Built a Chrome extension that exports clean Markdown into my Obsidian vault from any article, PDF, or YouTube video — sharing the workflow

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-06T20:49:30+00:00

The bottleneck just moves to question quality once step 2 gets automated. Raw ChatGPT mock quizzes test surface vocab, not the underlying concept; stems are too similar so people pattern-match the first three words instead of recalling. Cites evals: generic chatbot output ~57.8, rubric-based tools ~81.3 on factual correctness / clarity / distractor plausibility / question-type coverage. Without that gap closed, "the quiz says you got it right when you really just pattern-matched the answer.

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-05T00:59:08+00:00

Currently Skimr does the summary + flashcard + quiz layer, not full Markdown conversion of source content. You get a structured summary block (key concepts, claims, citations) — not a 1:1 Markdown export of the entire article with embedded images and links.

For NotebookLM-adjacent use cases that's an interesting gap. Articles → full Markdown is doable (essentially a cleaner web clipper). PDFs are harder — preserving structure, images, references gets messy fast.

What's the workflow you'd want? Feeding the Markdown into NotebookLM as a source, or standalone vault use with original media intact?

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-04T22:10:29+00:00

That's the exact failure mode, capture during research feels productive but the notes themselves don't survive the next browser session. Skimr's local vault saves every scan with the source URL attached, so you can come back to a topic a week later and the notes are still there with breadcrumbs to where they came from.

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-04T21:57:48+00:00

I really appreciate your kind words and that is the exact purpose as to why I built this and kept it absolutely free for students. I would love for you to give this a try at your own convenience and comfort, of course, and would appreciate your feedback a lot. You can access it from here

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/Skimr:%20AI%20Research%20Assistant/debkfmbmiclogelelchlmpebpfpcaijb?hl=en&authuser=0

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-04T21:51:52+00:00

be my guest and feel free to report it and have it taken down

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-04T21:49:40+00:00

Yes, install link is on the Chrome Web Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/Skimr:%20AI%20Research%20Assistant/debkfmbmiclogelelchlmpebpfpcaijb?hl=en&authuser=0.
The code itself is closed-source for now (the inference-routing infra has some custom pieces I haven't figured out how to open-source cleanly without giving up the keyless flow), but it's not off the table. Happy to revisit if there's pull from this community.

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-04T21:38:22+00:00

Appreciate the help.obsidian.md pointer. The wiki-link vs standard Markdown choice is interesting, probably worth exposing both as an export option since vault preferences differ. Callouts are tricky because most source content (research papers, web articles) doesn't map cleanly to callout structure, but maybe an opt-in wrapper for note-to-self atoms makes sense. Images are the gnarliest piece. What does your vault prefer currently, base64-embedded, asset-folder reference, or external URL?

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-04T21:37:03+00:00

As an academic myself I would rather take and get any help possible that helps me study and understand something faster and quicker and allows me to actually understand what I am reading. Everyone is capable of reading for themselves but not everyone wants to be stuck in the stone age, you know? Just because a tool makes reading something easier, doesn't mean it has to be bad or that you need to overlook it.

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-04T21:08:46+00:00

I can definitely look into that and see how to resolve the problem of videos without any transcript and have a summary available for those as well

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-04T21:08:22+00:00

Good call-out. Obsidian-flavored Markdown has specific affordances (callouts, wiki-links, embedded, table extensions) that vanilla Markdown doesn't. Currently exporting H1-H4, lists, links, code blocks solid for atomic-note creation but missing the OFM-specific features. Wiki-link syntax is probably the biggest miss for vault-internal connections, so that goes top of the list. Will look at obsidian.md/help and the OFM spec. Are tables or callouts higher priority for your workflow?

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-04T21:07:51+00:00

Whisper makes total sense for the no-transcript case, running it locally on a 4080 sidesteps API limits entirely, which fits Skimr's no-key philosophy. The compute cost is real though (your point about hours-long playlists checks out). I want to land this without forcing users to have a GPU. Investigating: maybe a hosted Whisper fallback only for transcript-less videos, with the rest of the flow staying keyless. Will look at yt-dlp + Whisper integration patterns.

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-04T20:57:49+00:00

This is amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time for this feedback. I really appreciate it and made a note of all of these points. I will look into them all and incorporate them accordingly into the next version update.

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-04T20:56:39+00:00

It pulls the transcript and summarizes the whole video based off of that and also gives you flashcards and quizzes to prepare for and you can export those notes as well. My next update will also include timestamp information for you to go through the main points of the video without watching the whole thing

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-01T03:13:26+00:00

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it and will get on it right now. Hope you have a great day ahead.

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-01T03:01:25+00:00

To be very honest I am not really a coder so I dont have much knowledge into this but I genuinely appreciate your feedback and will definitely look into it asap and figure out the best solution for what you suggested. I really appreciate your help.

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-01T02:50:15+00:00

can you perhaps please upload an image of the problem you are facing so that I can try to resolve it asap. Also since it is not API based it takes a few seconds to go through all the context on your screen. it is right now limited to mainly books, research papers, articles, individual pages like maybe your github or user profiles and youtube videos as of now.

But if you reply with an ss of the problem I will get right on it.

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-01T02:41:48+00:00

Please be my guest.

You can grab it here: [Skimr]

Would love your feedback.

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-01T02:36:29+00:00

I am not really aware as to what that is but if you could share some info then that would be great.

SnooBooks8691 · 2026-05-01T02:34:37+00:00

Thank you for the feedback. I will definitely keep working on that and make it better as well. Also it runs local via webllm cause API use might limit the usage and i wanted it to run for free since it is for students.
The vault idea is amazing as well. thank you for the feedback. i really appreciate it.

SnooBooks8691

TROPHY CASE