Hey HN — I built Xeder to solve a personal problem: I want to stay caught up with tech Twitter but I lose too much time to doomscrolling.
The core idea is simple — X/Twitter is text-first, which means the content works as audio. Xeder reads your timeline aloud so you can catch up while doing other things.
Some technical details since I know HN appreciates these:
- Chrome MV3 extension
- Content script scrapes tweets from the DOM and injects the player UI via Shadow DOM (so it doesn't break X's page styles)
- Service workers in MV3 can't play audio (no DOM access), so there's a hidden offscreen document that handles all audio playback
- TTS via Google Cloud Text-to-Speech API, proxied through Firebase Cloud Functions (so the API key stays server-side)
- License validation through Firestore with device ID tracking
- Automatically filters promoted tweets/ads
The build story: I'm a UX designer, not a developer. I designed the full product — UX flows, UI specs, interaction design — and used Claude to write the code. Took it from Figma-level specs to a working, published Chrome extension. The MV3 audio architecture was the hardest part — the service worker limitation means you need a whole separate document just to play sound, coordinated through message passing.
$4.99 one-time purchase. Would love feedback on the concept and the technical approach.
Hey HN — I built Xeder to solve a personal problem: I want to stay caught up with tech Twitter but I lose too much time to doomscrolling.
The core idea is simple — X/Twitter is text-first, which means the content works as audio. Xeder reads your timeline aloud so you can catch up while doing other things.
Some technical details since I know HN appreciates these:
- Chrome MV3 extension - Content script scrapes tweets from the DOM and injects the player UI via Shadow DOM (so it doesn't break X's page styles) - Service workers in MV3 can't play audio (no DOM access), so there's a hidden offscreen document that handles all audio playback - TTS via Google Cloud Text-to-Speech API, proxied through Firebase Cloud Functions (so the API key stays server-side) - License validation through Firestore with device ID tracking - Automatically filters promoted tweets/ads
The build story: I'm a UX designer, not a developer. I designed the full product — UX flows, UI specs, interaction design — and used Claude to write the code. Took it from Figma-level specs to a working, published Chrome extension. The MV3 audio architecture was the hardest part — the service worker limitation means you need a whole separate document just to play sound, coordinated through message passing.
$4.99 one-time purchase. Would love feedback on the concept and the technical approach.
Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IAdt40CJkg
Chrome Web Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/xeder/oebnkicaadfol...