A Privacy-First AI Chrome Extension: What to Check Before You Install One
AI-powered browser extensions are useful — but you shouldn’t use one without knowing what it sends, when, and where. “Privacy-first” isn’t a slogan; it’s checkable on five points: sending triggers, data scope, permissions, storage location, and logging.
This guide lays out that five-point checklist neutrally, then shows how Arrows Lite — an extension for saving and resuming work in progress — answers each point, grounded in its implementation.
Five things to check before installing any AI extension
For any AI extension, look for explicit answers to these five questions. Not finding an answer is itself an answer.
- When does it send? Automatically, or only on your explicit action? Any background sending?
- What does it send? Whole pages or visible text only? Are URLs, form values, or cookies included?
- What permissions does it demand? Watch for <all_urls> (access to every site), history, cookies, or webRequest.
- Where does data live? On your device, or accumulated on external servers? Can you delete and export it?
- Logging and reuse: does sent content end up in server logs? Is it reused for training or ads?
How Arrows Lite answers each point
Here are Arrows Lite’s answers — not as policy statements, but as facts of the request-building and text-extraction code:
| Check | Arrows Lite |
|---|---|
| When it sends | Only when you press the AI page summary button. No automatic or scheduled sending. Never use AI → nothing is ever sent |
| What it sends | The target tab’s title + its visible text (max 6,000 chars) + an output-language code. Never URLs, images, cookies, passwords, form values, or hidden elements |
| Permissions | No <all_urls>. No history, cookies, webRequest, or debugger. The only external endpoint is our own relay server |
| Where data lives | Saved Cases and sticky notes are stored locally on your device — no external sync. Export/import as JSON; uninstall removes everything |
| Logging and reuse | Page text, titles, and tokens are not written to server logs (generalized messages only). No analytics or ad SDKs in the extension |
The full item-by-item list is on our dedicated page, “What Arrows Lite sends to AI — and what it never sends”.
Why AI is a helper here, not the product
Arrows Lite is not an AI summarizer. Its job is saving your work in progress so you can resume the next day; AI is confined to one supporting role — drafting the “how far did I get” note when you save.
- The AI summary is optional; saving, organizing, and resuming all work without it
- You can edit or discard the drafted summary before saving — AI output is never final by itself
- Only the one tab you are saving is involved. All-tab scanning or monitoring never happens
The smaller the AI’s role, the smaller the data it needs. A privacy-first AI extension, in our view, is one that keeps AI’s footprint at the minimum the job requires.
How to verify the claims yourself
Privacy claims should be checkable by users. With Arrows Lite you can:
- Open Chrome’s extension settings and confirm there is no <all_urls> in the requested permissions
- See the drafted summary before saving — and since only visible text is eligible, what you can see on the page bounds what can be sent
- Compare the store privacy disclosure and this site’s “what we send” page — both are updated together with the implementation
FAQ
Yes. The AI page summary is optional; unless you press the button, nothing is ever sent. Saving, organizing, resuming, and sticky notes all work without AI.
To control usage of the AI summary (rate limits and abuse prevention). Sign-in is needed only for AI; the token is held in memory only and never stored.
Requests go through our own relay server to the AI provider’s (Anthropic’s) API solely to generate the summary. The relay does not write page text to its logs.
The permission list (no <all_urls>; a single external endpoint) is visible to anyone in Chrome’s extension settings. And because only visible text is eligible for sending, the page you see is the outer bound of what can leave.
Small AI, explicit privacy
An AI extension that can name all three things it sends. Save and resume your work — free to try.
Get it on Chrome Web Store — Free