Incise
A cross-browser extension that turns text selection into a utility. Highlight anything and get an instant AI answer (explain, summarize, define, translate, simplify) without leaving the page.
July 2026
- TypeScript
- React
- WXT
- Tailwind CSS
- Anthropic API
- OpenAI API
Incise is built on one idea: highlight text, act on it. No chat window, just answers. Select anything on a page and a floating action bar offers one-click actions: explain, summarize, distill, define, translate, or simplify, with the result streaming in right there. Right-click an image to describe it or pull out its text.
In development for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, with Safari planned. The repository still carries the project’s original name, Distill.
Highlights
- Floating action bar on selection, plus a right-click context menu for power users
- Streaming results: answers appear as they’re generated
- Notepad: save and organize results and raw quotes, with search, filter, and export
- Image actions: describe an image or extract its text
- Bring your own key: use your own Anthropic or OpenAI key, stored locally, with no usage limits; otherwise requests go through a proxy that keeps keys off the client
Engineering
- Built with WXT, which generates the manifest and produces Chrome, Firefox, and Edge builds from one codebase with hot reload in development
- React 19 and TypeScript, with the in-page UI mounted in a Shadow DOM so the extension’s Tailwind styles never collide with the host page
- A service worker handles the AI calls, context menu, and messaging; the proxy path validates tokens, enforces rate limits, and streams responses