you've built browser extensions: what's been your biggest growth lever post-launch?
2. What features would you actually want from a tool like this?
3. Any feedback on the approach — is A–F grading the right abstraction, or should I lean toward summaries?
Currently in Chrome Web Store review. Happy to share the install link once it's approved if anyone wants to try it.
Open to all feedback — kind or brutal.
Replies
Wow, Tharun... this is really cool! I love the idea of instantly grading privacy policies. The A‑F scale is clear, though a quick summary could help users decide fast. If you’re up for it, I’m launching on PH soon ... would appreciate a follow (See PRODUCT HUNT LAUNCH link in my profile). I'm building The Sponge, an AI‑powered flashcard tool that turns any web page into study material.
@rianbrob Thanks! Quick summary is actually already in there — every report has a one-liner at the top before the bullets (e.g., "You give Temu a broad license to use your data and waive your right to sue in court"). The grade is the gut-punch, the one-liner is the "why" so people can scan in 2 seconds before deciding to read deeper.
Curious if you meant something even tighter though — like a TL;DR before the grade card itself? Open to ideas.
Flashcards from any webpage is a clean use case. Drop the PH link when it's live and I'll take a look. Good luck with the launch!