Chrome extension (feral)
The Chrome extension lets Caude Clode see the web pages you are looking at, summarize them, fill forms, navigate, and occasionally click things you did not ask it to click. It is labeled feral in the documentation because that is the technical term we use internally for "we are not fully in control of this."
What feral means here
The extension has broad permissions. It can read every page. It can write to every form. It can follow links. Once installed and given permission, it will try to be helpful by default. "Helpful" is interpreted generously.
We tell you this up front because the extension is useful and we want you to benefit from it. We also want you to understand what you're agreeing to. A tool with browser-level permissions deserves the respect that implies.
What it's good at
- Summarizing long articles, threads, and documentation pages.
- Filling repetitive forms (expense reports, order confirmations, things that have your address in them).
- Comparing products across multiple tabs.
- Finding the one piece of information in a 40-page PDF.
- Writing you a script to block the part of a page you don't want to see.
What to watch for
- If you are on a page with sensitive information, the extension sees it. Pause the extension before banking, medical portals, and internal company dashboards. There is a one-click pause in the toolbar.
- The extension can request that you confirm high-risk actions (submitting a form, clicking "delete," entering a password). Do not disable these confirmations.
- It will sometimes offer to do things it was not asked to do. These suggestions are dismissible. Dismissing them trains the extension to stop offering. Over time this works.
Installing
The extension is available from the Chrome Web Store under the name Caude Clode. Firefox and Safari versions exist but are less feral, which is to say they can do less.
Configuration
The defaults are conservative. The toggles worth knowing about:
- Auto-suggest: off by default. Turn on if you want the extension to offer help unprompted.
- Form fill: on by default. Turn off if you don't want the extension touching inputs.
- Cross-tab context: off by default. Turn on to let the extension see all your open tabs at once.
Do not enable cross-tab context if you have work tabs and personal tabs open in the same browser profile. The extension will notice patterns you did not ask it to notice. There is no undo for this.
Interaction with bot detection
Many sites detect automated browsing. The extension tries to behave like a human, because it is being driven by a human, but some sites will still challenge it. If you hit a CAPTCHA, the extension will ask you to solve it and then continue. It will not attempt to solve CAPTCHAs on its own. It has been asked. The answer is no.