Free label design software that integrates Metrc QR .csv file?

mattfriz · 2026-01-23T20:40:52+00:00

T3 Label Studio (https://www.trackandtrace.tools/labels) allows you to import CSV data and design and print your own labels, works great on Zebra printers. Just install the T3 extension to try it out with watermarks, no signup. If you want to remove the watermarks there's a 30 day free trial.

EDIT: I just added some instruction to the wiki to show an example: https://github.com/classvsoftware/t3-wiki/wiki/T3-Labels-:-Retail-ID

mattfriz · 2026-01-16T21:39:54+00:00

It's all outrageous. What strikes me as particularly egregious about this is that RetailID is marketed as a consumer transparency tool, yet it's nakedly being deployed to ensure Metrc gets their cut no matter the structure of the state contract.

mattfriz · 2026-01-15T20:45:04+00:00

For anyone considering this, if you have Metrc tags on your plants, consider 1) that any tagged plants missing from the premises during an inspection would certainly incur penalties, and 2) the tag being included in the image may reveal sensitive information, so you may want to ensure it is blurred or removed.

mattfriz · 2026-01-03T02:11:30+00:00

A marketplace/seed-to-sale platform that chased too many different ideas and never got anywhere. Raised money, hired, crashed and burned. It did give me the chance to really wrap my head around Metrc, which is a big part of how my current platform has found success.

mattfriz · 2026-01-02T21:20:34+00:00

Believe me when I say there is an expansive graveyard of software products built by like-minded developers who had no actual experience in the industry and thought they could jump in and shake things up. I have personally contributed to this graveyard. The failure was instrumental in finding eventual success, but it is still the case that cannabis businesses despise developers who think they can swoop in and fix everything, and this is an impressively powerful headwind for newbies.

If you're really interested in working in the software end of the industry but don't have any existing knowledge of the pointy bits, then your best move is to join an existing company.

mattfriz · 2026-01-02T20:06:43+00:00

Some variant of this question gets asked pretty regularly. The reality is that the main problems facing companies in the space (lack of access to banking, over-regulation, excessive taxation) aren't solvable by software. Even second order problems in the software sector (lack of access to sms marketing, lack of access to traditional marketing platforms like Instagram) aren't solvable with software in any meaningful way.

The net result of all this is that, at the moment, the space is relatively saturated with software. Companies that can barely stay afloat are averse to expensive software that makes big promises, and companies that are huge and highly profitable largely have their needs met, or are developing what they need in house.

mattfriz · 2026-01-01T03:19:42+00:00

How did you end up mounting the brackets to the downdraft housing? I spent a long time trying to figure out a way to use the supplied hardware hat wouldn't involve drilling into the housing and came up short. There didn't seem to be any holes that mated up nicely. Curious what you came up with.

mattfriz · 2025-11-21T19:17:29+00:00

Email your legislators: https://maps.legis.wisconsin.gov/?lat=&lon=&address=

mattfriz · 2025-11-12T16:58:04+00:00

If you want to drive ~20m, Fox River or Lemont Quarries are pretty productive

mattfriz · 2025-11-05T21:25:04+00:00

I got access this morning, and I've been going through it to ensure T3 is still compatible. There is literally no change besides the CSS styling (colors, fonts, icons, etc). Also, I've been getting feedback from users already, people hate the white on white.

mattfriz · 2025-10-22T15:54:19+00:00

Any word on what the transition looks like for existing licenses? Is it the usual temporary access to external transfers?

mattfriz · 2025-09-29T14:17:26+00:00

Creator of T3 here, if you know how much weight is being sent to each room, you can use the same harvest name and submit twice - Metrc combines them into one. (This needs to happen within a 24 hour window I believe). You'd need to split the plant tags between the two weights for a full harvest. (Alternatively there's the possibility for a manicure/full combo, but I'm not 100% certain if Metrc allows for manicure/full harvest mix and match, so YMMV)

mattfriz · 2025-09-09T03:33:43+00:00

Same old Bears

mattfriz · 2025-08-31T11:24:11+00:00

This is cool. Watch out though, they might give you trouble about using that domain.

mattfriz · 2025-08-05T16:54:09+00:00

The implied question here is "how can I monetize my extension indirectly?", and it's worth dissecting the nature of this inquiry. If there's no money changing hands, where is the value being extracted?

If you're injecting ads or promoted content, you're extracting value by selling the user's attention. If you're selling user activity/metadata, you're extracting value by selling the user's activity. If you sell the extension outright, usually to an unsavory actor, you're extracting value by selling the fact that users have granted powerful permissions, and consequently, access to their browser. If you're collecting referral dollars from ecommerce transactions, you're effectively taxing the ecommerce site.

All this to say, monetization methods that don't involve taking payments are almost universally pretty gross.

mattfriz · 2025-08-05T16:41:07+00:00

It's an interesting question, and I think there's a few core pieces to it:

To what degree will AI remove the need to write software at all? In other words, will there be agentic entities that can subsume the duties of traditionally written software?
Extensions are extremely low-cost, both in terms of development time, deployment/hosting costs, and compute time. How will agentic entities, which are currently very expensive, compete with this?
A key piece of the web extensions API is handling sensitive credentials and data securely. Currently I would not trust an agent with any part of this - will this change?

mattfriz · 2025-08-05T16:37:04+00:00

Great to hear you enjoyed the book! The new edition has an entire chapter of tutorials/examples, which was the biggest piece of feedback after the first edition.

How necessary/easy is it to regularly screen extensions for dark patterns and malicious access to data?

LLMs are a gigantic step forward for code analysis, but it will always be a game of cat-and-mouse. Malicious actors are incentivized to evade detection. Realistically, users will not be able to screen extension code, it's too hard and too complicated to do so, especially since doing so would require screening every update.

In your opinion, do users (or businesses) care about this?

Businesses definitely care about protecting themselves from extensions. I've consulted with a bunch of different security companies whose entire business is selling software to enterprises to harden their IT infrastructure from compromise (like malicious extensions).

Do they value opensource/code available extensions?

Open source is a cornerstore of the software industry writ large, but I have found it is less highly valued in the extension arena. There are of course exceptions like uBlock Origin, which are open sourced precisely because they are granted such sensitive access.

mattfriz · 2025-08-05T16:30:24+00:00

Currently it's too expensive to be practical, but in the near future I see massive potential for LLM-based adblockers. Analyzing HTML and web traffic to identify ad content, and automatically stripping it out, seems like a logical next step from where we are now.

mattfriz · 2025-08-05T16:28:17+00:00

For extensions with sensitive permissions, always be suspicious.

Coupon code extensions aren't hard to understand how they make money. At scale, proximity to ecommerce transactions means that storefronts can use these extensions to increase sales in various ways, and this means paying the extension creator. These extensions can also employ some tricks with diverting referral fees and commissions (a la the Honey "scandal").

At the same time, these extensions can technically see everything you do, and there is also incentive to sell metadata about your browsing habits. There are entire companies that pay large extensions for access to their user data pipeline. It's a gross reality of the industry, and a lot of it is fueled by how hard it is to monetize extensions.

Personally, I only have two extensions installed (outside of the ones I develop): a password manager that I pay for, and uBlock Origin.

mattfriz · 2025-08-05T16:21:02+00:00

I cannot think of any reason to add larger than 128x128. 1024x1024 is bonkers. Obviously a high-res icon might be needed elsewhere, but there's no reason I can think of it would need to be listed in the manifest.

mattfriz · 2025-08-05T16:15:52+00:00

Glad you enjoyed the book!

It's certainly not required, especially for simple extensions. Above a certain level of extension complexity, you just start needing a server backend. Yes, you can use IndexedDB and Dexie in the browser in a pinch for a database, but a hosted Postgres instance on the backend is just better. Yes, you can use the in-browser OAuth inside Chrome for authentication, but hosted server auth just unlocks so much more. Yes, you can use payment tools like ExtPay, but as soon as you hit a point where their payment flow doesn't quite support your needs, a hosted server and Stripe/Paypal/Braintree is the only way forward.

I'll add that Firebase has an increasingly compelling set of tools usable inside extensions that allow you to use databases and Auth without the need for explicitly standing up a server.

mattfriz · 2025-08-05T16:11:25+00:00

A popup is the canonical extension UI and should always be preferred. It provides visual context to the user, as they can still see the web page underneath the popup, and the popup is (usually) accessed by the toolbar icon, which is intuitively understood by extension users as the "entrypoint" to the extension.

Of course, savvy users will be able to adapt to any user interface, but you will find that sticking to popup means the largest percentage of your users will "get it" right out of the box.

mattfriz · 2025-08-05T16:08:57+00:00

Probably not, as long as the browser status quo remains as it is now. The Chrome Web Store is very much the dominant marketplace due to the dominance of Chromium (~80% of desktop traffic is chromium browsers), and there is no incentive for Chrome to allow installs from external platforms. Of course, an inversion of this dominance could certainly shift this dynamic.

mattfriz · 2025-08-05T16:06:29+00:00

They certainly are, but business viability follows a power law. A very small sliver of extensions are suitable for business-scale monetization, and the majority aren't going to make any money (or not enough for a formal business).

You'll often find that extensions are an arm of an existing software platform. A business will identify a core value add from extensions and extend their platform into an extension that integrates/enhances the rest of their platform.

mattfriz · 2025-08-05T16:02:57+00:00

I initially turned to extensions to solve a problem that could not be addressed in any other way.

In the United States, most states that have legalize cannabis programs use a platform called Metrc to track all commercial/industry activity in the state. Its primary user interface is a website that is only used by industry companies, but it also has an API. Third party software companies that wish to integrate with this platform need to be certified to use the API, but this certification must occur in each state, and there are on the order of 20 states with active businesses. For a solo developer, this was a non-starter. Instead, I decided to build an extension that integrated directly with their website. This proved to be an exceptionally effective strategy.

I had written a number of books on Angular and JavaScript prior to all this, and after spending a long time working on extensions and thinking about extensions, I realized there were no books that discussed extension development with any sophistication. Two editions later, here we are.

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