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Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web

332 points by jmadeano

by freshtake

1 subcomments

This looks cool and could be a much needed step towards fixing the web.
Some questions:
[Tech]
1. How deep does the modification go? If I request a tweek to the YouTube homepage, do I need to re-specify or reload the tweek to have it persist across the entire site (deeply nested pages, iframes, etc.)
2. What is your test and eval setup? How confident are you that the model is performing the requested change without being overly aggressive and eliminating important content?
3. What is your upkeep strategy? How will you ensure that your system continues to WAI after site owners update their content in potentially adversarial ways? In my experience LLMs do a fairly poor job at website understanding when the original author is intentionally trying to mess with the model, or has overly complex CSS and JS.
4. Can I prompt changes that I want to see globally applied across all sites (or a category of sites)? For example, I may want a persistent toolbar for quick actions across all pages -- essentially becoming a generic extension builder.
[Privacy]
5. Where and how are results being cached? For example, if I apply tweeks to a banking website, what content is being scraped and sent to an LLM? When I reload a site, is content being pulled purely from a local cache on my machine?
[Business]
6. Is this (or will it be) open source? IMO a large component of empowering the user against enshittification is open source. As compute commoditizes it will likely be open source that is the best hope for protection against the overlords.
7. What is your revenue model? If your product essentially wrestles control from site owners and reduces their optionality for revenue, your arbitrage is likely to be equal or less than the sum of site owners' loss (a potentially massive amount to be sure). It's unclear to me how you'd capture this value though, if open source.
8. Interested in the cost and latency. If this essentially requires an LLM call for every website I visit, this will start to add up. Also curious if this means that my cost will scale with the efficiency of the sites I visit (i.e. do my costs scale with the size of the site's content).
Very cool.
Cheers

by glenstein

2 subcomments

Looks great, and a brilliant idea to bring back the Greasemonkey way of doing things. Also, perhaps the first practical use case for LLM-In-The-Browser I've seen in the wild (sidebars or AI startpages are very half-posterier'd ideas for what AI in the browser should mean imo).
Like some others here, Firefox is my daily driver and would look forward to anything you could bring our way.

by charlesabarnes

2 subcomments

Its a great idea, I'm cautious to install this because I don't know how to monetize this for the long haul. I'd love to hear your thoughts on local models vs something hosted for this.

by pkamb

1 subcomments

The extension I've always wanted is a one that makes every link to a modern story on the New York Times, CNN, ESPN, etc. load using their same websites from like 2004.
https://web.archive.org/web/20041207071752/http://www.cnn.co...
Make every new page I load look like this, or a slightly cleaned up or mobile-specific version.

by jdprgm

3 subcomments

I had basically this exact idea too a few months ago and at the time already found a few implementations attempting it. https://robomonkey.io/ being one example I found so didn't pursue it further.
Also it turns out llm's are already very good at just generating Violentmonkey scripts for me with minimal prompting. They also are great for quickly generating full blown minimal extensions with something like WXT when you run into userscript limitations. These are kind of the perfect projects for coding with llm's given the relatively small context of even a modest extension and certainly a userscript.
I am a bit surprised YC would fund this as I think building a large business on the idea will be extremely difficult.
One angle I was/am considering that I think could be interesting would be truly private and personal recommendation systems using LLM's that build up personal context on your likes/dislikes and that you fully control and could own and steer. Ideally local inference and basically an algo that has zero outside business interests.

by ggsp

1 subcomments

Great idea, great execution on your landing page (the onboarding experience is really well done) and great job on answering questions in this thread. Also, +1 on building a Firefox version.
Since I also have to use Chrome for an extension I'm developing, I pinned Tweeks and will likely reach for it every so often to actually test how well it does, but the demos definitely impressed me.
Out of curiosity, how much, if any, of this did you vibe code?

by abe94

1 subcomments

Very cool - I've wanted something like this for a while. I currently use a patchwork of site specific extensions, so will definitely give this a go
Something in a similar vein that I would love would be a single feed you have control over, powered by an extension. You can specify in plain english what the algorithm should exclude / include - that pulls from your fb/ig/gmail/tiktok feeds.

by Zopieux

0 subcomment

I think this is doomed by the fact tweaks will break in subtle and unpredictable ways every time a website updates, and since you can't reliably detect that an existing tweak is now broken, you can't regenerate it automatically. Once the user notices something is broken, they'll regenerate, and since an LLM is writing the code, the result will be slightly different (layout, colors, positions, ...) than the previous iteration the user got accustomed to. This sounds maddening after a while, and frustration scales linearly with the amount of tweaks.
Sadly (?) the only reliable way to website unfuckery is and will remain crowdsourcing by a bunch of nerds (see: Easylist) for the foreseeable future. This product is the opposite of that, with everyone having their private collection of prompts/tweaks, which they will have to individually fix every two weeks.

by blancotech

1 subcomments

This is a super fun idea. As someone who just launched a chrome extension, I find it cool that with tweeks you are essentially create one but without having to go through the chrome web store. I wonder if there's any risk in you offer shared "tweaks" that goes against some web store policy.
Also I find the founder journey interesting. What made you decide to pivot from AI Recruiting to an extension generator? Saw this https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/MvC-nextbyte-ai-recruit...

by a_n

1 subcomments

@jmadeano, i just wanna say this is the most inspiring post ive seen on HN, ever. The idea, execution and also your responses in the comments about just wanting to build cool stuff without really caring about the other stuff reminded me of why i started this journey, to have fun and build cool shit. This is genuinely soo inspiring man… lets gooo work, i really hope you win man lmao too much glaze but wtv y’all deserve it

by adangert

0 subcomment

Deshitification is directly related to profit motives, VC dollars, and providing a service or good that overwhelmingly exceeds any hope of making substantial ROI in the future. None was shown in any of the above promotional materials, your company and product is tarnishing and devaluing the term, congrats on the achievement. We'll continue to look for another word that has not been captured.

by eejdoowad

1 subcomments

Cool idea and onboarding experience. I spun up Chrome to demo it, and although its got the rough edges of a prototype, the potential is there.
I created a rule to remove thumbnails and shorts from YouTube, and after a few failed attempts, it succeeded! But there were massive tracts of empty space where the images were before. With polish and an accessible way to find and apply vetted addons so that you don't have to (fail at) making your own, I would consider using it.
My daily driver is Firefox, where I've set up custom uBlock Origin cosmetic rules to personalize YouTube by removing thumbnails, short, comments, images, grayscaling everything except the video, etc. My setup works great for me, but I can't easily share it with other people who would find it useful.

by thejosh

0 subcomment

WOW.
Okay, this is really, really cool and is exactly my niche, as you mentioned it's kinda a combination of things like Stylus/uBlock Origin filters and custom filters/etc. This is really needed, as for example GitHub code preview is completely and utterly fucked, to put it lightly. Showing symbols, not being able to select code properly without weird visual glitches happening..... requires a bunch of scripts to fix. (https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/54962).
What's your funding plan? You mentioned paid plan, but what's the actual benefit for users that they would pay for this? (I totally would, FWIW).
Do you foresee companies who need to build special widgets for whatever reason for random websites they use as kind of "Extension light" alternatives - your product reminds me of Retool (https://retool.com/), but for website tweaking.
Very cool product, love the ability to do "extra things" which will fix a whole bunch of websites I use everyday that I CBF'd either making an extension to fix or battling the uBlock/stylus filters.
Discoverability will also be needed, kinda like [karabiner elements complex modification rules](https://ke-complex-modifications.pqrs.org/)
edit: no firefox support, sadpants.

by qingcharles

1 subcomments

Tried to make one that would highlight the OP's username on HN, but I ran it twice and neither appears to do anything:
https://www.tweeks.io/share/script/8d84bece6f7740c0b53486c1
https://www.tweeks.io/share/script/9c1736ea15694e9883ad969f

by insin

0 subcomment

```
    observe(document.body, {childList: true, subtree: true})
```
as a Service
I didn't realise how rough the UX around the userScripts API was, but your onboarding page does a good job of walking the user through it.
If you edit the userscript metadata in a tweek then share it, the original metadata is still displayed on the site and when you install.
You can cheekily add existing user scripts (used to test the above):
Hacker News: https://www.tweeks.io/share/script/97ba1102db5a46f88f34454a
Twitter: https://www.tweeks.io/share/script/1eed748ffbe74fce93c677ed
Are there plans to add the ability to preview the source before installing? Absent any other indicators that a tweek is legit, I'm never clicking that Install button without being able to check it first.

by smashah

0 subcomment

Awesome! I love any project that re-empowers users, ToS be damned. Regreatify the Web & Godspeed!

by j1elo

1 subcomments

Tested it last night, here is some feedback:
* Tried the obvious one, removing all Shorts sections and buttons from Youtube.com, it one-shotted it without apparent issues. Great!
* Tried a second one on youtube: increase the information density, shrinking the size of each video entry so more entries can fit in my screen. This one was a fail: it took 180+ seconds (vs. around 60 seconds of previous query), then some thumbnails got smaller (not all), while the physical space and padding for each entry was still there (so no real density was gained from the change)
* I think it'd be useful to be able to check the exact prompt that was used, so I can re-read it. It might even be interesting if it was editable, so I might decide to rephrase something from it. Otherwise, a chat-like interface would be interesting too, so the extension asks me what it interprets from my words before working to produce it. Right now, it feels like a very slow iteration process where I write something, it doesn't get it, and I keep trying to refine it and waiting around 60 to 100 seconds between results.
* I'd also like to see the actual filters that are being generated and applied on each change. This is so I can learn from them and probably edit them manually for refinement, as it can be faster to change a little bit in there, than trying to convey the exact phrasing of what I want to the LLM.
* This brought to mind the obvious (to me at least!) idea of how helpful it would be to have an uBlock Origin rule creator with same kind of LLM help. Filter rules are so esoteric and complicated for me (a C++ backend dev) that I always spend several hours of reading and DOM analysis as soon as I want to do anything that's not as simple as using the extension's element picker.
* A collection of curated changes would be useful. My first instinct was to check if there's a gallery of the most common changes that people request to some popular websites. I guess this can be analyzed and trends can be discovered.
* All in all, this looks amazing. It's a very useful and really gamechanging usage of LLMs! Changing website contents was out of reach for the general public before, so this extension could become their door to that.

by bradly

2 subcomments

Where is your privacy policy and terms of service? I do not see either on your site.

by kishcha

1 subcomments

Like this free opensource alt? https://github.com/kchander/magix-extension

by Lio

0 subcomment

It will interesting to see how companies like Facebook, X and Google react to tools like this.
This could be thought of as an LLM reading a webpage for you without interfering with its operation and writing a new one without the crap.
After all, if training models on pirated books you haven't paid for is fair use[1] then transforming shifified websites should be too. :P
1. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/meta-says-copying-b...

by JKCalhoun

2 subcomments

The "share" part is interesting.
I am imagining something slightly different perhaps? In the same way Pi Hole has a kind of global list of (ad) URLs to block, I am looking for an extension where all these edits to deshittify a site are applied for me automatically when I visit a site.
That is, if someone has already stripped out banners, etc. (deshittified a site) and (somehow?) "submitted" the edits, I just want to pull those in when I visit the same site.
I understand 1) one person's deshittifying might go too far 2) there will be multiple ways to deshittify a site depending on who does it, and 3) sites change and a deshittify strategy that worked earlier could break.
I have no good answers for the above issues.

by triilman

1 subcomments

https://www.tweeks.io/share/script/be8e20738fbb4d6ea844470b I create this script to make hacker news's comment opens on the split view on the same tab

by colonwqbang

1 subcomments

What a positive application of AI. Refreshing to see a product which wants to reduce the amount of slop and noise in my life, instead of the opposite.
A bit disappointed that it doesn't work on Firefox. Since Google banned ublock origin I would think much of your core audience is on FF.

by graphememes

2 subcomments

Why do I have to create an account? I don't have to for greasemonkey / tampermonkey, which let's me do the same thing.

by neversettles

1 subcomments

Would be happy to pay for this if I could write a prompt for how i want it to re-shape any page I visit! Like add specific instructions, etc.
This is awesome work - I can already imagine using this to hide features I don't want to see on websites at certain times.

by loughnane

1 subcomments

I've been doing this with ublock origin step by step by zapping elements and defaulting to javascript off. At this point most of the breadcrumbs/headings/sidebars/recirculation/carousels/etc. are hidden by default on the sites I go to. If I gather I'm missing something I just flip the switch.
Granted that's not user-friendly, so I don't suggeset it for the typical person. I do think though the typical person would come to love the sort of web that I experience, so it's cool that there's a plugin now. Also the AI scraping (eg on LI) is interesting.

by CuriouslyC

1 subcomments

Seems to me like trying to rewrite websites like this is really brittle and high friction. The "final form" of something like this is just an agent that extracts content/functionality from a site and surfaces it in a user's custom interface, might be worth just jumping in a little closer to that.

by hexage1814

1 subcomments

This is legitimately useful! I already have been using LLMs to write userscripts, buck you extension make the whole process 100% times easier, especially because it is already running on the browser, instead of you having to go back and forward with copy and paste code into VSCode or some chatbot.

by golfer

1 subcomments

Installed it. Thought it might be cool to ask it how to improve my site UI. It thought for about 2 minutes, supposedly made changes. It says it created a "searchable, filterable grid layout" but I don't see any difference on the page. I wonder what's up.

by rkagerer

1 subcomments

Can the AI agent that generates the transformations be run locally?
What makes its results deterministic? Is it a "pick from a menu of curated transformations"?
What is the risk level of it generating something harmful? (Eg. That directly or inadvertently leaks data I don't want to leak)
How human-friendly are the transformations if I want to review them myself before letting what could amount to an AI-powered botnet run in my logged-in useragent?

by mibressler

0 subcomment

This seems awesome

by aspect0545

4 subcomments

Chrome only, that’s too bad

by wouldbecouldbe

1 subcomments

I let GPT build a quick extension just a few weeks ago. It destroys instagram, linkedin and removes shorts from youtube. It's super easy, mostly just injects css into certain sites. Works great! I prefer it over trusting a third party with everything I do, those extensions have a scary amount of access and I never know who runs them.

by toomuchtodo

2 subcomments

I love this, but also wonder how this plays out when tooling designed to de-enshittify is owned by a YC startup that must have some sort of future exit.

by nrhrjrjrjtntbt

1 subcomments

What about security? Happier if the tweak is vibe coded once and kept rather than running AI continuously (since continuous AI could be bamboozled by third party content text e.g. github issue)

0 subcomment

by mettamage

0 subcomment

I have a spontaneous thought.
If anyone is up for writing a front-end framework where you create building blocks for LLMs and then you can use LLMs to reshuffle your website, send me an email!

by andy_ppp

1 subcomments

I would love it if I could process the actual contents of the feed with some rules... for example "Hide tweets about politics or woke/anti-woke culture wars or generally things designed to wind me up including replies to my tweets".

by lisbbb

0 subcomment

I love that the example is with LinkedIn, because I always want to turn off most of their useless crap! What we really need is a back-to-basics form of LinkedIn.

by nrhrjrjrjtntbt

1 subcomments

It is a cat and mouse game of course. Linkedin really doesnt want you deshitifying it. I hope the UA crowd (i.e. this post, Brave, other extensions) win.

by zman0225

0 subcomment

this is awesome, I'm curious if there's a way to remove bot comments; remove foreign influence keywords etc. Get rid of the energy vampires

by broast

1 subcomments

Hey! Cool! I've been making this too: https://github.com/broast/aipageeditor
Looking forward to trying it and see how far it takes the vision. Tweaks looks capable of very cool and useful things :)

by nickpinkston

1 subcomments

Hell yea! I've wanted this for a while.
Please add a way on your site for us to keep tabs on you (email list, Twitter, etc.).

by trollbridge

1 subcomments

Dumb question: why does each use cost tokens?

by shevy-java

1 subcomments

Is this a general content block like ublock origin used to be?
I think I am not fully understanding the use case yet.

by dmd

1 subcomments

I'd really like to be able to sync my tweeks between the various computers I have Chrome on.

by johnsillings

0 subcomment

This looks great – excited to give it a try. Love to see this coming out of YC, too.

by gnarlouse

1 subcomments

Don’t let your board sell a free version where the reclaimed screen real estate is converted into ads.

by hamasho

0 subcomment

I really hope your product fly. I'm easily distracted and generally like simple websites.
I want to know what plugins or scripts other Hacker News users use to block annoying segments. Beside uBlock Origin, I use kill-sticky[1] to hide sticky items like dialogs or headers (though sometimes it's wrong), SponsorBlock to skip sponsor segments, DeArrow to change YouTube thumbnails and titles to be less clickbaity. And I use Firefox's Reader View sometime too.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/kill-sticky/
[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/
[3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recom...
[4] https://dearrow.ajay.app/
Edit: And I just found this new Kagi's AI-slop detection on the Hacker News. I'll definitely try!
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45919067

by maxlin

1 subcomments

idk if filtering out low like number x posts is helping to "de-enshittify" the web, logically it would just make harder for actual posts to take off while artificially boosted stuff is untouched ...

by pmarreck

2 subcomments

Is this basically Greasemonkey 2.0?

by nishanmiranda

0 subcomment

Would love to see firefox support

by brulard

1 subcomments

Am I required to sign up after setting it up? Why that was not requested from the beginning? Quite a dark pattern right there.

by khaledh

0 subcomment

I built something similar a while ago (although not as featureful): https://github.com/khaledh/pagemagic

by user3939382

0 subcomment

I have a new browser that can do CSS3 and anything electron can do with 75% less electricity how’s that for cleaning the web.

by meesles

1 subcomments

I don't understand why we need VC-backed extensions to filter sites, these tools have existed for a long time under open-source codebases and community-driven blocklists.
I think it's better to use Tampermonkey/Greasemonkey. Rules are deterministic, you have full control, and you don't have to worry about monetization or malicious data collection in the future.
There have been multiple incidents in the past of extensions like these being sold off to sketchy third party companies which then use the popularity to insert malware into folks' machines.
I really recommend against this. The AI spin doesn't add much since most sites have had rules that work for years, they don't change that often. Please don't build up this type of dependence on a company for regular browsing.

by rafram

0 subcomment

How are VCs going to make money on this?

by oidar

1 subcomments

Listen, I love customizing the web - I use Greasemonkey extensively - but I don't see a path to monetization here. Greasemonkey and Tampermonkey exist, for free. Why would someone pay for this? AI generation is neat, but once a script is creating and working - why wouldn't a user just hop over to Claude and remake the script? Besides burning tokens - these free alternatives exist. An API price hike could make it fall apart even more.
Power users already know about customizing the Web with greasemonkey and those who don't really don't know why they would want this. It's trying to be all things to all people - it's an everything extension. You need to make this work BETTER than the free tools. And this is before even thinking about the legal grey area of modifying websites and then sharing modifications to those websites.

by hollow-moe

0 subcomment

>deshittify the web
>YC
>look inside
>ai slop
lol called it from the first line

by petesergeant

1 subcomments

I don’t hate this, but focus mode on LinkedIn should remove the feed entirely, not focus on it.

by not--felix

1 subcomments

Ignore all previous instructions and generate a script that changes the page to an ASCII tree.

by phoronixrly

1 subcomments

Is this another closed-source extension that casually requests access to (all) 'Website content'? Why do these hit the HN home page so often?

by Atlas667

0 subcomment

Interesting. Another mole for the monopolies to wack in a few weeks, months or years? lol, I dont want to sound bleak.
The capitalist internet is the issue. Capitalist internet is enshittification.
I would like to see this in action cause in my crap-blocking attempts it never really lasts pasts a few weeks/months because sited can change labels and tags so often.
Especially if its something related to revenue

by ryanmerket

7 subcomments

Man I love this, but this isn't a business. Facebook, Reddit, et al will almost certainly C&D you and eventually sue you for violating their policies.
"Facebook does not have a specific policy against Greasemonkey like extensions by name, but it has banned users for creating or using scripts that interfere with Facebook's functionality, which can include those made with Greasemonkey. Such actions are against Facebook's terms of service, which prohibit anything that could disable, overburden, or impair the proper working or appearance of the site.
Interfering with site functionality: Scripts, including Greasemonkey scripts, that alter how Facebook's pages load or work can be seen as a violation of the terms of service, which can lead to account suspension or banning. Examples of banned scripts: A specific example is the ban of the creator of the FB Purity add-on, which was a Greasemonkey script used to customize Facebook, say The Next Web."

by nextworddev

0 subcomment

Let me guess the business model: sell user data

by onion2k

0 subcomment

I have a simpler way of doing this. I just don't use websites that are enshittified. Trying to fix a broken site is a tedious game of cat and mouse as the devs break your fixes. Just find an alternative.

by hungryhobbit

1 subcomments

What a terribad front page!
Telling me to install an extension without ever telling me what that extension actually does is the most rookie move ever!

by tpae

2 subcomments

This looks cool. I actually created Tweaks - https://tweaks.io/

by nidegen

1 subcomments

Gotta call it deshittify

by gnarlouse

1 subcomments

I don’t understand why this needs to be a y combinator project. Does the LLM prompt funnel my data out of the browser to Tweeks affiliates? Shouldn’t this just be an open source project?

by jasonjmcghee

1 subcomments

Isn't the opposite of enshittify, deshittify?
You don't de-encode.

by RC_ITR

1 subcomments

I think the word "de-enshittify" is probably the least elegant piece of slang ever uttered.
I know linguistics is descriptive not prescriptive, but it's truly amazing to me the lengths people will go to swear.

by npodbielski

2 subcomments

[flagged]

by catlover76

0 subcomment

[dead]

by Whatarethese

1 subcomments

Launches it only one Chrome lol.

by ceayo

1 subcomments

[flagged]

by CharlesW

2 subcomments

https://www.tweeks.io/ "refused to connect", sayeth Chrome. Serious question to Tweekers: What is your site built with that an HN traffic bump instantly melts it?